Jules Hardouin Mansart | An architect of icons

Jules Hardouin Mansart, architect to King Louis XIV, left a legacy of incredible work in France. Sue Aran explores his life and style…

Imagine a small village and church surrounded by meadows, wetlands and forests filled with wild game, very much like a Millet or Poussin painting of the French countryside. The year was 1607. Into this scene rode a six-year-old boy on his first hunting trip with his father. They stayed at a village inn and the trip was so memorable for the young boy that he vowed he’d return. When fate dealt him the hand that would ultimately change the course of French history, he kept his promise.

The young boy was the Dauphin, the future King Louis XIII. His father was King Henry IV, his mother Marie de Medici, and the pastoral landscape that so impressed itself in his memory – was the fiefdom of Versailles.

Crowned King in 1610, Louis XIII next visited Versailles in 1621 and stayed at the same inn. Finding the location ideally situated between his main residence at Saint-Germain-en-Laye and Paris, he purchased the surrounding land from a local landowner and built a small hunting lodge. That small, two-story residence became the foundation of the Palace of Versailles as we know it today. It is estimated that for the next 40 years, 60% of France’s revenues at the time were spent on this flamboyant structure. It’s impossible to value it properly but those that try estimate up to three hundred billion dollars – or more.

In 1631 Louis XIII commissioned the architect, Philibert Le Roy, to replace the lodge with a classically designed chateau constructed in brick and stone. When his successor Louis XIV, the “Sun King,” took over the reins of power, he commissioned the leading artists of the day, architect Louis Le Vau, decorator and painter Charles Le Brun and the landscape designer André Le Nôtre – to rebuild and extend the footprint of the small hunting chateau.

It’s estimated that for some 40 years, 60% of France’s revenue was spent on this flamboyant structure. It’s impossible to value it properly but those that try estimate up to three hundred billion dollars – or more. Once completed, the Sun King’s entire court, courtesans and staff, totalling upwards of six-thousand people, crowded into the buildings, necessitating further expansion. Into this heady assemblage strode the young architect Jules Hardouin Mansart, whose work is considered to be the pinnacle of French Baroque architecture.

Jules Hardouin Mansart

Born in Paris in 1646, Jules studied under his renowned great-uncle, François Mansart (also spelled Mansard), one of the originators of classical French architecture. Adopting his great-uncle’s name, Jules Hardouin Mansart used his family ties and prodigious ambition to make contacts at the royal court and in 1674 he won the commission to remodel the estate of Clagny (which no longer exists) that the King had recently bought for his then mistress, Madame de Montespan. Pleased by the work on Clagny, the King hired Hardouin-Mansart to enlarge the Château du Val in the forest of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and the following year appointed him Chief Architect and Superintendent of Royal Buildings.

In 1676, Hardouin-Mansart received another commission to design the famous dome of the church of Saint-Louis des Invalides, considered one of the architect’s greatest masterpieces. The designer of Les Invalides was Libéral Bruant, one of Hardouin-Mansart’s teachers. He assisted the aged Bruant, and the chapel was finished in 1679 to Bruant’s designs after his death. This chapel was known as Église Saint-Louis des Invalides. Buoyed by the brilliance of this plan, Louis XIV put Hardoiun-Mansart in charge of redesigning and enlarging the Chateau of Versailles into a palace.

Using Le Vau’s original plans, he added a second storey and designed the magnificent Hall of Mirrors as well as the North and South wings, the Grand Trianon, the Orangerie (subsequently planted with 3,000 of the King’s beloved orange trees), and the Petites Écuries and Grandes Écuries (stables). By 1682 Louis proclaimed Versailles his principal residence and seat of government and was able to offer rooms in the palace to almost all of his court.

Following the death of his wife, Maria Theresa of Spain, the King asked Hardouin-Mansart to undertake the enlargement and remodeling of the Royal Apartments for himself and his then-secret wife, the Marquise de Maintenon. Hardouin-Mansart next began construction of the Royal Chapel which towered over the rest of the palace.

Although occupied with the Palace of Versailles for much of his life, Jules Hardouin-Mansart designed many other renowned buildings, among them the Chateau de Dampierre (1675), Chateau de Marly (1679), Place des Victoires (1684), Pont Royale (1685), and the Place Vendôme (1690).

Today schools, squares, buildings, hotels and streets are named after Jules Hardoin-Mansart and his legacy lives on.

By Sue Aran, a writer, photographer, and tour guide living in the Gers department of southwest France. She is the owner of French Country Adventures, which provides personally-guided, small-group, slow travel tours into Gascony, the Pays Basque, Provence and beyond.

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