JULES HARDOUIN-MANSART

1

Jules Hardouin-Mansart (1646–1708) was the son of an obscure painter, Raphaël Hardouin. As a youth, he first trained with his great uncle, the famous François Mansart, whose prestigious family name he added to his own after the elder architect died in 1666. In 1673 he became involved with the Bâtiments du roi (the king’s works), when its superintendent, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, selected him for an inspection mission to the Languedoc. Hardouin-Mansart’s career was launched, and it progressed rapidly thereafter. A member of the Royal Academy of Architecture in 1675, he became First Architect of the King in 1681 and, unexpectedly for a building professional, Surintendant des Bâtiments in 1699. Only once before had this prestigious position, traditionally earmarked for the nobility, been held by an architect, Philibert Delorme.

2

As superintendent and first architect, Hardouin-Mansart took on simultaneously the roles of client and architect—a convenient, if ethically problematic, convergence. This concentration of power helped him reorganize the Bâtiments. Prefiguring the modern architectural office, he set up a hierarchical structure from the apex of which he oversaw numerous draftsmen and building managers. This efficient configuration enabled him to satisfy both Louis XIV’s voracious appetite for building and the copious demands placed on the Bâtiments, which included not only public buildings in the provinces but also private requests from members of the court. As his career advanced, Hardouin-Mansart also rose through the ranks of society: he was ennobled in 1682; the king bestowed on him the title of Chevalier de l’Ordre de Saint-Michel in 1693; and in 1699 he took his place among the landed gentry as the Comte de Sagonne.

3

To an extent, Hardouin-Mansart’s professional and social success had a negative effect on the critical reception of his work. The Duc de Saint-Simon, ever on guard to preserve the privileges of the old aristocracy, disparaged Hardouin-Mansart’s meteoric rise from modest beginnings, insinuating that the architect was more adept at flattery than building. Some architectural historians have concurred with the duke’s assertions. Espousing the Vasarian myth of the solitary genius and disregarding the collaborative, sometimes convoluted, building process, they have sought to identify the “real” designers at the Bâtiments by analyzing drawing styles. Fiske Kimball, for instance, believed that Pierre Lepautre, one of HardouinMansart’s draftsmen and engravers, was responsible for the innovations in interior decoration that took place during the last years of Louis XIV’s reign. [1] Going further in the pinpointing of authorship, Albert Laprade denied Hardouin-Mansart any design ability whatsoever. He credited Louis Le Vau’s disciple François d’Orbay with the bulk of Hardouin-Mansart’s buildings that were realized before d’Orbay’s death. [2]

4

Historians wishing to look at the first architect’s legacy more dispassionately, or at least those aware of the complexities of architectural design, had to contend with another consequence of his prominence: the immense quantity of documents generated under his supervision. They have grappled with not only the profusion of drawings produced at the Bâtiments but also the superabundance of notarial records, contracts, reports, and letters documenting Hardouin-Mansart’s role as first architect, controller of the royal building budget, protector of the royal art academies, and supervisor of the royal manufactories. This archival bounty makes any overall assessment of his contribution a daunting proposition. Until now, published scholarship has not lived up to Hardouin-Mansart’s stature in the history of French architecture. [3]

5

Several initiatives spurred by the tercentenary of his death in 2008 have helped to remedy this situation. An aborted exhibition planned for Versailles that year, subsequently transformed into a smaller showing at the Musée Carnavalet in 2009, led to an international conference in Paris and Versailles in December 2008 and two imposing publications: Bertrand Jestaz’s two-volume study (2008), and a 600-page collective work edited by Alexandre Gady (2010). [4] The nearly simultaneous publication of two major studies on the same architect is apparently due to scholarly intrigue worthy of the court at Versailles.

6

Despite their different formats, the two books share a common goal: the rehabilitation of Hardouin-Mansart as a designer. Changes in architectural scholarship, and certainly in architectural publishing, during the past fifty years account for their dissimilarities. Jestaz’s Jules HardouinMansart, a greatly expanded and revised version of his groundbreaking but unpublished 1962 dissertation at the École des Chartes, Paris, falls within the lineage of studies of an artists’ lives and works, based on painstaking archival research. [5] The straightforward narrative—a chronological string of the major milestones in Hardouin-Mansart’s life in parallel with his architectural works—is in keeping with the author’s exacting training. The account is divided into two parts—before and after 1681, the year when HardouinMansart became Louis XIV’s first architect. Following the order of Jestaz’s dissertation, the chapters are set out according to the ascendancy of the architect’s successive patrons. In his conclusion, Jestaz appraises Hardouin-Mansart’s artistic legacy. Based on masterful analyses that are backed by consummate knowledge of seventeenth-century architecture, Jestaz shows Hardouin-Mansart to be a great innovator. Whereas historians have customarily portrayed the architects of the Bâtiments as uninspired, formulaic designers, Jestaz’s Hardouin-Mansart emerges as a talented individual who favored unconventional forms and drew upon unusual precedents. Jestaz interprets the architect’s love of plain surfaces and simple masses, his interest in horizontal compositions, and his restrained or unusual treatment of the orders as challenges to tradition. Thus, ironically, the architect most closely associated with the so-called classicism of the grand siècle may have been the least committed to the ideal of a normative doctrine promoted by the Royal Academy of Architecture.

