Visiting Amboise Château
(Loire Valley, France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
The
British always reserve ahead for tour buses of at least 30 to go around
visiting châteaux along the Loire River in summer. If you do not have a reservation in July for
a tour bus, it is almost impossible to buy tickets for a small group.
With
no tour buses available, Laurent and my American family drove to Amboise in
stick-shift cars as a bachelor-bachelorette party. It was stop-and-go all the way there, but we
finally made it.
Amboise
dominates a rock outcropping on the right bank of the Loire. It has high walls that tower over the Loire
River; during one of many religious wars, Protestants hung from the walls of
Amboise as trophies.
The
round towers are large enough for horses to trot up four abreast to the garden
esplanade. A king could ride in his
covered carriage up to safety from trouble in town below easily this way.
We
took a tour in French that our bilingual wedding attendees had to translate for
the rest of us. Defenders of Amboise
have been fighting off intruders at this spot since the 11th century
during the 100 Years’ War with England.
Charles
VIII defended the Loire Valley less and invaded Italy more during the Italian
Wars in the 15th century.
Charles
VIII discovered the luxurious Italian lifestyle and brought back Italian
furniture for his castles as well as Italian architects, sculptors, and
gardeners.
The
flame-styled Gothic windows line up in one wing against the rectangular
Renaissance windows in another.
“That
would be a great photograph to show the difference between those two styles,” I
said in my nascent reviewer’s eyes.
Leonardo
da Vinci is buried at Amboise. The
Valois King Francis the First brought him to Amboise to paint, put on parties,
and build war machines as da Vinci did for Ludovico Sforza of Milan.
At
one time, there was a restaurant in a half-timbered home in Old Town Tours
called the Leonardo da Vinci that had models of his war machines dangling from
the ceiling. The restaurant was Italian
with the Milanese specialty of risotto on the menu.
Leonardo
da Vinci’s home, the Clos Lucé, is located at the foot of Amboise with its own
museum containing the artist’s notebooks that he wrote in reverse script that
he could read in a mirror. (Industrial
espionage prevention tactic in the Renaissance?)
I
studied art history in high school and at the University of Chicago, which
enabled me to identify and compare styles without textbooks at Amboise.
I
thanked all my dignified professors at the University of Chicago, whom I
thought were a little stodgy in their suits, ties, and pocket hankies for their
hideously grueling essay exams, so I could be my own tour guide in France, if
needed.
Essay
questions like “Discuss the Development of Plurifacial Sculpture in Renaissance
Italy using at least 10 Sculptures as Examples with Complete Identification” and
“Compare and Contrast 15th Century Italian Renaissance Painting in
Florence, Sienna, Venice, and Rome using at least 5 Works from each City”
explain why I spent hours memorizing art works in the art library and described
all my professors as sort of “evil in a good way” over pizza. They wanted to keep little undergraduates like
me in their graduate courses occupied in wholesome pursuits.
Those
art history tests had three essay questions and usually 30 identification questions,
which required identification slides, design and composition analysis, and significance
of the work of art in its social and historical context. You had to do this in about three or four
paragraphs.
Fast
writing and thinking were a by-product of this testing.
I
was having fun at my wedding, and it had not even started yet.
By
Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
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