BOOKS ON ARCHITECTURE

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     In his dedication to the Jesuit Fathers in La Flèche as well as in the 1627 royal privilege authorising him to market the Fidelle ouverture de l’art de serrurier, Mathurin Jousse the Elder is specified as a merchant and master locksmith. Living in La Flèche after being trained as a compagnon (craftsman), he spent time with architects Martellange and Derand who were building the Jesuit college. Interested in the works, he was employed by the college to give practical instruction on manufacturing scientific instruments. "Puisque tu veux donner aux apprentis secours... Des conditions requises à l’apprenti : désir d’apprendre et se rendre expert en iceluy" ("L’autheur à son livre"). The influence of Jesuits specialized in teaching can be found in the prologue of the work edited "pour facilliter en tout mon possible le chemin à ceux qui embrassent l’apprentissage de cest art". Jousse is both right and wrong when he writes : "Personne que je sache ne s’est encore jusqu’à présent ingéré d’en mettre aucune chose par écrit, ains au contraire, ceux qui en ont eu la plus grande connaissance se sont contentés d’une pratique mercenaire sans se soucier d’en découvrir aucune chose à la postérité, ensevelissant avec eux tant de belles et rares expériences qu’un assiduel travail leur avait fait découvrir" (p. 2). Right, for the knowlege was transmitted from master to compagnon completely secretly and orally since the organization of the trade of locksmith in the 13^th century. The statutes of the master locksmith corporation were entered in Book XVIII of the Livre des métiers by provost Étienne Boileau, written in 1260, during Louis IX’s reform of the Provostship of Paris. These regulations were modified by the ordinance of Philippe le Bel on July 6, 1307 and restored in their original form in 1392. Work was progressively structured by a strict apportionment of tasks among the various corporations dealing with wrought iron. The term of iron work, applied to the important architectural iron work which developed at the beginning of the 17^th century was taken from the corporation which manufactured it, that of the "serreuriers qui font serrures et clefs". The title of master locksmith was gained after the realization of a masterpiece consisting of a lock and a key. In 1543, Francis I confirmed the 1392 text instituting the masterpiece, and it was not until 1650 that the last great text appeared which would govern the community up to the end of the Ancien Régime. The trade rule consisted of a five- to ten-year apprenticeship under a master followed by approximately five years of traveling and working in one’s trade in the guild. If the craftsman reached the level of master craftsman, he could then open his own shop and workshop. François Le Boeuf points out that the departmental archives of la Sarthe have a contract between Mathurin Jousse and three locksmith craftsmen (4 E VIII 16/418) for the hinges on the windows of the east wing of the "cour des Classes" of the Jesuit college. It could take two full years to create a masterpiece in accordance with the orders of the corporation jury. The lock had to have "des ornaments et figures". "Certains ont mis deux ans et plus à parfaire leur chef d’œuvre, tellement que c’est quelquefois la ruine des pauvres aspirants, à cause des grands frais et dépenses qui leur convient faire en travaillant... Il ne se fait plus de portes, coffres et autres meubles comme l’on faisait le temps passé, et elles sont subjectes à accrocher, rompre soutanes, robes et manteaux qui s’en approchent" (F. Le Bœuf 2001, p. 10). In order to make these pieces in secret, various technical and artistic skills were brought into play: iron working, silversmithing, gunsmithing, clock-making and ornamental iconography. But Mathurin Jousse is wrong when he says that "Personne que je sache ne s’est encore jusqu’à présent ingéré d’en mettre aucune chose par écrit", because he seems to be unaware of the work of George Bauer, known as Agricola, De metallica (Basel, 1556), the first real treatise on metallurgy. Nonetheless, the Fidelle ouverture remains one of the first great technical essays on processing iron, essentially hardening it. The last engravings of the collection, after a series of keys and plates, also represent file-cutting machines, well hinges, small iron window grates and some shop-sign consoles. There are also a few extraordinary devices starting on page 53: a folding wheelchair, and an iron leg and arm for a disabled person.
The engraved frontispiece represents columns supporting two angels and a mandorla around a sun, the inscription IHS and a heart. An aged person draped in a tunic is holding a bellows and a hammer; his right leg is a wooden prothesis; on the other side a young man carries a caduceus. At their feet two people are conversing (master locksmiths?), with a key and a compass placed on a plinth between them. Since traditions and procedures were transmitted under the seal of secrecy from master to compagnon, it was rare to find (before the 18^th century, the century of the encyclopedia) technical treatises such as the famous Art de convertir le fer forgé en acier et d’adoucir le fer fondu by Antoine Ferchault de Réamur, published in 1722. The first publication on the art of ironworking, after Jousse’s, was Diderot’s and d’Alembert’s enterprise, in the Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, which came out between 1751 and 1765. This work strongly inspired another encyclopedic work, the Descriptions des arts et métiers faits et approuvés par MM. de l’Académie royale des Sciences, in Paris. In volume XX, L’art du serrurier, published in 1767, Duhamel du Monceau writes on page 21, "Mathurin Jousse était un très habile serrurier établi à La Flèche, qui a fait un très bon ouvrage sur son art; mais comme il s’est contenté de décrire quelques pièces de serrurerie qu’il regardait comme des chefs d’œuvre, son ouvrage ne nous a pas été d’une grande utilité".
