224 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 



and he was Keeper (Concierge] of the Tuileries. Jacques du Cerceau 

 was placed in charge of buildings at the Louvre in 1595, and in 1602 

 was Controller and Architect of the King's Buildings at 1,200 1. a 

 year. He completed and restored the chateaux of Monceaux and 

 Verneuil for the king's mistresses, Gabrielle d'Estrees and Henriette 

 d'Entragues respectively. He may have had some part in the western 

 half of the Grande Galerie, and completed the junction between it and 

 the Tuileries after du Perac's death. It is possible, too, that he was 

 the architect of the Hotel de Mayenne rather than his nephew Jean 

 to whom it is usually attributed, since it seems to have been built 

 before 1610. 



DE BROSSE. As the reign of Louis XIII. advanced there is rather 

 fuller information about the architects. The traditions of the two 

 great architect families of the last reign were kept up under Maria de' 

 Medici's regency, and beyond it. Of the three leading architects of 

 that time two were grandsons of Jacques I. du Cerceau, Jean du Cerceau 

 (born before 1590, died after 1649), son of Baptiste, and Salomon 

 de Brosse (born 1562 or earlier, died 1626), son of Jehan de Brosse, 

 clerk of works at Verneuil, and of Julienne, daughter of Jacques I. du 

 Cerceau, and the third a younger brother of Louis Metezeau, Jacques 

 Clement II. (1581-1652). 



Salomon de Brosse was certainly the greatest architect of the early 

 seventeenth century. His early training was, no doubt, on the works 

 of his grandfather and uncles at Verneuil and elsewhere, but whether 

 he went to Italy is not known. His belief in the need of a good 

 classical grounding is proved by the fact that he found time, amid the 

 pressure of an extensive practice, to re-edit Bullant's " Regie Generale " 

 (1619). Uniting a sound taste and judgment with a great family 

 tradition, and the culture of a scholar with practical experience, he 

 was peculiarly fitted to take a leading part in the settling of the national 

 architecture in a period of divergent aims. He gathered up all that 

 was best in contemporary efforts into a consistent manner, which his 

 Huguenot antecedents tinged with seriousness, and his classical studies 

 with a feeling for Roman majesty, and thus raised architecture out of 

 the quagmire of utilitarianism. The earliest building attributed to him 

 is the first "Temple" or Protestant Church at Charenton (1606, 

 burnt down by the mob 1621). His other principal works are the 

 aqueduct of Arcueil (1612-24), the Hotel de Bouillon or Liancourt 

 (1613), the chateaux of Coulommier (1613) and Blerencourt (1614), 

 the facade of St Gervais (1616-21), the Luxembourg Palace (1615-24), 

 the Capuchin Church at Coulommier (1617-25), the Palace of the 

 Parlement of Brittany at Rennes, the rebuilding 'of the Grand' Salle 

 of the Palais de Justice in Paris (1618), the second Temple of Charen- 

 ton, and in all probability the royal hunting box of Versailles (1624), 





