Perrault, Claude
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)
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Perrault, Claude