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| Frederick Marschall Tapestry Room - wall detail Palace of Fontainebleau ca. 1885 watercolor Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Frederick Marschall Tapestry Room - wall detail with Flemish tapestry Palace of Fontainebleau ca. 1885 watercolor Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Frederick Marschall Music Room - wall detail Palace of Fontainebleau ca. 1885 watercolor Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
"If the Romans (someone will say) did not devote themselves to this labor of translation, then by what means were they able so to enrich their language, indeed to make it almost the equal of Greek? By imitating the best Greek authors, transforming themselves into them, devouring them, and, after having thoroughly digested them, converting them into blood, and nourishment, selecting, each according to his own nature and the topic he wished to choose, the best author, all of whose rarest and most exquisite strengths they diligently observed and, like shoots, grafted them, as I said earlier, and adapted them to their own language. In doing this (I say) the Romans constructed all those fine writings we so ardently praise and admire, judging some to be the equal of the Greeks, preferring some as superior to them."
. . .
"Thus let him who would enrich his language devote himself to the imitation of the best Greek and Latin authors and aim, as at a sure target, the point of his stylus at all their greatest strengths. For there is no doubt that the largest part of artfulness is encompassed in imitation, and just as it was most praiseworthy in the ancients to invent well, so is it most useful to imitate well, especially for those whose language is not yet very copious and rich. But let him who would imitate understand that it is not an easy thing faithfully to follow the strengths of a good author and, as it were, transform oneself into him, seeing that Nature herself, even with things that appear most similar, has not managed to prevent their being distinguished by some mark and difference. I say this because there are many in all languages who, without delving into the most hidden and inward parts of the author they have chose, adapt themselves only to what they see at first and, diverting themselves with the beauty of words, miss the force of things."
"And certainly, since it is no vice, but greatly praiseworthy, to borrow from a foreign language ideas and words and to claim them as one's own, so is it greatly to be blamed and is indeed odious to any reader of liberal character to see such imitation within the same language, like that of even some learned men who judge themselves to be among the best when they most resemble a Héroët or a Marot. I thus admonish you (O you who desire the growth of your language and wish to excel in it) not to imitate lightly, as someone recently said, its most famous authors, as the greater number of our French poets commonly do, a thing surely as reprehensible as it is worthless to our vulgar tongue, since it amounts to no more (O great generosity!) than to give it what it already has. I wish our language were so rich in homegrown models that we had no need to have recourse to foreign ones. But if Virgil and Cicero had been content to imitate those of their own language, what would the Latins have beyond Ennius or Lucretius, beyond Crassus or Anthony?"
– Joachim du Bellay (1522-1560), from The Defense and Enrichment of the French Language (1549), translated by Richard Helgerson (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006)
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| Frederick Marschall Gallery of François I - wall detail Palace of Fontainebleau ca. 1885 watercolor Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Frederick Marschall Salon of Louis XIII - wall detail Palace of Fontainebleau ca. 1885 watercolor Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Frederick Marschall Salon of Louis XIII - panel detail Palace of Fontainebleau ca. 1885 watercolor Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Frederick Marschall Salon of Louis XIV - wall detail Palace of Fontainebleau ca. 1885 watercolor Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Frederick Marschall Guard Room - wall detail Palace of Fontainebleau ca. 1885 watercolor Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Frederick Marschall Escalier de la Cour - wall detail Palace of Fontainebleau ca. 1885 watercolor Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Frederick Marschall Council Chamber of Louis XV - wall detail Palace of Fontainebleau ca. 1885 watercolor Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Frederick Marschall Painted Panel - Escutcheon surrounded by Cherubs Palace of Fontainebleau ca. 1885 watercolor Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Frederick Marschall Two Painted-Panels Palace of Fontainebleau ca. 1885 watercolor Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Frederick Marschall Series of Painted Panels Palace of Fontainebleau ca. 1885 watercolor Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Frederick Marschall Bed Alcove - wall detail Palace of Fontainebleau ca. 1885 watercolor Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Frederick Marschall Queen's Bedroom - wall detail Palace of Fontainebleau ca. 1885 watercolor Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Frederick Marschall Small Antechamber - wall detail Palace of Fontainebleau ca. 1885 watercolor Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Frederick Marschall Bedroom of Marie Antoinette - wall detail Palace of Fontainebleau ca. 1885 watercolor Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Frederick Marschall Bedroom of Marie Antoinette - painted door panel Palace of Fontainebleau ca. 1885 watercolor Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Frederick Marschall Chinese Room - wall detail Palace of Fontainebleau ca. 1885 watercolor Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |