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Architect: Claude Perrault
Style: French Classicism
Dates: 1668-74
The Eastern Façade of the Louvre, Claude Perrault, Final Essay
The Eastern Façade of the Louvre, or the Louvre Colonnade, is a marvel in architectural terms and served at the forefront of architectural advancements in the seventeenth century. Given its immense history with seemingly infinite construction efforts, the Louvre is an example of the blending of historical and modern forms of architecture and is praised for its advancements and impacts on France and the world. Despite the long list of renovations, however, the building of the Eastern façade is the clearest example of French efforts to modernize and become the global superpower it stands as today.
The Louvre is regarded as one of the most famous constructions in the world; however, it is essential to note that the Louvre hasn’t always been this grand museum. In its current state, the Louvre is the byproduct of a series of expansions that were commissioned beginning in the twelfth century. In 1190, a fortress was ordered by King Philippe II to be constructed on the right bank of the Seine River in what was then Western Paris. However, in 1546, King Francis I transformed the site into a palace meant to serve French royalty. Francis I’s architect, Pierre Lescot, designed the palace to be expanded, and his successors carried this same idea. By the seventeenth century, the Louvre stood as an expansive palace along the Seine (Fig. 1). Louis XIII initiated the construction of the eastern portion of the grounds in the seventeenth century, and the eastern wing was designed to serve as the palace’s main entrance. With a change of succession, however, came a change in direction. In 1682, Louis XIV introduced and relocated the entirety of the French court to the Palace of Versailles, and construction on the Louvre was stopped, leaving the now deserted palace untouched for nearly a century. What had been intended by its prior courts to be Paris’ most prominent symbol of French Classicism instead became a symbol of its absence and a foreshadowing of the fall of the French monarchy.
Following the deaths of King Louis XIV, Kings Louis XV and Louis XVI used the Louvre as storage for artworks and sculptures that the French court owned. Ultimately, King Louis XVI’s reign came to an end in 1793 following the French Revolution, and that same year, the French National Assembly ordered the Louvre to be opened as a museum. However, the museum was closed in 1796 due to structural concerns resulting from its century of absence. Still, it was reopened and expanded in 1801 at the start of the rule of the Napoleon lineage, where the museum garnered an official name as the Musée Napoléon. Napoleon wanted to establish a national museum that housed a collection of art from around the world, enlarging its collection from his military campaigns, donations, and commissions. His contributions, however, also consisted of stolen works from other European nations, and in 1815, when Napoleon signed the Treaty of Fontainebleau, he was forced to return these works. France was permitted to keep only a select number of pieces, and the Louvre was reinstated as the museum’s official name. After Napoleon’s rule, the Louvre continued to expand and was completed by Napoleon III in the mid-nineteenth century. Finally, in the 1980s and 1990s, the Louvre underwent significant remodeling. To traditionalists no avail, the museum was modernized, along with the addition of a new exhibition. In 1981, architect I.M. Pei proposed a pyramid at the center of the site to be constructed from steel and glass, a symbol and byproduct of the museum’s modernization efforts. For the first time since 1674, the Louvre’s eastern façade was succeeded as the museum’s main entrance.
Arguably, the most impactful addition to the Louvre, despite its long history of additions and renovations, is the construction of the Eastern façade. King Louis XIV, along with being crowned as king in 1643, assumed the role of resuming the construction of the Louvre. He began by commissioning architects for the Eastern façade in what would ultimately become a competition for the chance at the title of “architect to the king.” Despite their contributions to French architecture in the past, namely with the development of French Classical styles and the introduction of Baroque in French culture, architects Louis Le Vau and Gian Lorenzo Bernini were initially barred from submitting plans. This was partly due to their non-French backgrounds, especially Bernini, who was of Italian descent, as well as King Louis XIV’s desire to maintain the Louvre and this new wing as a symbol of true classic antiquity, now regarded as French Classicism. Ultimately, the Petit Conseil, a trio of architects Louis Le Vau, Claude Perrault, and Charles Le Brun, was entrusted with the Louvre’s renovations. Charles Le Brun oversaw the conversion of the portrait gallery into the Gallery of Apollo, whose barrel vault ceiling was to depict Apollo transforming the night sky. In the picture, the night is personified by Diana and Morpheus. Twelve tondos, or circular artworks, depict the laborers of each month of the calendar year, and all twelve zodiac signs are on display. This gallery was to represent King Louis XIV as France’s new order. Claude Perrault was selected as the architect of the Eastern façade, and construction officially commenced in 1665. The façade’s symmetry is meant to symbolize a new order and French nationalism, and the pediments above the windows are to reinstate the triumph of the French monarchy.
