Pierre Lescot

French architect

• Born: 1510?
• Birthplace: Paris, France
• Died: September 10, 1578
• Place of death: Paris, France

Lescot was long regarded as the first of France’s great architects, chiefly because of his redesign and reconstruction of the original Louvre castle. Although modern scholarship modifies this estimate, he remains ranked among the premier French architects and designers of the sixteenth century.

Early Life

Biographical material on the early life of Pierre Lescot (pee-ehr lehs-koh) is limited and often unverifiable. He was born probably in Paris in 1510 into a well-positioned seigneurial family. His father, for whom he was named, was King Francis I’s crown attorney, an attorney for one of the courts of relief, or assistance, as well as the leader of the Parisian merchant guilds. The elder Lescot held estates at Lissy near Brie and, among others, at Clagny close to the royal residences at Versailles. Originally, the Lescots came to France from Italy, where their connections with the Alessi family affected the younger Lescot’s later career.

While a young man, Lescot inherited the paternal estate at Clagny. Favored by Francis and Henry II, Lescot served as their principal chaplain, as their honorary church canon, as an associate abbey at Clermont near Laval, and as a canon at Nôtre Dame in Paris. Advantaged by such royal associations and family position, the younger Lescot began displaying talents as a painter, while at the same time studying mathematics and architecture. Very likely while young, Lescot journeyed to Italy, where, under the auspices of old family friends, he absorbed decorative and architectural concepts later manifested in his work. Unquestionably, he studied Italian architectural writings and examined many of France’s Roman ruins many years prior to his official visit to Rome in 1556.

Under absolutist monarchs who were forging France into Europe’s first nation-state, Paris during Lescot’s lifetime was also changing. Whether engaged in the monarchs’ hodgepodge administrative structures or in the small manufacturies producing luxuries for Crown and court, most of the 250,000 inhabitants of Paris clustered around the Île de la Cité, the Seine River island that from time immemorial simultaneously offered the people their best opportunities for defense and the first ford bridge linking both riverbanks. During Lescot’s lifetime, royalty, its retainers, and courtiers began converting the Marais (swamp), the oldest district on the Seine’s north bank, into an aristocratic enclave, where services of architects builders and artists were ineluctably drawn.

Life’s Work

Lescot’s architectural work commenced during a period of brilliance in French Renaissance architecture , translating into its own idiom characteristics of Italian styles, while subduing elements of its own Gothic traditions. Among his contemporaries and colleagues were the great French sculptor Jean Goujon and Philibert Delorme, an innovative engineer. Encouraged by relative domestic peace, the Crown, its court, and other aristocrats not only began new constructions but also planned to redesign buildings and residences that formerly functioned as fortified positions. New or remodeled, these structures were intended as the abodes of people enjoying the money and leisure to live more ostentatiously, surrounded by what they conceived to be the ultimate in style.

Francis’s own building obsession, which included several châteaus, was epitomized in 1519 by his redesign of Chambord, initially a feudal strong point, which, on completion, reflected Italian symmetries imposed on a functionally banal fortress. Partly a consequence of French and Italian architects and artists crossing one another’s borders more frequently, Chambord, as an exemplar, inspired more imaginative, eclectic, and sophisticated architectural design in France.

Francis then turned his attention to the three-hundred-year-old Louvre in Paris, whose pattern closely conformed to other thirteenth century castles, many then still built of wood. It was replete with a strong tower and a donjon, and was surrounded by sturdy masonry walls.

Because the Louvre’s poor drainage and odeurs made its precincts unfashionable and its proximity to religious houses and the raucous students of the Left Bank undesirable, Francis decided in 1526 on the Louvre’s modernization, though aside from removing the donjon, nothing was done until 1546. That year, Lescot was selected to construct a new structure on the site of the old château’s west wing the Old Louvre then lying outside the old city walls. Considering the restricted Parisian work space available, Lescot planned for two floors of detached buildings, with a central pavilion and its staircase. Each side was to be flanked by large public reception rooms. Within five years, however, these plans had been revised, providing for a grander gallery (salle) and shifting the staircase to the north wing: in all, requiring construction of two new pavilions at each end with a new staircase for one of them. Moreover, the façade was raised one floor so construction of the King’s Pavilion to the southwest would not overpower these two new pavilions.

Monarchs, the times, and styles altered events even as Lescot’s revisions were under way. Sometime between 1551 and Henry’s death in 1559, Lescot was called on by the Crown to develop more ambitious plans, which he did. His new plans called for building a court enclosed by blocks double the length of his original wing. The Louvre façade was visually unified with pilasters of the then-preferred Corinthian and Composite orders. Pediments over windows were alternated between triangular and rounded ones: a variety demanding attention. Each of his three pavilions divided into separate bays, differing from the wings uniting them. Ground-floor windows were set inside rounded arches; those windows of the second floor featured open pediments; and attic windows were capped by sculpted crossed torches. All three pavilions, devoid of horizontal lines, were designed to accentuate the vertical: Double columns, among other devices, carried eyes upward. Overall, Lescot (with Goujon) successfully blended classical and traditional French architecture into his own style of French classicism.

