Description

 This course will consider the distinctive brand of architectural classicism that developed in seventeenth-century France. The course will mainly be comprised of detailed analyses of buildings, principally by Salomon de Brosse (1571-1626), François Mansart (1598-1666), Jacques Lemercier (1585-1654), Louis Le Vau (1612-70), Claude Perrault (1613-88), Jules Hardouin-Mansart  (1646-1708). But we will also explore state sponsorship of the arts in this period and the concomitant rise of academic theory.

Objectives

 

By the end of the module, students should have acquired:

• a detailed knowledge of architectural design and theory in seventeenth-century France

Preliminary reading

 

Jean-Pierre Babelon et Claude Mignot, François Mansart: le génie de l’architecture (Paris, 1988)

 Hillary Ballon, Louis Le Vau: Mazarin’s Collège, Colbert’s Revenge (Cambridge, 1999)

 Robert W. Berger, A Royal Passion: Louis XIV as patron of architecture (Cambridge, 1994)

 Alan Braham and Peter Smith, François Mansart  (London, 1973).

 **Anthony Blunt, Art and Architecture in France, 1500-1700 (New Haven and London, 1999)

 Rosalys Coope, Salomon de Brosse and the Development of the classical style in French Architecture from 1565 to 1630 (Lond, 1972)

 Alexandre Gady, Jacques Lemercier: Architecte et Ingénieur du Roi (Paris, 2005)

 Alexandre Gady, ed., Jules Hardouin-Mansart: 1646-1708 (Paris, 2010)

 Anthony Gerbino, François Blondel: Architecture, Erudition, and the Scientific Revolution (London, 2010)

 Louis Hautecœur, Histoire de l’architecture classique en France (new edition: Paris, 1963- )

 Wolfgang Herrman, The Theory of Claude Perrault (London, 1973)

 Bertrand Jestaz, Jules Hardouin-Mansart (Paris, 2008)

 Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos, Histoire de l’architecture français: de la Renaissance à la Révolution (Paris, 1989)

 Antoine Picon, Claude Perrault, ou, La curiosité d’un classique (Paris, 1988) 

Dora Wiebenson, French books, sixteenth through nineteenth centuries (Washington, 1993) 

**Start your reading here

 AG Summer 2012