Claude Perrault

Claude Perrault , 1613-88, French architect, scientist, and physician. One of the most eminent French scholars of his time, he advanced the study of anatomy and made other scientific contributions. His greatest architectural achievement is his work on the east facade of the Louvre, known as the Colonnade. In this project (1667-70) he collaborated with Le Vau and Le Brun. Perrault did much to establish the qualities of classical balance and order in French Renaissance architecture. He also built portions of the south facade of the Louvre and the Paris Observatory (1667-72), which, with adaptations to modern scientific requirements, is still in use. At the request of Colbert, he translated (1673) and added notes to the monumental work of Vitruvius . He also wrote (1683) a treatise on the five orders of columns in architecture. Charles Perrault was his brother.

Bibliography: See study by W. Hermann (1974).

Perrault, Claude (1613–88). French physician and amateur architect whose fine translation of Vitruvius (1673) achieved fame, and still commands respect. He played some part (with Le Vau and Le Brun) in the design of the celebrated east front of the Louvre in Paris, of 1665–74, an astonishingly ‘modern’ Classical building for its date, with coupled Corinthian columns set on a plain podium, but he was not solely responsible (indeed his brother, Charles (1628–1703), claimed to have conceived the design, and that Claude had used it in the finished building). The noble façade, which was partly influenced by a design of Bernini, impressed Wren sufficiently for him also to use twinned columns on the west front of St Paul's Cathedral, London. Perrault published Ordonnance des Cinq Espèces de Colonnes (Regulation of the Five Sorts of Columns—1683—translated into other languages later) in which he expressed doubts that proportions could determine beauty, which attracted the opprobrium of N. -F. Blondel. Perrault was an important figure in the evolution of French rationalism, and indeed one of the fathers of the Enlightenment.

Bibliography

R. Berger (1993, 1994);
Blunt (1982);
Hautecœur (1948);
Herrmann (1973);
Middleton & and Watkin (1987);
C. Perrault (1993);
C. Perrault (1683);
Petzet (2000);
Picon (1988);
Soriano (1972);
Jane Turner (1996)