Annalisa Avon The architect and the peintre savant Nicolas Poussin, Jacques Le Mercier and the Louvre Long Gallery decoration Canadian Centre for Architecture – CCA, Montrèal (Canada) Talk 19 February 1999 This conference was a mid-time compte rendu of my research at Montrèal CCA-Canadian Centre for Architecture, established by Phillis Lambert and directed by Kurt Forster. I had a grant as a resident scholar for the program Baroque beyond Rome, for which I proposed as topic XVII century French architecture. I studied the subject for my PhD dissertation in History of Architecture at the IUAV-Istituto Universitario di Architettura, Venezia, Renâitre de nouveau antiques”. La Francia del primo Seicento e l’opera di Jacques Le Mercier (1585-1654), architetto di Richelieu, discussed in Rome in 1996. In 2011, I discussed my PhD thesis in Art History on a topic deepening the same argument, Dall’una all’altra Roma: intorno al progetto di Charles Errard, primo direttore dell’Accademia di Francia, per la chiesa dell’Assomption a Parigi, 1650 ca.-1676 I deepened my research and published some more results in books and essays, some of which now added to my Academia Edu profile. I refer to Annalisa Avon, Rinascere antichi. L’architettura nelle relazioni fra Parigi e Roma nel Seicento, 2017. The years passing, other researchers published on Jacques Le Mercier and his buildings, Poussin and the Grande Galerie du Louvre, sometimes using suggestions and indications contained in my research, considering it helpful, and I am proud of this I have to add that I completely ignored the fourth engraving by Le Mercier, Vue perspective du Palais Farnese à Caprarola, 1606. Sorry about this! I missed its existence.. As its title suggests, my report deals with Jacques Le Mercier’s project for the Louvre’s Long Gallery (that’s to say the Grande Galerie du Louvre). I can add that I will talk about the polemic or querelle -to say it in French- that took place on the same occasion between the architect Le Mercier and the well-known painter Nicolas Poussin, which had the task of the Gallery decoration. 1 First, I would like to resume the episode and return later on it. The episode is wellknown, and you can find information about it in every book dealing with Poussin: in 1640, the painter, living in Rome, arrived in Paris invited to come back to France by Louis XIII and Francois Sublet des Noyers, the Surintendant des Batiments. The King and the court gave to Poussin many charges: paintings for chapels, royal residencies, private houses, engravings for the Imprimerie Royale books frontispieces, of and so on; but indeed, the most crucial task he received was the decoration of the Long Gallery that connected the Louvre with the Tuileries. It was a passage about four hundred meters long covered by a vault, initially conceived by King Henri IV but left unfinished. As the architect of the King and, since 1624, architect of the Louvre, Jacques Le Mercier was arranging the Gallery decoration with paintings, stuccoes and false architecture. Poussin brutally attacked the arrangement project. The account of what really happened is contained in a letter that Poussin wrote to François Sublet des Noyers (the letter is lost in the original, but it has been published as a transcription in third person by Félibien, in his Entretiens sur la vie et les ouvrages des plus excellents peintres anciens et modernes, Paris1666-1668). The letter is not dated, but we can suppose that it is 1641 when Poussin had already begun working on the Long Gallery decoration. In his letter, Poussin criticises Le Mercier project because, in his opinion, the architect had paid scarce attention, or no attention at all, to perspective rules and laws of vision, above all in defining the dimensions of the paintings that should have decorated the vault. It’s important to say that Poussin references to the Gallery's measures and statements about perspective in the letter and his remarks. Then, we will have the time to say something more about Poussin statements. 2 What happened later? We know that in March 1641, Poussin received from the King a brief that gave him complete control over the Gallery: Poussin had succeeded in his aim, and Jacques Le Mercier did not have the charge anymore. The painter remained in Paris until 1642, also working for the Gallery, of course. We know that anyway he did not love very much to stay in Paris. In one of his letters to his friend Cassiano Dal Pozzo, Poussin wrote (20 September 1641): “se io stassi molto tempo in questo paese bisognerebbe ch’io diventassi un strapassone come gl’altri … li studii e le buone osservationi o delle antichita o d’altro non vi sono conosciuti in nessun modo …” (“to stay here in France longer, I should get a sort of little poor man … here nobody studies antiquities o anything else…”). Coming back to Italy, he left the Gallery decoration unfinished but promised that he should have sent drawings so that the work could go