Pautre, Antoine Le (1621–79). After Le Vau and Mansart, the most inventive French architect of C17. He designed the Chapelle de Port-Royal, Paris (1646–8), but his most celebrated work was the Hôtel de Beauvais, Paris (1654–60), on an impossibly irregular site with two street-frontages. He imposed order, creating an internal court on a strong axis, with an impressive variety of invention there and in the main staircase. He published Desseins de plusieurs palais (Designs of Many Palaces—1652–3) and Les œuvres d'architecture d'Anthoine Le Pautre (Works in Architecture of Antoine Le Pautre—1681), which included designs for enormous country-houses and palaces even more Baroquely exuberant than those of Le Vau; these publications seem to have influenced Wren and Schlüter. His Baroque cascade at Saint-Cloud (c.1662–4) was one of his finest creations. His nephew, Pierre Le Pautre (c.1648–1716) worked at Versailles under Hardouin-Mansart, where he decorated the Salon de l'Œil de Bœuf (1701) and chapel (1709–10), significant works in the beginnings of the Rococo style.

Bibliography

R. Berger (1969);
Builder (1982);
Hautecœur (1948);
Jervis (1984);
Kalman and Lampugnani (ed.) (1972);
Kimball (1980);
Jane Turner (1996)

Le Pautre, Antoine (1621–81). See Pautre.