October

This beautiful medieval palace was demolished to make room for a baroque masterpiece...the residence of the Kings of France, the Louvre. Even the walls in front have been extensively modified, where they exist at all. This is one of the only views of this magnificent edifice. If you stood on the same place today, you would be looking directly at one of the most romantic bridges in Europe...the Pont Du Art. However, this painting was made long before it was built.

October, the month of tilling and sowing, is represented along the left bank of the Seine. The view is from the vicinity of the Hôtel de Nesle, the Duc de Berry's Paris residence, from approximately the same vantage point as in the month of June.In June the Limbourgs looked east, while here they turn toward the north; in June they painted the Palais de la Cité, former residence of the kings of France, while here they show the Louvre, the royal residence since the time of Philippe Auguste (reigned 1180-1223).Before us is the imposing mass of the Louvre of Charles V, the Duc de Berry's brother, as seen from the windows of the Duke's hôtel; it is rendered so scrupulously that we can make out its every detail.In the middle rises a big tower, the dungeon built by Philippe Auguste, whose outline is traced in the paving of the château's cour carrée (square courtyard). This dungeon, commonly called the Tour du Louvre, symbolized the royal prerogative; from here appanages were granted, and here the royal treasure was housed.In the miniature the dungeon hides the northwest tower, known as the Tour de la Fauconnerie, where Charles V kept the precious manuscripts of his library. But we can see the three other corner towers: to the right is the Tour de la Taillerie; then the eastern facade protected by twin towers whose outline is also visible on the courtyard paving; farther to the left is the Tour de la Grande Chapelle, followed by the southern facade, also with double towers.Every detail is so precise that even today, several centuries after this Louvre's destruction, a model of it was made possible thanks largely to the Limbourgs' painting. An enceinte marked by the towers and machicolated balconies stretches along the Seine in front of the château. At left is a postern.Tiny figures stroll on the quai from which steps lead to the river, giving access to the boats.In the foreground, in the fields bordering the left bank, a peasant wearing a blue tunic sows seeds that he carries in a white cloth pouch. A bag of grain lies on the ground behind him, beyond which birds peck at the newly sown seeds.At the left, another peasant on horseback draws a harrow on which a heavy stone has been placed to make it penetrate more deeply into the earth. A scarecrow dressed as an archer and strings drawn between stakes both help discourage birds from eating the seeds.This scene of country life in the shadow of the royal residence gives us a vivid image of the outskirts of Paris at the beginning of the fifteenth century.



The Hotel du Nestle is still there of course...but it is a hotel. Here is an excerpt from its colourful past.


The following excerpt is taken from Around and About Paris/Volume 1. So if you cannot make it to Paris, just dream your way there in company of author Thirza Vallois. It is part of a walk she has designed in the 6th arrondissement of the Left Bank, at the famous Hôtel de Nesle, which faces the Pont des Art, the most romantic of Paris's bridges.

The medieval Hôtel de Nesle was second to none, except perhaps to the Louvre on the opposite bank, the home of Jean, duc de Berry (the king's brother) and of his fabulous illuminated manuscript, Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry, his world-famous Book of Hours. The original defence tower had been erected around 1220 by Philippe Hamelin, the Provost of Paris, and was therefore known as the Tour Hamelin. A gate was soon added to the walls, roughly 30 meters to the south, on the site of the present entrance to the Mazarine Library of the Institut de France (no 23 quai de Conti). A plan on the façade of the eastern wing of the Institut de France indicates the precise location of the tower and gate. When later Simon de Clermont, the Lord of Nesle, built a palace next to them, they became known respectively as La Tour and La Porte de Nesle.
From 1308 pm, when Philippe le Bel had bought the palace, it became the residence of various members of the royal family. Its waterside location, though pleasing, made it vulnerable to flooding and it therefore was provided with the first quai in the city (now quai de Conti), which was built in 1313 by Etienne Barbette, the road surveyor of Paris. Philippe le Bel's three sons, the future Louis X, Philippe V and Charles IV, married respectively Marguerite, jeanne and Blanche de Bourgogne (the latter two were sisters and cousins of Marguerite). All three resided in the palace and seem to have used its tower for their amorous liaisons. One day, however, their sister-in-law Isabelle, Philippe le Bel's daughter and wife of Edward II of England, noticed three gentlemen wearing the three purses she had given the three princesses as gifts. Needless to dwell on the scandal that ensued, nor to enumerate the list of tortures inflicted on the princesses' lovers (which included, of course, castration) before they were finally decapitated and hanged by the armpits to be devoured by birds of prey. Marguerite and Blanche were shaved and dispatched to languish at the Château-Gaillard of Andelys (on route to Normandy), while Jeanne was locked up in the castle of Dourdan, south-west of Paris. Blanche was later forced to take the veil, Marguerite was suffocated between two mattresses by order of her husband Louis X, who wished to remarry, but Jeanne was offered the beautiful Hôtel de Nesle by her loving husband, Philippe V, who, moreover, generously passed away in 1322, leaving Jeanne free to lead a life of merry widowhood for the next seven years. Was she the queen who, as Brantôme wrote three centuries later, used to watch out from the tower for passers-by and, having sent for them and exhausted their sexual potency, had them tied up in sacks and precipitated from the top of the tower into the water to drown? Brantôme could not confirm this allegation but added that most Parisians believed the story to be true. Which is already corroborated by the famous poet François Villon two centuries earlier, who, in his moving Ballade des dames du temps jadis (1461), put to music and sung by Georges Brassens, evokes the queen who ordered Buridan to be thrown in a sack into the Seine:
Semblablement où est la royne Qui commanda que Buridan Fust jecté en un sac en Seyne?
Similarly where is the queen Who odered Buridan To be thrown in a sack into the Seine? Buridan, who is supposed to have been her lover during those seven years and to have escaped death by falling on a boat loaded with hay, later became the rector of the University of Paris and outlived Jeanne by 30 years. The rival he injured subsequently, when he was involved in another liaison, later became no other than Pope Clément VI.

http://www.metropoleparis.com/1998/336/336nesle.html A link for the modern Tour Hamelin.