Salomon de Brosse (c. 1571 – 8 December 1626)[2] was an early 17th-century French architect who moved away from late
Mannerism to reassert the
French classical style and was a major influence on
François Mansart.
Life
Salomon was born in
Verneuil-en-Halatte,
Oise, into a prominent
Huguenot family, the grandson through his mother of the designer
Jacques I Androuet du Cerceau and the son of the architect Jean de Brosse. He was established in practice in Paris in 1598 and was promoted to court architect in 1608.
De Brosse greatly influenced the sober and classicizing direction that
French Baroque architecture was to take, especially in designing his most prominent commission, the
Luxembourg Palace,
Paris (1615-1624), for
Marie de' Medici, whose patronage had been extended to his uncle. Salomon de Brosse simplified the crowded compositions of his Androuet du Cerceau heritage and contemporary practice, ranging the U-shaped block round an entrance court, as Carlo Maderno was doing at
Palazzo Barberini, Rome, about the same time. The impetus for the plan is often traced to
Palazzo Pitti, Florence, where the
Medici queen had spent her youth, but the formal plan of
Anet could also be adduced. He clad the building wholly in stone, avoiding the lively contrast of brick and stone that was the more familiar idiom. Though de Brosse was forced to relinquish his post on 24 March 1624, construction of the Luxembourg proceeded according to his plan and elevations; extensions made in the nineteenth century have not obscured his external elements.
^The entrance pavilion and the structures flanking the screen are the portions of the Luxembourg Palace least altered from de Brosse's original design (Coope 1996, p. 865).
^The screen was originally solid; the windows were added later (Ayers 2004, p. 130).
Bibliography
Ayers, Andrew (2004). The Architecture of Paris. Stuttgart; London: Edition Axel Menges.
ISBN9783930698967.
Blondel, Jacques-François (1752). Architecture françoise, reimpression of 1904, vol. 2. Paris: Librairie centrale des Beaux-Arts.
Coope, Rosalys (1972). Salomon de Brosse and the Development of the Classical Style in French Architecture from 1565 to 1630. London: A. Zwemmer.
OCLC462335463. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
OCLC533450
Pannier, Jacques (1911). Un architecte français au commencement du XVIIe siècle: Salomon de Brosse. Paris: Libraire centrale d'Art et d'Architecture.
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Internet Archive.