François Blondel
François Blondel | |
---|---|
Born | Nicolas-François Blondel c. 10 June 1618 |
Died | 21 January 1686 Paris | (aged 67)
Nationality | French |
Occupation | Architect |
François Blondel (c. 10 June 1618 – 21 January 1686)
Early life
Born Nicolas-François Blondel at
Career
In 1640
Richelieu named Blondel sub-lieutenant of one of his
Around 1648 Blondel received his first architectural commission, the grand stables at the Château de Chaumont-la-Guiche in Saint-Bonnet-de-Joux in southern Burgundy. The stables were executed 1648–1652 by the local mason and entrepreneur François Martel, to whom the design has frequently been attributed. However, Blondel mentions that he was responsible in a note in his 1685 edition of Louis Savot's L'architecture françoise, and, according to his biographer Anthony Gerbino, there is no reason to question Blondel's claim.[6] The
In 1652 Blondel became the tutor of the son of the
In 1656, Blondel was named reader in Mathematics and Fortification at the Collège Royal, where his place was filled during his numerous absences by the astronomer Picard. From 1662 to 1668, Blondel exercised the functions of Syndic of the college.
In the years 1657 to 1663
In 1659, on a voyage to Constantinople he saw an aqueduct "in a place that one calls Belgrade, which by its grandeur, its height and the magnificence of its structure, cedes nothing to that of the Pont du Gard."[11] That same year he was posted as diplomatic resident to Copenhagen, and post he filled until 1663, when he was recalled to France to become a conseiller d'État.
The following year, 1664, Colbert named him Ingénieur du Roy pour la Marine, which occasioned his supervision of harbour fortifications in Normandy (Cherbourg, Le Havre), in Brittany and in the Antillies (Martinique, Guadeloupe, Saint-Domingue), where he witnessed at first hand the prodigious effects of a
Quatremère de Quincy reported that Blondel's talents for architecture were first tested in 1665, in building the royal corderie (ropewalk) at Rochefort. Blondel was also put in charge of constructing the Roman bridge at Saintes.
In 1669, Blondel was admitted to the Académie des Sciences as a geometer (cartographer).[12] That year, in the course of a trip to London in the company of Jean-Baptiste du Hamel, secretary of the Académie, he witnessed an unsuccessful blood transfusion effected by the Royal Society in hopes of curing a madman, with the thought that the human passions were transmitted in the blood.
That same year he was commissioned with urbanization projects for the embellishment of Paris, notably the reconstruction of the Porte Saint-Denis and the Porte Saint-Bernard, and the plan for the city's expansion, which he accomplished with the collaboration of the architect Pierre Bullet.
On 31 December 1671, the King named Blondel Director and Professor of the
In 1673, Blondel was appointed professor of mathematics to the Grand Dauphin; if the royal pupil was of mediocre talent, the project resulted in Blondel's Cours de Mathématiques (1683).
From 1670 until his death in 1686, Blondel was wholly occupied in professional matters and teaching. He collaborated on the dictionaries of Antoine Furetière, of Adrien Auzout for mathematics and Giovanni Alfonso Borelli for astronomy.
References
Notes
- ^ Gerbino 2010, p. 10; Vuillemin 2008, p. 157. He was not related to Jacques-François Blondel.
- ^ For example, see Title unknown, L'Intermédiaire des chercheurs et curieux, vol. 54 (1906), column 126.
- ^ Gerbino 2010, p. 10.
- ^ Gerbino 2010, pp. xvi, 17.
- ^ The stables still exist but are not open to the public.
- ^ Gerbino 2010, pp. 18–21. See Blondel's note on p. 109 of the 1685 edition of Louis Savot's Architecture françoise (copy at e-rara). Gerbino also points out that the stables are ascribed to Blondel by Louis Hautecoeur in his Histoire de l'architecture classique en France, vol. 2 (1948), part 1, p. 511, but "the claim otherwise appears to have gone unnoticed." Herrmann 1982, p. 219, also credits the stables to Blondel.
- ^ Gerbino 2010, p. 18. Gerbino reproduces four photographs of the stables by William Curtis Rolf. A photo of the ground-floor interior can be viewed online at the Internet Archive.
- ^ Gerbino 2010, pp. 18–19.
- OCLC 759544764.
- ^ Blondel's proof has been questioned by some authors, but is now generally accepted as correct (Gerbino 2010, p. 269 [note 47]). However, both Galileo's and Blondel's analyses were deficient: subsequent authors have shown "that resistance to rupture also varies in proportion to the beam's ability to bend before breaking." A consideration of elasticity, a part of modern theory on the strength of materials, was missing from both Galileo and Blondel's work (Gerbino 2010, p. 269 [note 50]).
- Valens Aqueduct.
- ^ Vuillemin 2008, p. 158. Tagell 1996 states Blondel was admitted as a mathematician.
Sources
- Gerbino, Anthony (2010). François Blondel: Architecture, Erudition, and the Scientific Revolution. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780415491990.
- Herrmann, Wolfgang (1982). "Blondel, François", vol. 1, pp. 216–219, in Macmillan Encyclopedia of Architects, 4 volumes, edited by Adolf K. Placzek. New York: The Free Press. ISBN 9780029250006.
- Tadgell, Christopher (1996). "Blondel, (Nicolas-)François", vol. 4, pp. 165–166, in ISBN 9781884446009.
- ISBN 9780826418616.
External links
- Cours d'architecture, Parts 1 (1675), 2 & 3 (1683), 4, 5 & 6 (1683); from the Getty Research Institute, bound as one volume, digitized by the Internet Archive
- Cours d'architecture, second edition (1698), Parts 1, 2 & 3, 4, 5, & 6 at Heidelberg University Library