7

Jestaz supports his discussion with a wealth of documentary evidence. In fact, books 391 the entire second volume is devoted to extensive transcriptions of the most important primary sources, in large part archival and unpublished. These include the “Bref estat,” a manuscript life of Hardouin-Mansart (perhaps written by his brother-in-law Robert de Cotte, as Jestaz suggests), whose importance was first revealed in Jestaz’s dissertation. [6] A similar documentary interest guided Jestaz in his choice of illustrations. Most often photographed by the author himself, these images are never mere illustrations to the text but provide graphic evidence, which he deciphers as adroitly as he dissects archival records. At times, the black-andwhite reproductions lack the necessary sharpness, and the decision to enlarge Jestaz’s photographs for the volumes’ covers—surprising from a publisher as experienced as Picard—seems misguided. But these are quibbles in comparison with the immense benefit of making these important documents accessible.

8

Gady’s elegantly designed Jules Hardouin-Mansart, 1646–1708 belongs to the contemporary genre of lavishly illustrated multiauthored works that explore the career of a single artist from various perspectives. Although it is not, properly speaking, an exhibition catalog, the book illustrates many of the artifacts displayed at the Carnavalet and addresses themes broached in that show, for which Gady was guest curator and the author of a thirtythree-page illustrated guide. Seasoned specialists (though Jestaz is absent, as one might expect) and younger scholars alike, most of them participants in the 2008 conference, wrote the introductory essays, which range from biographical accounts to thematic studies. Others contributed to the illustrated catalogue of the architect’s projects and buildings that forms the second part of the book.

9

Since both of these undertakings set out to cover the entirety of HardouinMansart’s life and career, some overlapping and even duplication inevitably occurs. Many drawings published by Jestaz in 2008 are also reproduced in Gady’s 2010 volume, this time in color, and Gady includes a transcription of the “Bref estat” as well. However, the book edited by Gady is hardly a glossy and derivative account of Hardouin-Mansart’s career. While of necessity drawing on Jestaz, it occasionally questions, sometimes corrects, and frequently expands on that scholar’s discoveries and interpretations. The stimulating dialogue between the two publications establishes a fertile context for future studies of Hardouin-Mansart.

10

Some of the introductory essays of the 2010 publication concern material that Jestaz had interspersed among his architectural analyses. Claude Mignot describes Hardouin-Mansart’s early training, notably his relationship to François Mansart, up to the time when the younger architect became a member of the Academy. Benjamin Ringot and Thierry Sarmant discuss the remainder of Hardouin-Mansart’s career. In two other essays, these three authors analyze the structure of the Bâtiments during the two key phases of the architect’s career. In his principal contribution to the catalog, Gady addresses Hardouin-Mansart’s design work. Examining the architect’s articulation of wall surfaces, use of the orders, preferences in roof types, and taste for curved volumes, he corroborates Jestaz’s appreciation of Hardouin-Mansart’s skill. For Gady and Jestaz alike, Hardouin-Mansart’s quest for simplicity emerges as his most important contribution to French architecture.

11

Other essays focus on less-known aspects of Hardouin-Mansart’s career. Gady expands on Jestaz’s brief remarks on portraits of Hardouin-Mansart, a topic he featured in the introductory gallery at the Carnavalet. Combing through archival records, particularly Hardouin-Mansart’s probate inventory, Joëlle Barreau and Yoann Brault trace the provenance of his immense fortune. Guillaume Fonkenell addresses Hardouin-Mansart’s technical proficiency, in particular his mastery of stereotomy. Finally, Claude Mignot restores Hardouin-Mansart’s crucial role in the development of the French formal garden.

12

The second part of the book, a catalogue raisonné of Hardouin-Mansart’s buildings, adopts a dual structure, typological and chronological. Documentary discoveries lead to the addition of new constructions to Jestaz’s list. These include the main altar of Saint-Just Cathedral in Narbonne (1694–95), the Orangery of the Chateau of Thouars (1699–1705), and the only building Hardouin-Mansart seems to have erected outside France, the Chateau of L’Isle, in Switzerland (1694–98). In other cases, attributions are rejected. Fonkenell questions Jestaz’s ascribing of a project for Place Bellecour in Lyons to Hardouin-Mansart, arguing that the only document related to this design probably dates from the late eighteenth century and was subsequently falsified in order to make it pass for an autograph by the architect. [7] With an oeuvre as abundant as HardouinMansart’s, researchers will surely be revising and refining this inventory in the future.

13

The institutional sponsors of both of these publications deserve recognition: the French Ministry of Culture and Communication for Jestaz; the Centre AndréChastel of the Université Paris IV–Sorbonne and the Centre allemand d’histoire de l’art for Gady. It is encouraging to see public institutions fund these costly but crucial scholarly undertakings. They are undoubtedly the finest tribute that can be paid to Hardouin-Mansart’s exceptional career.