Pierre Lescot

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Palais du Louvre

Pierre Lescot (c. 1515 – 10 September 1578) was a French

Lescot wing of the Louvre in Paris. He played an important role in the introduction of elements of classical architecture into French architecture.[1]

Biography

Lescot was born in Paris.

Palais du Louvre,[2] which transformed the old château into the palace that we know. A project put forward by the Italian architect and theorist Sebastiano Serlio
was set aside in favor of Lescot's, in which three sides of a square court were to be enclosed by splendid apartments, while on the east, facing the city as it then was, the fourth side was probably destined to be lightly closed with an arcade. Festive corner pavilions of commanding height and adorned by pillars and statues were to replace the medieval towers. Elsewhere in the Louvre, little was actually achieved beyond razing some of the old feudal structure.

The Henri II staircase at the north end of the Lescot Wing of the Louvre

Though Lescot was confirmed in his position after the king's death by his heir

musicians' gallery
. Of Lescot's constructions at the Louvre there also remain the Salle des Gardes and the Henry II staircase.

Lescot's Fontaine des nymphes 1549, rededicated as Fontaine des innocents

His first achievements (1540 – 1545) were the rood-screen in Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois, of which only some sculptures by Goujon have been saved and in Paris the Hôtel de Ligneris (1548–50, now the Musée Carnavalet, which was thoroughly altered by François Mansart). Here and especially in the design of the Fountain of Nymphs (1547–49, illustration, right), his moderate tectonic role is outshone by Goujon's sculpture.[4] He was also responsible for the Château de Vallery.

Lescot's career is so scantily documented it is not known whether he ever visited Italy, or whether his knowledge of Italian practice was derived through the architecture and engravings that issued from the

duc de Nevers, published long afterwards, instances "Magny" (i.e. Clagny) as "a painter who used to make inventions of masquerades and tourneys",[6]
as all court architects were expected to produce in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries.

At his death, Lescot was succeeded at the Louvre by Jean Baptiste Androuet du Cerceau.

See also

Other outstanding architects of the French Renaissance:

Notes

  1. ^ "the man who was first responsible for the implantation of pure and correct classical architecture in France."David Thomson, "A Note on Pierre Lescot, the Painter" The Burlington Magazine 120 No. 907 (October 1978, pp. 666-667) p 666; see Henri Zerner, L'art de la Renaissance en France. L'invention du classicisme (Paris: Flammarion) 1996. Lescot
  2. ^ The contract is of 1551. The project is analyzed in the context of Parisian urbanism in David Thomson, Renaissance Paris: Architecture and Growth, 1475-1600 (Berkeley: University of California Press) 1984, figs. 60-70.
  3. ^ Cour Carrée illustration.
  4. ^ The Fontaine des nymphes replaced an ancioent public fountain for the entry of Henry II into Paris, 1549.It stood against a wall; when it was rearranged in 1788 as a free-standing fountain, Augustin Pajou sculpted a fourth face. (Insecula Archived 2007-05-12 at the Wayback Machine).
  5. ^ Ronsard's poem, Discours à Pierre Lescot, was written in 1555 and subsequently modified (Thomson 1978:667).
  6. ^ "un Peintre qui souloit faire des inventions pour les masquerades & tournois nommé Magny, resident à Paris...", noted in Thomson 1978:667 and note.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Pierre Lescot.


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