The inventive hybridity of early modern ecclesiastical architecture in France mixes the traditional and local forms derived from the medieval past with neoclassical ones imported from Italy and ultimately derived from antiquity. Although this combination of seemingly disparate styles generally characterizes sixteenth-century French churches, the flying buttresses of the Church of Sainte-Madeleine in Montargis remain exceptional in their classicizing reimagination of a conventional architectural typology. In Architectural Design as an Expression of Religious Tolerance: The Case of Sainte-Madeleine in Montargis, Maile Hutterer suggests that the unusual form of the Montargis buttresses derives from the political and religious circumstances of their creation. Calvinist Jacques Androuet du Cerceau I is the most likely designer of the Montargis buttresses, and they were constructed while Montargis was part of the holdings of Protestant sympathizer Renée de France. The designer's careful balancing of orthodoxy and heterodoxy paralleled Renée's carefully constructed position between Catholicism and Calvinism.
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September 2017
Research Article|
September 01 2017
Architectural Design as an Expression of Religious Tolerance:The Case of Sainte-Madeleine in Montargis
Maile Hutterer
Maile Hutterer
University of Oregon
Maile Hutterer is assistant professor in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture. Her research focuses on Gothic architecture in France, especially the contextual analysis of buttressing and its decoration. She has previously published articles in Gesta and the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. msh@uoregon.edu
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Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (2017) 76 (3): 281–301.
Citation
Maile Hutterer; Architectural Design as an Expression of Religious Tolerance:The Case of Sainte-Madeleine in Montargis. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 1 September 2017; 76 (3): 281–301. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2017.76.3.281
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