Jousse’s work reveals a few other technical improvements, such as the pin key lock which opens on both sides. He also describes a spiral, not flat, spring, for "je peux véritablement dire qu’entre tous les arts méchaniques, il n’y en a aucun qui puisse se parangonner à celuy du serrurier, pour nous être utile et nécessaire. C’est cette considération qui me faict mettre à jour ce traicté" (ch. I, p. 1-2). The inventory made after his death in 1645 lists in his house an impressive quantity of material connected to locksmithing: supplies of metal, iron, copper and tin and tools: as hammers, bores, chisels, files, bit-braces anvils, saws, rasps, clamps, tongs, etc. as well as hinges and pins and joiner’s tools: chisels, trying-planes and planes. But the old library, a veritable "Ali Baba’s cave" contained other treasures revealing the multiple skills of our man in the practice of the metalworking arts. Among the various "ustenciles manufacturés" de Jousse, the notary mentions, pêle-mêle, wooden candle-making moulds, small iron mills, as well as a "modelle de bois pour servir à faire des moulins", or even "branches de chevreuil propres à emmancher des couteaux" (F. Le Bœuf 2001). He also listed several pieces of religious metal work, in ordinary metal, copper or tin, some reliquaries, several crucifixes, several unrepaired. He also mentioned a small copper Virgin Mary, a mould for lead crucifixes, "quatre petitz tableaux de plomb, ou encore sept livres de plomb où est compris une petite statue". Finally he pointed out "plusieurs anticques ou médailles représentant plusieurs empereurs, Cézars et autres de cuivre pesant trois livres et demi". In the same category, let us also mention approximately fifteen "estampes creuses pour faire médailles", which represent diverse religious personages including Saint Ignatius, certainly corresponding to a Jesuit order, or the "dix-neuf poinçons de relief représentant les mesmes figures", found in the main room. Elsewhere, small copper pictures representing a Virgin or a crucifixion are listed. It is apparent that Jousse was accustomed to making small repoussé or moulded metal objects. According to D. Guilmard (1881, p. 43), a second edition of the treatise on locksmithing was published. But this edition does not appear in the catalogue of works published by Georges Griveau (Pasquier & Dauphin 1932). Could there have been confusion with the treatise on carpentry published also in 1627 which was in fact re-issued in 1659?
Merchant, master locksmith, Mathurin Jousse can also find a place in the pantheon of the best ornament-workers. Abbot de Marolles was not mistaken in his book Livre des peintres et graveurs, c. 1665, when he wrote the names of 17^th century locksmiths whose engraved work was sought by amateurs, "Dans l’art du serrurier, avec Mathurin Jousse, Didier Torner, on loue et Guillaume Lorrain, Nicolas de Jardins, Louche avec son parrain, Pasquier de Focamberge, et Berton et Labrousse". An integral part of architecture and interior decoration, locks became focal points for Renaissance architects and ornament-workers. Thus Jacques Androuet du Cerceau, an architect, draftsman and engraver, and as such the main French ornament-worker of the 16^th century, passed on to us his Modèle de serrurerie vingt et une pièces gravées, petits panneaux grotesques, indicated by D. Guilmard in the Lesoufaché collection. These models appeared to be better adapted to wood sculpting than to wrought iron. But little by little repoussé work enabling the manufacture of extremely elegant keyhole plates and bolts replaced heavy pieces manufactured in force, hammered and sent through the fire many times. The chateaux of Anet, Fontainebleau and Écouen all held examples of this iron work which was claimed by Antoine Morisseau, Guillaume Hérard, Mathurin Bon, Gilbert Drouys, Adam Bontemps, Michel Suron, Jean Duchesne et Jacques Martin de Lyon. Mathurin Jousse was their worthy successor at La Flèche, proposing original models in the Fidelle ouverture de l’art du serrurier. He shows decorations of crownings or keyhole caps of chest locks, engravings of escutcheons, keyholes (p. 31), a head of a grotesque holding two sea horses on a leash, chimeras, ibex, eagles, foliated scrolls, fanciful animals, masks and figurines terminating in a plinth (p. 34, fig. IX). The use of the cold chisel and the chisel to create these decorations of grotesques, Moors and "rinceaux habités" denotes Jousse’s great dexterity and proves that his work had a lot in common with contemporary ornament-makers, such as Antoine Jacquard, engraver and manufacturer of arquebuses in Poitiers, around 1624, the author of Dessins d’arquebuserie, de serrurerie, d’orfèvrerie et de bijouterie (keyholes, key heads), or Didier Torner, author of a series of thirty pieces, Dessins de serrurerie (keyholes and heads). On one of the pieces we read the name Didier Torner, and towards the bottom Guillaume Le Lorrain’s, which would lead us to suppose that Torner engraved Le Lorrain’s compositions, as he was a master locksmith at that time. They are dated 1622, 1624 and 1625. In the volume at the Bibliothèque nationale (Serrurerie, L.e. 6a), other numbered pieces, unnamed, represent plates and keyholes, with a piece "Entrée de serrure", marked P. Lionnois (1620). One might also mention the models of P. Clary (1614), Pasquier de Focamberge (1625) and Honorat Tacussée (1630), and conclude with the work of Hugues Brisville, master locksmith in Paris, dedicated "A Monsieur Longuet, conseiller du roy en ses conseils et grand audiencier de France" and engraved by Jean Bérain.

