Claude Perrault

Claude Perrault

Though Claude Perrault (Paris, 1613 - Paris, 1688) is best known as the architect of the eastern range of the Louvre in Paris, he also achieved success as physician and anatomist, and as an author, who wrote treatises on physics and natural history. Aside from his influential architecture, Perrault is best regarded for his translation of the ten books of Vitruvius, the only surviving Roman work on architecture, into French, done at the instigation of Colbert, and published in 1673. As physician and physicist with a degree of doctor from the University of Paris, Perrault became one of the first members of the Academy of Sciences when it was founded in 1666.

In the competition for the new range of building for the Louvre he was successful over all rivals, even Bernini, who had travelled from Italy expressly for the purpose. This work claimed his attention from 1665 to 1680, and established his reputation: the colonnade became widely celebrated. The simple character of the ground floor basement sets off the paired Corinthian columns, modelled strictly according to Vitruvius.

Perrault also built an Observatory, the church of St-Beno�t-le-B�tourn�, designed a new church of Ste-Genevi�ve, and erected an altar in the Church of the Little Fathers, all in Paris. Perrault's design for a triumphal arch on Rue St-Antoine was preferred to competing designs of Charles Lebrun and Levau, but was only partly executed in stone. When the arch was taken down in the 19th century, it was found that the ingenious master had devised a means of so interlocking the stones, without mortar, that it had become an inseparable mass.

His brother, Charles Perrault, is remembered as the classic reteller of the old story of Cinderella among other fables.