on. Between 1642 and 1643, with the death of Louis XIII and Richelieu and the fallen into disfavour of Sublet des Noyers, Long Gallery decoration was abandoned, in 1661 a fire burnt it, and the decoration concept completely changed. Today nothing remains of the decoration conceived by Poussin*. And here, the story is over. Well, it’s important to say that, according to Poussin opinions and words, as expressed in the letter mentioned above, Jacques Le Mercier should have been a sort of entirely ignorant and incapable architect. We have a fantastic souvenir of Poussin’s stay in Paris, referring precisely to the episode of the Long Gallery. It is an engraving (André Chastel wrote about it in 1960) dating to the end of the XVII century. It gives us an idea about the current opinion -an opinion that I must say has never changed- of the querelle. We can see on the right-side Poussin luimême, the painter, dressed -we can say, even if he’s naked - as Hercules. A female figure 3 keeps him, and she is the Envy, in which we can identify the French painter, Simon Vouet, his main antagonist, the most requested painter in Paris for the decoration of vaults and plafonds. Hercules would like to beat with his cudgel the three figures on the left side: the Fortune, which is covering of gold a man, in which we can identify Jean Fouquières, the painter that executed some paintings for the Gallery decoration; Fouquières is caressing a donkey, and who is this donkey? The donkey is Jacques Le Mercier. This engraving explains well what people thought of the episode: the classic painter Poussin, in France, had to fight against stupid artists and architects, that didn’t understand anything of arts and architecture (look at what the putti, on the left, are doing on the palette!). Well, I think it’s time now to talk a little about this donkey. I think it’s first of all necessary to introduce this architect. Who was Jacques Le Mercier? Jacques Le Mercier, Voyage d’Italie Le Mercier was born in 1585 in Pontoise, he was the son of a maître-maçon - a masonNicolas Le Mercier, and probably his grandfather was a mason too. In 1605, when aged only twenty-two, he reached Italy and remained in Rome until 1610, or better until 1612 as recently discovered. Thus, Le Mercier’s voyage de Rome is the first important thing at the 4 beginning of his career. Only two French architects joined Italy before the half of the XVII century: one was Jacques Le Mercier, the other one was his friend the Jesuit architect Etienne Martellange, in Italy at his Compagnia del Gesù. It is a strange case, but neither François Mansart (the architect often quoted as le Dieu de l’architecture) nor Louis Le Vau or Clement II Métezeau ever visited Rome and its antiquities. To find out who did it, we must go back to XVI century’s architects Guillaume Philandrier, Philibert de l’Orme, and Jean Bullant. In Rome, Le Mercier made three engravings (dated from 1605 to 1610) and one drawing (the drawing is ‘attributed to-‘). San Giovanni dei Fiorentini The first drawing represents the wooden model of Michelangelo’s project (not executed) for the Roman Church of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini. (in the CCA drawings, there are two engravings with the same subject). 5 Portrait of Henry IV The second drawing is indeed stranger. It represents a sculpture, still existing and still placed in the portico of the Church of San Giovanni in Laterano, of King Henri IV of France. The author of the statue was the French artist Nicolas Cordier, who worked for Aldobrandini’s family and the Cardinale Baronio. The paper with the engraving dedication to Maria de Medici was added later (after the King’s death) by Jacques Le Mercier. 6 Catafalque for Henri IV The third engraving shows the plan and the elevation of a catafalque, an ephemeral funerary architecture for Henry IV to be erected in the same Church mentioned above, San Giovanni in Laterano (Henry IV died in Paris in a bloody way in 1610). 7 Sant’Eligio degli Orefici Finally, there is a drawing representing the church of Sant’Eligio degli Orefici, by Raffaello Sanzio. It is not signed, but it may be by Le Mercier: it seems to be a drawing made for an engraving, as it shows the plan in perspective, the elevation, the internal and external views of the building, just like in the first engraving, representing the wooden model of Michelangelo’s project. Studies on the drawing confirm that it represents the Church as it could be at the beginning of the XVII century. 8 All we know about Le Mercier’s staying in Rome comes out from these engravings and from the drawing (we’ve not other documents). It’s not too much, but pictures and engravings could suggest many reflections about his architectural interests. Many details of his future work will reveal his debts to Michelangelo’s architecture. At least one element of Sant’Eligio degli Orefici returns in one of the churches by Le Mercier. His drawing (we have seen that he liked to represent building plans in perspective) and this way of illustration is almost two… Does something concern the links already existing with the French royal court (we must consider the dedication to Maria de Medici)?. 