Catherine Prade (Musée national des Prisons, Fontainebleau) – 2008

Critical bibliography

J.-P. Babelon, Demeures parisiennes sous Henri IV et Louis XIII, Paris, Le Temps, 1977.

A.-M. Bruleaux, "L’organisation du métier du Moyen-Age à nos jours", Métiers d’art, 18, avril 1982, pp. 43-48.

A. Chastel, La grottesque, Paris, Le Promeneur, 1988, p. 42.

D. Guilmard, Les maîtres ornemanistes. Dessinateurs, peintres, architectes, sculpteurs et graveurs. Écoles Française, Italienne, Allemande, et des Pays-Bas (Flamande et Hollandaise), Paris, Plon, 1881, pp. 37-61.

H. Havard, Les arts de l’ameublement, La Serrurerie, Paris, Delagrave, s.d. [1842 ?].

F. Le Bœuf, "Mathurin Jousse, maître serrurier à La Flèche et théoricien d'architecture (vers 1575-1645)", In situ, 1, 2001.

P. Le Bœuf, "La Bibliothèque de Mathurin Jousse : une tentative de reconstitution", In situ, 1, 2001.

É. Pasquier & V. Dauphin, Imprimeurs et libraires de l’Anjou, Angers, Société anonyme des éditions de l’Ouest, 1932, pp. 311-326.

É.-C. Pecquet, « Mathurin Jousse, architecte et ingénieur de la ville de La Flèche au XVII^e siècle », Cahiers Fléchois, 6, 1984, pp. 28-41.

R.-A. Weigert, Inventaire du Fonds Français. Graveurs du XVII^e siècle..., Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, 5, 1968, "Jousse (Mathurin)", pp. 615-617.