In his development of plans for the façade, Perrault was heavily influenced by ancient architectures, namely Greek and Roman styles. This manifested within the design of the Eastern Louvre façade in the context of the proliferation of parallelism and symmetries between these ancient cultures with French architectural style. Perrault represented that culture, most specifically in his conceptualization of orders. According to Perrault, ancient architecture dwelt on projecting one element into a larger one, while modern architecture is meant to reflect these elements in their exact dimensions across axes. Perrault emphasized the symmetry between ancient and modern, implying that an axis can be drawn between both, and thus they can be considered symmetrical and hence equal. Essentially, while appreciating and emphasizing the beauty of the pre-existing Louvre façades, progressives such as Perrault can extract this beauty from the buildings of the past and turn it into value for the present and the future. As proposed by King Louis XIV, the Louvre was to be a political symbol by reflecting on the rivalry between Italy and France for artistic dominance. Still, most importantly, it intended to secure such power in the early days of his reign. In a sense, the notion of the architecture of the façade can be viewed as a collective creation generated by the palatial manner and extravagant details of the design. Columns, regardless of their order, were featured in most French architectural plans, establishing them as the most crucial feature in architectural designs.
Perrault’s façade was no exception for the inclusion of these columns. Evident in their existence in his design is a progression in the political and artistic attitudes of the era and a progression in the perception of art itself. During this time, the paired columns were the essential aspect of the design, and Perrault introduced this concept in the Eastern façade. The pairing of columns appears on the Eastern façade of the Louvre, and at the time of its creation, there were no prior instances of its existence in history. This serves as Perrault’s progression on the perception of architecture and the impacts of doing such. Perrault, placing the columns in pairs, was able to birth a wider intercolumniation and, in turn, assured the windows and doors overlooking the porticoes were not obscured, unlike how they were in ancient structures, where the openings were wider than the intercolumniation (Fig. 2). By placing the columns closer together, while retaining the position of the next set as outlined in classical Vitruvian rule, more clearance could be given to each portico, and thus a more palatial sense within the existing orders. This new arrangement surrounding intercolumniation is considered a new rule of spacing, adding to Vitruvius’s five types previously outlined.
Perrault proclaimed that this new order of coupling columns on the colonnade, which has a more open composition, is effectively a sixth order, which he dubbed “Pseudosystyle,” meaning it is not authorized by ancient beliefs. This method of column placement was based not only on observation but also on his inclination towards theological criticism, effectively setting the different orders of Vitruvian Classicism against each other.
Two columns, each pair spaced evenly in a row, make up the Louvre’s eastern colonnade design and serve as a symbol of rebellion from the present design ritual (Fig. 3). In his architectural theory on confirmation and design of its inherent modernity, Perrault also challenges the traditional architectural views on the assertion that beauty is not universal nor natural since it doesn’t depend on mathematical harmony or precision. Perrault’s argument in this work is that Vitruvius’s concept of optical adjustment may be replaced by acknowledging the human mind’s ability to compensate for illusions of scale, angle, and distance. He also states that human perceptions of beauty and proportion are taste rather than absolute. Perrault also recognizes proportion as a determining role in the beauty of modern architecture, consequently criticizing the proportioning systems done by the early architects.
The Eastern Colonnade of the Louvre not only responded to the current social routine but alsoshaped a new practice surrounding French Classicism. Perrault’s creation of a new order of columns proved the effects of French dominance within architecture and served as a masterpiece in explaining his theory. Further, applying his theory to a site as world-renowned as the Louvre only builds upon tradition from a place of advancement and delivers a message of the evolution of identity within the perception and creation of architecture.