François Mansart

French architect

• Born: January 23, 1598
• Birthplace: Paris, France
• Died: September 23, 1666
• Place of death: Paris, France

Mansart is generally recognized, along with Louis Le Vau, as one of the two greatest French architects of the seventeenth century and is credited with reviving classicism in French architecture while retaining enough vestiges of the prevailing Gothic to produce buildings that were truly unique.

Early Life

In the time of François Mansart (frah-swah mahn-sahrt), individuals who wanted to be architects did not go to school to learn their profession. Rather, they apprenticed to people in the building trades, who were the designers of most new buildings. Mansart was born into a family of carpenters and masons. His father, Absalom Mansart, was the king’s carpenter and his mother, Michelle Le Roy, was a sensitive woman of exquisite taste. Mansart began to learn carpentry from his father as soon as he was old enough. When Absalom Mansart died in 1610, the training of his twelve-year-old son fell to the boy’s brother-in-law, Germain Gaultier, a sculptor and architect of some repute.

Someone interested in architecture and design could not have been born at a more challenging time. Henry IV , who reigned from 1589 to 1610, sought to enhance the royal revenues by curtailing the extravagant building of palaces that had been going on and by emphasizing building projects that would benefit the people both by employing them in the building trades and by revitalizing Paris.

Henry encouraged members of his court to build country houses, and this encouragement resulted in the emergence of an interesting domestic architecture, designed generally for economy, achieved by a new simplicity of design. On Henry’s death, Louis XIII began a thirty-three-year reign that emphasized the building of churches and royal palaces. The Palace of Luxembourg in Paris was completed in 1615, following the design of Salomon de Brosse, with whom François may have served a brief apprenticeship as an adolescent.

Soon Mansart began to work with his mother’s brother, Marcel Le Roy, a noted contractor. He presumably worked on site with Le Roy’s contracting syndicate when it built a bridge across the River Garonne at Toulouse, and it is thought that Mansart, now around twenty-two, might have designed the bridge’s triumphal arch. It is known that, in the same year, his uncle dispatched him to collect some money owed the contracting syndicate by the city of Toulouse.

During his early twenties, Mansart, thin and wiry with sharp features, a long pointed nose, and dark, animated eyes, again represented his uncle’s construction syndicate, presenting to the city fathers of Rouen their proposals to build a bridge. Mansart clearly had sufficient aplomb and self-assurance to handle intensive questioning from these burghers, most of them more than twice his age. He obviously controlled enough technical information to explain to them intricate details of the proposed project and to respond effectively to their searching questions. He withstood the most rigorous tests of accountability and was soon widely recognized as someone who understood construction and design well enough to be entrusted with his own commissions.

Life’s Work

Mansart received two of his own commissions around 1623. One was to design the facade of the Church of the Feillants, later destroyed, in Paris. The other was to remodel the Château de Berny, south of Paris, part of which survives. In that work, he was able to display one of his greatest talents, that of working from the original design of an extant building and, within the structural and physical limitations of that building, to create something unique. Mansart retained the two side pavilions and courtyard of the Château de Berny but added a towering central portion to the plan, linking it with colonnades to the side pavilions and adding a pavilion that contained a remarkably graceful staircase. A portion of one of the side pavilions has survived, but Mansart’s plans are preserved in the National Archives in Paris.

In the nearly two decades between 1623 and 1642, Mansart was actively engaged in all sorts of architectural projects, civic, domestic, and ecclesiastical. His Château de Balleroy in Normandy, begun in 1626, survives and reflects the kind of design Mansart favored. Using the native yellow stone of the region as his base, he faced the walls of the château with thin squares of white ashlar, a stone that lends a serenity and dignity to the surface it creates. Like the Château de Berny, Balleroy has a high center structure, in this instance crowned with a cupola. It took more than a decade to complete Balleroy, and by that time Mansart had begun to imbibe the baroque influence coming to France from Italy, so the central portion of Balleroy and its quadrant colonnades, reminiscent of Berny’s, are more ornate.

Mansart provided designs for such ecclesiastical structures in Paris as the high altar in the Church of San Martin des Champs (c. 1625), the Altar of the Virgin in the Cathedral of Nôtre Dame (1628), the Convent of the Visitation (c. 1633), and the Church of the Visitation (c. 1633). During the same period, however, Mansart also engaged in all sorts of secular projects, including such diverse construction or remodeling jobs as the Château de Plessis-Belleville (1628), the Hôtel de l’Aubespine (c. 1630) and the Hôtel de la Vrillière in Paris (c. 1637), an aqueduct for the Château de Limours (1638), and walls around the park of the Château de Chambord (1639). During this period, he was gaining great confidence in his ability to produce fine structures, and he enjoyed a reputation that made him known throughout France. He received more commissions than he could accept.

The self-assurance that had been an asset to Mansart in his twenties was turning into an arrogance that offended many people during this middle period of his life. Jean-Baptiste Colbert , as emissary of Louis XIII, commissioned Mansart to draw plans for an addition to the Louvre. Colbert, knowing that Mansart had a reputation for changing designs and demolishing already completed work to accommodate his changes, stipulated that Mansart could not make changes once his designs were in and construction was begun. Mansart refused the commission, viewing it as an inhibition to his artistic freedom.

