on works of restoration, and Louis XVIII., Louis Philippe and Napoleon III. devoted considerable sums to the same end. The palace is surrounded by gardens and ornamental waters—to the north the Jardin de l’Orangerie, to the south the Jardin Anglais and the Parterre, between which extends the lake known as the Bassin des Carpes, containing carp in large numbers. A space of over 200 acres to the east of the palace is covered by the park, which is traversed by a canal dating from the reign of Henry IV. On the north the park is bordered by a vinery producing fine white grapes.
Forest of Fontainebleau.—The forest of Fontainebleau is one of the most beautiful wooded tracts in France, and for generations it has been the chosen haunt of French landscape painters. Among the most celebrated spots are the Vallée de la Solle, the Gorge aux Loups, the Gorges de Franchard and d’Apremont, and the Fort l’Empereur. The whole area extends to 42,200 acres, with a circumference of 56 m. Nearly a quarter of this area is of a rocky nature, and the quarries of sandstone supplied a large part of the paving of Paris. The oak, pine, beech, hornbeam and birch are the chief varieties of trees.
It is impossible to do more than mention a few of the historical events which have taken place at Fontainebleau. Philip the Fair, Henry III. and Louis XIII. were all born in the palace, and the first of these kings died there. James V. of Scotland was there received by his intended bride; and Charles V. of Germany was entertained there in 1539. Christina of Sweden lived there for years, and the gallery is still to be seen where in 1657 she caused her secretary Monaldeschi to be put to death. In 1685 Fontainebleau saw the signing of the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and in the following year the death of the great Condé. In the 18th century it had two illustrious guests in Peter the Great of Russia and Christian VII. of Denmark; and in the early part of the 19th century it was twice the residence of Pius VII.,—in 1804 when he came to consecrate the emperor Napoleon, and in 1812–1814, when he was his prisoner.
See Pfnor, Monographie de Fontainebleau, with text by Champollion Figeac (Paris, 1866); Guide artistique et historique au palais de Fontainebleau (Paris, 1889); E. Bourges, Recherches sur Fontainebleau (Fontainebleau, 1896).
FONTAN, LOUIS MARIE (1801–1839), French man of letters,
was born at Lorient on the 4th of November 1801. He began
his career as a clerk in a government office, but was dismissed
for taking part in a political banquet. At the age of nineteen
he went to Paris and began to contribute to the Tablettes and
the Album. He was brought to trial for political articles written
for the latter paper, but defended himself so energetically that
he secured the indefinite postponement of his case. The offending
paper was suppressed for a time, and Fontan produced a collection
of political poems, Odes et épîtres, and a number of plays, of
which Perkins Warbec (1828), written in collaboration with
MM. Halévy and Drouineau, was the most successful. In 1828
the Album was revived, and in it Fontan published a virulent
but witty attack on Charles X., entitled Le Mouton enragé
(20th June 1829). To escape the inevitable prosecution Fontan
fled over the frontier, but, finding no safe asylum, he returned
to Paris to give himself up to the authorities, and was sentenced
to five years’ imprisonment and a heavy fine. He was liberated
by the revolution of 1830, and his Jeanne la folle, performed in
the same year, gained a success due perhaps more to sympathy
with the author’s political principles than to the merits of the
piece itself, a somewhat crude and violent picture of Breton
history. A drama representing the trial of Marshal Ney, which
he wrote in collaboration with Charles Dupenty, Le Procès d’un
maréchal de France (printed 1831), was suppressed on the
night of its production. Fontan died in Paris on the 10th of
October 1839.
A sympathetic portrait of Fontan as a prisoner, and an analysis of his principal works, are to be found in Jules Janin’s Histoire de la littérature dramatique, vol. i.
FONTANA, DOMENICO (1543–1607), Italian architect and
mechanician, was born at Mili, a village on the Lake of Como, in
1543. After a good training in mathematics, he went in 1563
to join his elder brother, then studying architecture at Rome.
