Louvre Colonnade

Cast in a restrained classicizing baroque manner, it interprets rules laid down by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius, whose works Perrault translated into French (1673).

The use of one central and two terminal pavilions is typically French, while the main entrance, a pedimented avant-corps, resembles a triumphal arch or temple front.

The simple character of the ground floor basement sets off the paired Corinthian columns, modeled strictly according to Vitruvius, against a shadowed void.

Louis Le Vau, the King's First Architect at the time of the death of Cardinal Mazarin in 1661, completed the south wing of the Louvre's Cour Carrée in 1663.

[6] On 1 January 1664, Jean-Baptiste Colbert purchased the post of Surintendant des Bâtiments du Roi from Antoine de Ratabon and suddenly halted all work on the east wing.

[22] A change in the order from Composite to Corinthian may have been due to the influence of Roland Fréart de Chambray, who was called to Paris to become a member of the Petit Conseil in 1668.

The architectural sculpture of the southern staircase (Escalier du Midi) were created in the early 1810s by François Gérard, Auguste Marie Taunay, Augustin Félix Fortin, and Charles Antoine Callamard [fr].

A characteristic feature of pre-classical French architecture, it is shown in nearly every project and early drawing of the east façade, and its reexcavation revealed the original soubassement, or podium (see the engraving from Blondel's book).

The moat may have been filled in around 1674 to facilitate construction (see the engraving by Sébastien Leclerc) and not restored due to lack of funds to build the contrescarpe after Louis XIV's attention shifted to the Palace of Versailles.