LE MUET, Pierre

French architect and theoretician. His most important work was Manière de bastir pour toutes sortes de personnes (Manner of Building for All Sorts of People, 1623), which probably drew on Serlio's then unpublished sixth book of Architettura, and Du Cerceau's Trois Livres d'Architecture, especially the first book (1559). Le Muet's book contains designs for urban dwellings for sites ranging from very small to quite large, was reprinted three times, came out in an English translation in 1670, and was superseded in 1720 by a collection of designs entitled Architecture moderne ou l'art de bien bastir pour toutes sortes de personnes.

Of the numerous Parisian town-houses he designed (many of which retained Mannerist tendencies), not much remains intact, apart from the handsome Hôtel d'Avaux (now Saint-Aignan), 71 Rue du Temple (1644-50 - which has a garden façadeGLOSSARYthe front or principal face of a building, especially one elaborately constructed; a blind façade is a façade that is purely decorative and does not relate to the structure of the building. influenced by the Louvre and a court with façades enlivened with a Giant Order of pilasters), and the Hôtel Tubeuf, 16 Rue Vivienne (1648-54), both of which were elegant essays in Classicism. Le Muet designed the ground-plan of the Church of Nôtre-Dame-des-Victoires (1629), and from 1655 to 1666, assisted by Le Duc, succeeded Lemercier at the Val-de-Grâce, Paris, completing the conventual buildings and the upper Order and domeGLOSSARYin architecture, hemispherical structure evolved from the arch, usually forming a ceiling or roof. of the Church.