Pierre Le Muet - 'How to build well for all types of person'

 "Manière de bien bastir pour touttes sortes des personnes"

This engraving comes from an architectural treatise written in 1623 by Pierre le Muet intended as a copy-book of architectural designs for the simple and domestic buildings of the French seventeenth century.

This sectional drawing illustrates the section of many of the existing buildings in Richelieu, with which the treatise is contemporary. All the period terms for the elements of the charpentes are itemised.

2009 celebrates the 30th year of the firm SARL MERLOT - Charpente et Couverture  located on the Richelieu industrial estate (see map on the right).  The firm's leadership will pass from the founder M. Etienne to his son Fabrice on 11 December 2010.  Entirely by coincidence, the coloured photo below shows a new oak roof structure by MERLOT that is almost identical to that drawn above by Pierre Le Muet, nearly 350 years ago.

In the humble house of Abbé Henri Proust, the roof trusses are king-post trusses in oak, and actually ARE 350 years old. As Merlot's 2009 catch phrase says:

 "La Qualité défie le Temps - Quality defies time (and weather!)"

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The Paris XII bistrot: "le duc de Richelieu"

try the blog run by the proprietors.... 

"le duc de Richelieu" could refer to any of the eight dukes of Richelieu;

probably not Armand-Jean 'le cardinal de Richelieu', and probably not the notorious 3rd duke, 'le maréchal de Richelieu'

Maybe the 5th duke, founder of Odessa and twice Prime Minister of France who succeeded Tallyrand?

Perhaps the owners will enlighten us...

HERE is a list of the ducal candidates .

tel: 01 43 43 05 64

A short promenade to the east from the Île St. Louis

Yes - that's the island in the Seine on the left of the map...

Below an article in Figaro

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the Vitruvian townhouse or 'domus'

Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (c.90 - c.20 BC) is the author of the only known treatise on the art and practice of architecture coming down to us from the classical world of Rome.  He offers de Architectura to the Emperor Augustus as a summation his life-long expertise on building and construction matters, much of it learned by advising the Legions of the Empire.

It has been a book of enormous influence, as much for its rarity as its magpie contents.  It was the basis of most of the treatises of the architecture of the Italian renaissance, including the most famous and influential, I Quattro Libri dell' Architectura, (Venice 1570) of Andrea Palladio.

Regrettably all the illustrations to which the original text refers have long been lost.  So each new learned reader has tried to recreate these illustrations from the text and their own contemporary experience.

A new translation by Richard Schofield has been published by Penguin Classics.  Included is a recreation of the plan of the layout of a typical Roman house.  Surprisingly few archaeological examples of 'normal' Roman townhouses remain, even when helped by the later discoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum in 1748.

1 - entry or vestibulum

2 - entrance corridor or fauces

3 - rectangular catchment area or impluvium

4 - entry court or atrium

5 - side rooms or alae

6 - 'home office' or tablinum

7 - corridor or andron

8 - colonnaded courtyard or peristylium

9 - open faced room or exhedra

Read here about Pierre le Muet

and here about the houses of Richelieu

While the houses at Richelieu are clearly derived from the traditional French early renaissance hôtels of the 16th century, there is no mistaking the new influence of these Roman models, with their deep plots arranged side by side, their high boundary walls, their double courtyard format, their use of what the French call dépendances or side extensions, or the fact that private life is led deep within the layered plan.

Every aspect of the cardinal's ambitions for the town drew on the Roman Example to reflect and encourage a new

Golden Age.

The Rome of Augustus recreated for the glory of Louis XIII 

and his First Minister

Armand-Jean d P 

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the late Charton Heston on the cardinal

Richelieu's knockers (3)... well Paris' Marais actually

A nice example of 17th century ironwork decoration embroidering the typical hanging ring knocker on a Marais hôtel on its main street-front carriage gate.

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1 rue des Gaulthiers - a little property gets restored...

This little housekin is on the eastern side of the walled town of Richelieu, with a garden behind that leads down to the moat/canal of the Mable river.  I was lately used by Jean-Louis Laurence as the base of his internet consultancy UPWARD, but since Jean-Louis L moved to grander premises on the Grande Rue itself, it has been restored, re-roofed and generally licked into shape.  It stands adjacent to another much larger restoration that looks onto the place Louis XIII.

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Retail shops (3) - the Blublu Company of Richelieu - Artisanal Soapmakers

The soap shop has its own art gallery next door (to the right) that displays local artist's work.

Soaps are actually made on the premises.

€45 a kilo! or €4.50 per 100 grams!

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A view from the parc threading the entire cité idéale

LOOKING NORTH

Click on the picture for a very large detailed version

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a traction avant called 'Célestine'

This 1953 Citroën traction avant - front wheel drive - is called Célestine by her proud owner. But why? This is what Wikipedia makes of Célestine; 6 old Popes; a 'new age' best seller à la Dan Brown, an Icelandic rock band.......

want an escorted tour of the Loire Valley in this car?

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4 more postcards of old Richelieu

Claire et Nick have sent versions of four more postcards to add to our archive of views 'from the olden days'.

The first of the gatehouse of the porte de Loudun....

Then a card of the church and main square the place du Marché in its old layout...

Then the Grande Rue looking north from the place du Marché...

and finally the then shopping street of rue de la Galère.

Merci Claire.

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The colours of Touraine - 2

The buildings are all made of whitish tuffeau limestone that has a faded yellow-grey tone.  Windows, shutters and doors are usually painted one of many mid-greys, and general lack of maintenence adds an antiquing effect that sludges these somber colours further.  Roofs are of grey slate. Rooflights - lucarnes - are built of untreated greyed-out oak. This shop front first floor, jammed up against the stone wall of the village church at Bourgeuil - famous for its AOC wine - exemplifies this grisaille* colour palette, the background to life in Touraine, precisely.

In the market place, the colours of the soap stall however do the opposite; a riot of waxy soapy tints.

*grisaille noun; in art, a method of painting in gray monochrome, typically to imitate sculpture; a painting or stained-glass window in this style.

ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: French, from gris ‘gray.’

Richelieu's Fontainebleau - 2 - Wall sculpture

In one of the wings of the palace at Fontainebleau built by Henri IV in 1606-9, one can see examples of the façade treatment similar to that of the old lost château de Richelieu. The walls were interspersed with niches - both circular and semi-cylindric, that framed statues and busts of antique heros and heroines, both mythic and historic. 

In the old engraving of the castle below this can be seen in the courtyard part-elevation lower right. It is hard to visualise this rather 'bling', seemingly over-decorated manner.  It doesn't seem so exaggerated in reality.  At Richelieu the statuary would have been inserted in an all-cut-stone ashlar wall rather than in polychrome brick/stone as at 'rural' Fontainebleau.

From Éminence Rouge

Have a look at this video of a CAD recreation of the château de Richelieu that shows the way it was decorated with ancient statuary. Not bad for just a few bits and bytes.

Trailer Richelieu complet

by Nautilus-crea
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