Lescot’s interior work on the new wing was brilliantly enhanced by Goujon’s caryatids ornamentation unknown in France and rare even in Renaissance Italy and by the four groups of sixteen richly decorated Doric columns separating yet affording monumentality to the southern end of the great gallery. Their genius combined, Lescot’s and Goujon’s interior collaborations were almost inseparable: Both added distinctions to an architectural masterwork.

Although his career was preempted for years by the Louvre, Lescot managed many other commissions. Again in collaboration with Goujon, he built the Hôtel Carnavalet in 1545, filling the space between the Hôtel de Ville and the Bastille, thereby luring more courtiers and aristocrats into the Marais district. His use at Carnavalet of a wide street flanked by stables and a kitchen in lieu of a plain wall shortly became the rage among wealthy Parisians. Lescot worked on these other projects with great craftspeople. When Henry tired of his bedroom ceiling, Lescot and the Italian wood-carver Scribec di Carpi produced a new ceiling that rivaled any other of the period, including the magnificent ceilings for which Venice was famous.

After Henry’s death in 1559, Lescot’s personal life disappears from the historical record. Francis, who previously extended him his first commissions, enthusiastically supported him, partially repaying him by designating him the canon of Paris’s metropolitan church (with its many perquisites) and by making him the abbey of Clermont and a royal councillor as well. Francis’s successors reconfirmed these prerogatives for him, and throughout his career he maintained his Clagny estate. There is no other substantial knowledge of him, except that his death occurred on September 10, 1578, in Paris.

Significance

For some modern architectural historians, Lescot has been a source of debate: He was basically an amateur architect, and he was not a critical figure in the development of French architecture, particularly the distinctive Gallic version of Renaissance architecture French classicism.

In addition, many of Lescot’s plans and constructions were flawed, and some believe that as a mere overseer, he assumed credit for the genius of men such as Jean Goujon. Whatever modicum of credibility may be accorded these views, in the light of the overall evidence available, they fail to diminish significantly his contribution to his singularly imaginative plans and designs combining Italianate Renaissance elements with traditional French elements that produced a uniquely French architectural style. This was no more pronouncedly evident than in the original reconstruction of the Louvre and in the designs and plans that substantially determined the shape of that magnificent structure’s future.

Moreover, the design and embellishment of the Louvre and other of his original work represents a rare conjunction of architectural, engineering, and sculpting genius that is, the collaboration of Lescot, Goujon, and Scribec di Carpi. In addition to all their other accomplishments, they produced a nucleus around which, architecturally, one of the world’s most visual and magnificent urban cultural centers would develop to the wonderment of many subsequent generations.

Bibliography

Blunt, Anthony. Art and Architecture in France, 1500-1700. 5th ed. Revised by Richard Beresford. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999. Excellently and authoritatively written for general readers by a distinguished art critic and historian. Descriptions of Lescot’s work on the Louvre are clear and detailed. Contains notes for each chapter and many illustrations and plates.

Cloulas, Ivan, and Michèle Bimbenet-Privat. Treasures of the French Renaissance. Translated by John Goodman. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998. Survey of French Renaissance architecture, the chateaux and palaces of the period, and the treasures contained within. Includes illustrations, bibliographic references, and index.

Gardner, Helen, et al. Gardner’s Art Through the Ages. 11th ed. Fort Worth, Tex.: Harcourt College, 2001. Chapter 14 is especially pertinent to the work of Lescot and his colleagues. The book is beautifully illustrated in both color and black and white and includes plates and schematics. The text is well written. Contains a glossary, a bibliography, and an index.

Hamlin, Talbot. Architecture Through the Ages. Rev. ed. New York: Putnam, 1953. Chapter 16 bears particularly on the Renaissance in France and Italy, and hence on Lescot’s work on the Louvre. Older and less critical than Blunt’s book, it is still accurate and substantial in its major features. Contains many fine photographs and schematics and an excellent, double-columned index.

Janson, H. W. History of Art. 3d ed. Revised and expanded by Anthony F. Janson. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1986. Clearly written, this is a large, lavishly illustrated work with splendid black-and-white and color photographs. Part 3 of the book deals specifically with the Renaissance and Chapter 5, the subject of which is the Renaissance in the North, has excellent materials, including photographs of Lescot’s old Louvre.

Lévěque, Jean-Jacques. The Louvre: A Palace, a Museum. Translated by Geoffrey Finch, Ellen Krabbe, and Kirk McElhearn. Courbevoie, France: ACR, 1999. Details the history of the Louvre and its transformation from palace to museum. Includes color illustrations.

Ranum, Orest. Paris in the Age of Absolutism. Rev. and exp. ed. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003. This extended essay is very important to an understanding of the general social, political, and intellectual climate prevalent in Lescot’s day. Lescot is mentioned in connection with the Louvre and other works. Contains prints of local scenes, a fine view of the Louvre front, and portraiture paintings. Includes an excellent select bibliography and an extensive, double-columned index.