Antoine Lepautre

[1] He was a protégé of Cardinal Mazarin, to whom he dedicated his Desseins de plusieurs palais (Paris, 1652/3), in which his imagination is given free rein.

The Hôtel de Beauvais's architectural qualities were noted by Bernini during his Paris sojourn, and it remains Lepautre's outstanding surviving monument.

In this quality he built the wings for the lost Château de Saint-Cloud and constructed the celebrated Grand Cascade that survives in its park.

Drawings conserved in the Swedish National Museum of Fine Arts, Stockholm, demonstrate that Lepautre was the designer of stables for Jean-Baptiste Colbert at the Château de Sceaux, in the early 1670s.

The monograph in English is Robert W. Berger, Antoine Le Pautre: a French architect of the era of Louis XIV (New York University Press) 1969.