Among those willing to tolerate Mansart’s arrogance and changeability was René de Longueil, a wealthy merchant, for whom, between 1642 to 1651, Mansart designed and erected the Château de Maisons on the banks of the Seine. This building, which has survived, is one of Mansart’s two greatest works, and the only one for which he received full credit. Mansart brilliantly adapted this château to its surroundings. Well into the project, Mansart revised his plans drastically, and all the construction that had been done was torn down so that he could begin again, instituting the new, more imaginative design he had devised. His patron’s wealth was sufficient to permit this costly redirection, and apparently de Longueil was willing to bow to Mansart’s superior architectural knowledge despite the inordinate cost and unseemly delay it occasioned.

Maisons deviated from Mansart’s earlier practice of building a high central portion. The central part of this building and its two wings are of almost equal height except for a small tower and cupola in the central portion. The main building itself is starkly classical, its pilasters unadorned. Two courts in front of the building are surrounded by a dry moat, and a substantial terrace extends to the river front.

The pitch of the roofs and the chimney stacks are adaptations of the Gothic architecture that prevailed in France during the preceding century. The château is known for its gracefully dramatic staircase, a hallmark of Mansart’s domestic architecture. As the early Greeks had done in the Parthenon, Mansart used optical illusion and slight distortion to create proportion in the eyes of those who beheld the building from ground level.

Mansart’s other truly great project was the palace, convent, and Church of the Val-de-Grâce in Paris, begun in 1644. The work was commissioned by the Queen Mother, Anne of Austria , widow of Louis XIII. Mansart’s plans for this vast project were highly elaborate and imaginative. His concern was with the creation of beauty in its purest form. He viewed money merely as a necessary commodity to be provided by his patrons in whatever quantity his extravagant plans demanded.

The Queen Mother was a frugal woman, too timid to lock horns directly with Mansart, who was something of a bully, intolerant of artistic opinions save his own. After putting up with Mansart’s antics for more than a year, the Queen Mother in 1646 replaced him quietly with Jacques Lemercier. By this time, the foundation was laid and considerable progress had been made toward completing the church. When Lemercier took over, he scrapped most of Mansart’s plans, although the church definitely reflects Mansart’s genius. The palace plans were completely redone; Lemercier’s palace is a more pedestrian building than the church.

Mansart lived for another twenty years, his fortunes now in decline, largely because of his cantankerous personality. His reputation for artistic excellence remained unsullied, but commissions were scarce. He continued to work on projects, few of them executed, and those few were usually for remodeling jobs or for funerary monuments.

Significance

Mansart was almost too large for life. He had colossal ideas that captured the imaginations of the rich. When he was able to capture the purses of the rich as well, he could bring these ideas to fruition spectacularly. When he could not do so, he was incapable of compromise and resorted to tactics that made people avoid him. Mansart is often credited with having invented a roof that bears a corruption of his surname, mansard. Actually, this type of roof, common in much modern domestic architecture, existed before Mansart’s time. He employed variations of it in some of his châteaus, but he cannot be credited with its invention.

When the famed British architect Christopher Wren visited France in 1665, the year before London’s great fire, he visited Mansart and expressed his admiration for and appreciation of Mansart’s contributions to classical French architecture. Techniques Mansart used in the Church of the Val-de-Grâce, particularly in the dome, show up in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, for which Wren was chief architect. Mansart’s great-nephew, Jules Hardouin-Mansart , adopted Mansart’s surname and went on to become a famous architect in the last half of the seventeenth century. His most famous design was the palace at Versailles.

Bibliography

Arts Council of Great Britain. François Mansart, 1598-1666. London: Author, 1970. This brief pamphlet offers highlights of Mansart’s life and professional career, pictures of some of his buildings, and copies of some of his architectural plans. Allan Braham and Peter Smith contribute biographical notes, and the chronology is useful.

Blunt, Anthony F. Art and Architecture in France, 1500 to 1700. Baltimore, Md.: Penguin Books, 1953. Blunt makes pertinent comments about Mansart’s contributions to French architecture, identifying him as one of the two greatest French architects of the first half of the seventeenth century. The section on Mansart, although only twenty pages long, is accurate and informative.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. François Mansart and the Origins of French Classical Architecture. London: Warburg Institute, 1941. The first full treatment of François Mansart in English, the book is rich in information, examining Mansart against the larger backdrop of French classical architecture. Blunt’s book remains an authoritative source for the study of Mansart and his work.

Braham, Allan, and Peter Smith. François Mansart. London: A. Zwemmer, 1973. Braham and Smith present a full treatment of Mansart, replete with illustrations. A valuable adjunct to Blunt’s earlier work, this book fully discusses each of Mansart’s major works and provides valuable information about the plans of those buildings that have not survived.

Watterson, Joseph. Architecture: A Short History. Rev. ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 1968. Although Watterson devotes only a few pages to Mansart, his comments are serviceable, offering insights into Mansart’s most important buildings. Also provides a social commentary that places Mansart in the political milieu in which he functioned professionally.