He made rapid progress, and was taken into the service of
Cardinal Montalto, for whom he erected a chapel in the church of
Santa Maria Maggiore and the villa Negroni. When the cardinal’s
pension was stopped by the pope, Gregory XIII., Fontana
volunteered to complete the works in hand at his own expense.
The cardinal being soon after elected pope, under the name of
Sixtus V., he immediately appointed Fontana his chief architect.
Amongst the works executed by him were the Lateran palace,
the palace of Monte Cavallo (the Quirinal), the Vatican library,
&c. But the undertaking which brought Fontana the highest
repute was the removal of the great Egyptian obelisk, which
had been brought to Rome in the reign of Caligula, from the place
where it lay in the circus of the Vatican. Its erection in front
of St Peter’s he accomplished in 1586. After the death of Sixtus
V., charges were brought against Fontana of misappropriation
of public moneys, and Clement VIII. dismissed him from his
post (1592). This appears to have been just in time to save
the Colosseum from being converted by Fontana into a huge
cloth factory, according to a project of Sixtus V. Fontana was
then called to Naples, and accepted the appointment of architect
to the viceroy, the count of Miranda. At Naples he built the
royal palace, constructed several canals and projected a new
harbour and bridge, which he did not live to execute. The only
literary work left by him is his account of the removal of the
obelisk (Rome, 1590). He died at Naples in 1607, and was
honoured with a public funeral in the church of Santa Anna.
His plan for a new harbour at Naples was carried out only after
his death. His son Giulio Cesare succeeded him as royal architect
in Naples, the university of that town being his best-known
building.
FONTANA, LAVINIA (1552–1614), Italian portrait-painter, was the daughter of Prospero Fontana (q.v.). She was greatly employed by the ladies of Bologna, and, going thence to Rome, painted the likenesses of many illustrious personages, being under the particular patronage of the family (Buoncampagni) of Pope
Gregory XIII., who died in 1585. The Roman ladies, from the
days of this pontiff to those of Paul V., elected in 1605, showed
no less favour to Lavinia than their Bolognese sisters had done;
and Paul V. was himself among her sitters. Some of her portraits,
often lavishly paid for, have been attributed to Guido. In works
of a different kind also she united care and delicacy with boldness.
Among the chief of these are a Venus in the Berlin museum;
the “Virgin lifting a veil from the sleeping infant Christ,” in the
Escorial; and the “Queen of Sheba visiting Solomon.” Her
own portrait in youth—she was accounted very beautiful—was
perhaps her masterpiece; it belongs to the counts Zappi of
Imola, the family into which Lavinia married. Her husband,
whose name is given as Paolo Zappi or Paolo Foppa, painted the
draperies in many of Lavinia’s pictures. She is deemed on the
whole a better painter than her father; from him naturally
came her first instruction, but she gradually adopted the Caraccesque
style, with strong quasi-Venetian colouring. She was
elected into the Academy of Rome, and died in that city in 1614.
FONTANA, PROSPERO (1512–1597), Italian painter, was
born in Bologna, and became a pupil of Innocenzo da Imola.
He afterwards worked for Vasari and Perino del Vaga. It was
probably from Vasari that Fontana acquired a practice of offhand,
self-displaying work. He undertook a multitude of commissions,
and was so rapid, that he painted, it is said, in a few
weeks an entire hall in the Vitelli palace at Città di Castello.
Along with daring, he had fertility of combination, and in works
of parade he attained a certain measure of success, although his
drawing was incorrect and his mannerism palpable. He belongs
to the degenerate period of the Bolognese school, under the
influence chiefly of the imitators of Raphael—Sabbatini, Sammachini
and Passerotti being three of his principal colleagues.
His soundest successes were in portraiture, in which branch of
art he stood so high that towards 1550 Michelangelo introduced
him to Pope Julius III. as a portrait-painter; and he was
pensioned by this pope, and remained at the pontifical court
with the three successors of Julius. Here he lived on a grand
scale, and figured as a sort of arbiter and oracle among his
