MANSART, FRANÇOIS (1598–1666)

MANSART, FRANÇOIS (1598–1666), French architect. The brilliant François Mansart, though praised as the "God of architecture" by the professor and theorist Jacques-François Blondel (Architecture françoise, 1752–1756), attained the international reputation he deserved only in the mid-twentieth century, thanks to Anthony Blunt. Mansart's buildings synthesized the French and Italian classical heritage in an original and subtle play of volumes and sculpted surfaces. The numerous sketches and alternatives for his projects testify to his irrepressibly fertile imagination. Yet his design process also made him costly and difficult to work with. He was willing to tear down portions of his buildings two and three times during construction. He therefore rarely saw his designs completed, and his surviving buildings are often in fragments or have been greatly altered. The greatest monument to his art consists of approximately forty manuscript drawings that have been preserved.

Mansart's commissions from the royal circle were thwarted or curtailed. His hopes of completely rebuilding the château (residential castle) of Blois for the presumed royal successor Gaston d'Orleans (1608–1660; brother to Louis XIII) were defeated with the birth of Louis XIV (ruled 1643–1715) in 1638. Only one wing was completed (1635–1638). In 1645–1646 he managed to build only the foundations and the facade, up to the first order (columns and entablatures), for the church of the Valde-Grâce, when the exasperated Anne of Austria (1601–1666; wife of Louis XIII) replaced him with Pierre Le Muet (1591–1669). In 1664, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the surintendant des bâtiments (royal superintendent of buildings) solicited Mansart's designs for the expansion of the Louvre and, c. 1664–1665, for a mausoleum for the Bourbon dynasty at the abbey of St.-Denis. But Colbert soon abandoned Mansart because the latter was unable to settle on one of his multiple proposals.

Most of Mansart's completed buildings are in the area of residential architecture, often built for the new socially ambitious class of financiers and royal officers. These include the châteaus of Balleroy (Normandy, from 1631); Berny (Val-de-Marne, 1623–1627); Maisons, built for René de Longueil (Île de France, 1641–1660); Fresnes-sur-Marne (rebuilt by Mansart with the addition of a chapel 1644–1666); and a series of Parisian hôtels (noble town houses), the Hôtel de la Vrillière (1635–1650), Hôtel de Jars (1648), Hôtel Guénégaud du Plessis, (expanded 1648–c. 1660), and Hôtel Guénégaud-des-Brosses (1651–1653).

As was typical of architects of his time, Mansart came from a family involved in various building crafts. His father Absalon, who died when François was twelve, was carpenter to the king. François was trained by his brother-in-law Germain Gaultier, an architect and sculptor (and nephew of one of the greatest sculptors of the French Renaissance, Germain Pilon, c. 1525–1590), and by his uncle Marcel Le Roy, a master mason and civil engineer. Mansart did not travel to Italy, yet his collection of books attests to keen study of ancient monuments and French and Italian architects of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Born the same year as Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) and considered his equal by his French contemporaries, he also shared with his Italian colleague dual sensibilities in both sculpture and architecture.

Mansart's buildings are often formed in overall pyramid-shaped masses, as exemplified by the Parisian churches of the Val-de-Grâce and the Minimes (1657–1665) or the châteaus of Balleroy and Maisons. Although some compositions did not employ orders (for example, Balleroy or the church of the Visitation, 1632–1634), Mansart typically used classical orders or ornament, down to the smallest molding, to create a tectonic system, which evoked its support structure and volumes. For example, on the Val-de-Grâce facade, the orders are superimposed vertically, while advancing and receding from pilasters to engaged columns and exquisitely articulating its volumes.

Although he did not invent the mansard roof, it is aptly named after him. Mansart used it to good effect, and it became widespread in his time. The roof's truss system spanned wider building units than would otherwise have been possible. Thus Mansart's Hôtel de Jars (1648) and Louis Le Vau's Hôtel Tambonneau (1642–1646) were the first to have double-depth corps de logis (main residential areas of a hôtel), allowing for more complex floor plan, variety in size and function of rooms, and even diagonal axes (as in the Louvre). Mansart designed staircases with particular virtuosity, suspending them from walls with an open well in the center, lit by a ceiling dome.

On a large scale, Mansart was sensitive to the placement of his buildings in their urban context; he proposed forecourts and designed his facades and domes with urban vistas in mind. The low entry wall and elegant classical entrance of the Hôtel de la Vrillière emphasized its placement, unique for its day, on an axis from the street behind it (the rue des Fossées). Mansart's designs of châteaus such as Blois and Maisons influenced the garden designer André Le Nôtre (1613–1700) by aligning the garden, the château, and the road approaching it in one long axis stretching out to the horizon. Mansart anticipated the collective work of architects and garden designers (for example, at Versailles) in his harmonious integration of building and landscape.

MANSART, FRANÇOIS (1598–1666)

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