Two Copper Gutters, Château de Blois

This watercolor by Whitney Warren Jr. records two copper gutters from the Château de Blois, the Loire Valley royal residence begun under Louis XII. Each sheet pairs a front elevation of the gutter bracket — one crowned with a rosette, one with a fleur-de-lis finial — against a cross-section showing the semicircular copper trough and its scrolled support. Annotations note scale and placement: court-side versus exterior. Warren, then a student at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, made such measured drawings as standard academic training. Blois was a natural subject; its François I wing was among the most studied French Renaissance facades of the period.