MANSART, François

French architect, important for establishing classicism in BaroqueGLOSSARYThe period in art history from about 1600 to about 1750. In this sense the term covers a wide range of styles and artists. In painting and sculpture there were three main forms of Baroque: (1) sumptuous display, a style associated with the Catholic Counter Reformation and the absolutist courts of Europe (Bernini, Rubens); (2) dramatic realism (Caravaggio); and (3) everyday realism, a development seen in particular in Holland (Rembrandt, Vermeer). In architecture, there was an emphasis on expressiveness and grandeur, achieved through scale, the dramatic use of light and shadow, and increasingly elaborate decoration. In a more limited sense the term Baroque often refers to the first of these categories. The development of the Baroque reflects the period's religious tensions (Catholic versus Protestant); a new and more expansive world view based on science and exploration; and the growth of absolutist monarchies. architecture in mid-17th-century France. His buildings are notable for their subtlety, elegance, and harmony. His most complete surviving work is the château of Maisons.

Mansart was the grandson of a master mason and the son of a master carpenter. One of his uncles was a sculptor, another an architect. When his father died in 1610, Mansart's training was taken over by his brother-in-law, an architect and sculptor. Later, Mansart was apprenticed to and heavily influenced by Salomon de Brosse, a distinguished and successful architect during the reign of Henry IV and the regency of Marie de Médicis, mother of Louis XIII.

Mansart's career can be traced from 1623, when he designed the 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. of the chapelGLOSSARYa small separate place for worship, either part of a large church or a separate building. of the church of the Feuillants in the Rue Saint-Honoré in Paris (no longer standing). Of his early works, the only one that survives is the château of Balleroy (begun c. 1626), near Bayeux, in the département of Calvados. In 1635 Gaston, duc d'Orléans, the brother of Louis XIII, commissioned Mansart to reconstruct his château at Blois, which had been built in the 15th and 16th centuries and used as a royal residence by three kings. Mansart proposed rebuilding it entirely, but only the north wing facing the gardens was reconstructed.

In 1642 René de Longeuil, an immensely wealthy financier and officer of the royal treasury, commissioned Mansart to build a château on his estate. The château of Maisons (now called Maisons-Laffitte, in the chief town of the département of Yvelines) is unique in that it is the only building by Mansart in which the interior decoration (graced particularly by a magnificent stairway) survives.

Perhaps Mansart's personality was responsible for the setbacks he began to encounter in his last years, the first of which was a royal commission he received in 1645 and lost in 1646. Anne of Austria asked Mansart to draw up plans for the convent and church of the Val-de-Grâce in Paris, which the sovereign had vowed to build if she bore a son. When the costs of laying the foundation exceeded the funds provided, Mansart was replaced by Jacques Lemercier, who more or less followed the original plans.

With the accession of Louis XIV to the throne in 1661, private patrons became fewer and fewer. Architects, painters, sculptors, and craftsmen were called upon to build, decorate, and furnish structures commissioned by the king. When, in 1664, Louis decided to complete the palace of the Louvre, his chief minister and surintendant des bâtiments (roughly, "superintendent of buildings"), Jean-Baptiste Colbert, asked Mansart to draw up plans for the east wing (the colonnaded wing). Possibly because he could not produce and keepGLOSSARYtall, strong tower in medieval castles, used as an observation post and last refuge for those living in the castle, an, unlike the donjon, not designed for permanent habitation. to any final plan, Mansart lost the commission.

In 1665 Colbert again asked Mansart to produce designs - this time for a chapel for the tombs of the royal family of the Bourbons to be built at the end of the Saint-Denis basilicaGLOSSARYa church building, usually facing east, with a tall main nave and two or four side aisles of lesser height. There may also be a transept between the nave and the choir, which is reserved for the clergy. Originally, the basilica was an ancient Greek administrative building, and the Romans used this form for markets and law courts; it then became a place of assembly for the early Christians, and thus a church.. Mansart planned his design (which was never executed) around a central, domed space, which later inspired his grandnephew Jules Hardouin-Mansart in his design for the dome of the church of Les Invalides.