BOOKS ON ARCHITECTURE

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French

     In 1645, the bookseller François Langlois, also known as Chartres, obtained a privilege from the king to "faire graver & imprimer en telle forme, grandeur et caractère, & autant de fois que bon luy semblera, un livre intitulé Manière de bien bastir pour toutes sortes de personnes, par Pierre le Muet, Ingénieur & Architecte ordinaire du Roy. Reveuë & augmentée en cette seconde edition de plusieurs figures de beaux bastimens & edifices, de l'invention & conduite dudit sieur le Muet: & ce durant le temps de vingt années, à commencer du jour que le dit livre aura été achevé d'imprimer". The volume appeared at the beginning of 1647. Except for the frontispiece and the title, altered to include the indication of these "augmentations", the first part, "achevée d'imprimer pour la première fois janvier 1647" at the shop of François Langlois, bookseller, made no changes in the contents and the formatting of the first edition of the Manière de bâtir published in 1623. The second part, which bears the address of "widow François Langlois" (having been widowed since January 13, 1647), was new. It is made up of a title page and 31 plates engraved by Jean Marot. It was the first grand demonstration of his talent as an engraver of architectural forms. It was also sold as a separate volume, as is suggested by a few volumes thus kept. It is an anthology of works by Le Muet, the first of its kind published in France. One can find the drawings for three Parisian residences (the Tubeuf and Coquet houses, the hôtel d'Avaux) and for three châteaux (Pont-sur-Seine, Tanlay and Chavigny). As far as we know, this is the whole of his town and country production before 1645, with the exception of the hôtel Marin de la Châtaigneraie on rue Paradis (1642). These plates constitute an addition to the Manière de bâtir, to which the "maison de M. Tubeuf" was joined specifically, captioned "distribution de la neuvième place" (pl. 2). In fact, the plans of the three châteaux and the large hôtel d'Avaux complete on the largest scale, the range of small or medium-sized models (repeating an expression of Jacques Androuet du Cerceau) presented in the first part.
As he would for the plates of his two famous collections, Marot worked from drawings provided by Le Muet, and not from architectural plans, all of which explains the mismatch between his engravings and the erected buildings. This difference could be very consequent, hiding an irregularity incurred (pl. 16-17: the plans for Tanlay in which the trapezoidal platform becomes rectangular), or revealing a project which had been set aside (pl. 1 and 30): the elevation and section of a doorway project rejected for the hôtel d'Avaux).
Plate 1, without a caption, is a project for the portal of the hôtel d'Avaux (also visible in section, pl. 30). Plates 2 to 5 concern the "Petit bastiment de Monsieur le président Tubeuf, rue des Petits champs à Paris"), that is, the small residence constructed in 1643-1644, at the angle of the rue de Richelieu and of the rue des Petits Champs, for Jacques Tubeuf when he rented out the big residence he had bought from Duret de Chevry to Mazarin. (This residence was pulled down during the construction of the Bibliothèque impériale by Henri Labrouste). In plates 6, 7 and 8, Le Muet shows a "bastiment sciz rue Vivien", the small residence constructed between 1639 and 1642 for Jacques Coquet, 18, rue Vivienne in Paris (enlarged by Jacques Bruand from 1658-1661; transformed more fully in the 19^th century and restored in 2008). The châteaux come next. The "chasteau de Pontz en Champagne" (plates 9-15), otherwise called the château de Pont-sur-Seine (Aube), was built for Claude Bouthillier from 1638- 1648. (It burned down in 1814; a farmyard and the garden canal remain). The "Chasteau de Tanlay en Bourgogne" (plates 16-21), remained unfinished after first works were undertaken (1555-1568), and was finished by Le Muet for Michel Particelli d'Hemery between 1643 and 1649 (it remains almost intact today). The "Chasteau de Chavigny en Touraine" (plates 22-25) was built at Lerné (Indre-et-Loire), for Claude Bouthillier for the benefit of his son Léon Bouthillier de Chavigny from 1637 to 1646 (remaining are the platform, the portal, the chapel and the staircase). Finally, plates 26-31 show the "Hostel Davaux à Paris", a residence constructed for Claude d'Avaux, 78, rue du Temple à Paris, from 1644 to 1650 (more often known under the name of hôtel de Saint Aignan and today the Musée d'art et d'histoire du judaïsme).
The Manière de bâtir with its Augmentations was reedited in Paris during 1663 and 1664 by Jean Du Puis and in 1681 by François Jollain. An English translation of the first part was published in 1670 in London by Robert Pricke: The art of fair Building. The six plates of high straight roof framing, published in 1623, were replaced by plates showing roof framing "à la Mansart" more modern, borrowed from the little "Palladio, habillé à la française" published by Le Muet in 1645. The second edition, published in 1675 and again in 1679, contains the thirty-one plates of the Augmentations.

Claude Mignot (Université de Paris IV, Centre André Chastel) – 2005
Revised in 2008

Critical bibliography

P. Le Muet, Manière de bastir pour toutes sortes de personnes..., with introduction and notes by Claude Mignot, Aix-en-Provence, Pandora, 1981.

C. Mignot, Pierre Le Muet, architecte (1591-1669), Diss. Paris-Sorbonne, 1991 (microfim edition, Lille 3).

C. Mignot, "L'hôtel de Saint Aignan", Guide des collections du Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du judaïsme, Paris, Musée d'art et d'histoire du judaïsme, 1999, pp. 14-19(1^st ed. 1998).

C. Mignot "Le château de Chavigny à Lerné", Congrès archéologique de France, Touraine (1997), 2003, pp. 153-168.

C. Mignot, "Bâtir pour toutes sortes de personnes : Serlio, Du Cerceau, Le Muet et leurs successeurs en France. Fortune d’une idée éditoriale", S. Deswarte-Rosa (ed.), Sebastiano Serlio à Lyon. Architecture et imprimerie, Lyon, Mémoire active, 2004, pp. 440-447, 474.

C. Mignot, "Le château de Pont en Champagne, la 'maison aux champs' de Claude Boutillier, surintendant des finances de Louis XIII", Monuments et mémoires de la Fondation Eugène Piot, 94, 2005, pp. 173-212.

C. Mignot "Les modèles de Pierre Le Muet à l'épreuve du temps: l'hôtel Coquet puis Catelan à Paris", Bulletin de la Fédération des sociétés historiques et archéologiques de Paris et de l'Ile-de-France, 2007, pp. 189-238.