MANSART, FAMIGLIA. – Family of Parisian artists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. JEAN (d. 1618), a wood sculptor, was appointed «sculpteur des bâtiments du roi» in 1606. Among the most important artists of the M. family are:
FRANÇOIS M., architect, b. in Paris on 23 January 1598, d. there on 23 July 1666. A pupil of the architect Germain Gathier, with whom he collaborated on the castle of Rennes, in 1626 he built the castle of Balleray in Normandy, in 1630 the castle of Berny (Seine), and between 1632 and 1634 the church of the Filles de la Visitation de-Ste-Marie, in Paris, where he finally settled.
The Hôtel D’Albret dates from 1633, the Maisons-Lafitte castle from 1642–51, considered the masterpiece of seventeenth-century French civil architecture, and the Galleria Mazzarino from 1642. Between 1645 and 1665 M. built the abbey church of Val-de-Grâce. His contemporaries regarded him as one of the greatest national architects; while remaining tied to the French tradition, he employed a moderate classicism, with a confident and refined use of space and a severe restraint in decoration.
François M.’s pupil was his nephew JULES-HARDOUIN M., b. in Paris on 16 April 1646, d. at Marly on 11 May 1708. From a very young age, beginning in 1674, he was a member of the royal architects, acquiring a prominent position: in 1675 he became «architecte des bâtiments du roi», and in 1699 was appointed Baron of Jouy and Count of Sagonne. His name is linked to all the buildings of Louis XIV and his age; owing to the favors he enjoyed, he acted as a dictator over French architecture in the later seventeenth century. From his uncle he learned the classicizing taste of the Italian tradition, while following the stylistic development of seventeenth-century French art, also influenced by Louis Le Vau, whose work he continued at the castle of Versailles, executing in 1678 the façade facing the park, the interiors, and the garden pavilions, up to 1700. Numerous castles are owed to him, at Clagny, Marly-le-Roi, Choisy-le-Roi, St-Cloud, and Lunéville, as well as the enlargement of the Royal Palace of Paris, with the erection of the Galleria d’Enea, and important religious buildings, such as the cathedral of Notre-Dame at Versailles (1684–86) and the church of the Invalides in Paris (1693–1706): monumental works, but of clear and simple conception, rejecting all decorative exuberance.