9 Jacques Le Mercier architect of Cardinal Richelieu Considering the dedication in the second engraving to Maria de Medici, it may be that, after his return to France, the presence of Le Mercier in the Palais du Luxembourg was due to his relationship with the Queen. More simply, to the fact that he was the only French architect that reached Italy. However, on this occasion, Le Mercier met the young ArmandJean du Plessis, or Richelieu, architectural supervisor of the Queen and not yet, of course, the crucial political figure he was to become. From 1628 to 1642 (the year of Cardinal’s death), Le Mercier was the favourite architect of Richelieu. We can see some images of the most important projects he designed and built for Richelieu. Palais Royal (a palace at the side of the Louvre, formerly known as Palais Cardinal) The first contract is dated 1628, but the construction lasted a few years. As well as the other Richelieu buildings and residencies, Palais Cardinal enlarged and progressed as the Cardinal’s power and money enlarged and progressed, too. In his Palace, Richelieu gathered a part of his art collections. Still, it was famous above all for the Salle de la Comedie, whose project is by Le Mercier and inspired by ancient Greek theatres (we have not images or drawing of this salle but only views of the scene). Today, nothing remains of this Palace, as it completely changed in the XVIII century. The only remaining vestiges of the Le Mercier project are the sculpted device-divisa of Richelieu as Surintendant de la Marine (the strange form of the divisa reproduces a remain of the Parisian Roman Thermae now included in the Musée de Cluny). Château de Richelieu and Richelieu Ville As soon as he had money enough, Richelieu repurchased the château, or better the house he was born. Jacques Le Mercier had the task to build a splendid château starting from the old house, a sort of nucleus of the new building (in the image, we can see the old building 10 as a side of the central courtyard). The architect conceived the château according to a new idea (new for France, of course, and in private buildings): the succession of three courts, while the height of the buildings that defined them progressively lowered. This choice and this project can be considered an anticipation of the plan of the château de Versailles. In 1640 the château was finished. Richelieu never lived in it, and he did not even saw it, probably. Today, little remains of the château: a pavilion and ruins of the moat once surrounding the main building. Next to the château, there is Richelieu Ville, the village of the Cardinal Richelieu. Le Mercier also designed the town, using here regular plan, a grid. As the images show, it was (and it still is) surrounded by walls. We can underline, en passant, the presence of a detail 11 that reveals Le Mercier debts to Michelangelo: the shape of town wall arches derives from Michelangelo’s Porta Pia. Château de Rueil Le Mercier restored and enlarged for Richelieu the château of Rueil, his favourite country residence near Paris. Napoleon’s Malmaison replaced it later, and nothing at all remains of Richelieu’s Rueil. Richelieu’s Rueil was famous for its gardens, where there was also a trompe-l’oeil representing the Arch of Constantine in Rome. The author was Jean Le Maire, one Poussin’s best friends. 12 Chapelle de la Sorbonne In his will, Richelieu wrote “Lors que mon âme sera separée de mon corp, Je desire et ordonne qu’il soit enteré dans la nouvelle Église de la Sorbonne de Paris…”: he was asking to be buried in the church conceived by Le Mercier as a chapel for the collége, but above all as a sepulchrum or as a grave for the Cardinal. As proviseur de la Sorbonne, since 1626 Richelieu had promoted the re-building of the college. Pauperissima domus in ancient medieval documents (college birth goes back to the XIII century) utterly transformed and enlarged later. In the images, we can see the pauperissima domus and the ancient gothic chapel, later destroyed, then the courtyard and the new buildings with the chapel. 13 Probably, Le Mercier was the architect of the new college; indeed, he was the architect of the chapel, and only the chapel today remains, as the college was destroyed and re-built at the beginning of the XX century. Old photographs of Richelieu’s Sorbonne buildings exist, showing a straightforward architectural design without ornaments. 14 In France, no one had ever been so powerful to have a church as a private mausoleum (the only building that we can compare to the Sorbonne is the Valois’ Rotonda, built aside the Church of Saint-Denis by Primaticcio). On this occasion, too, Le Mercier made something completely new and rich of consequences for French architecture of the XVII century. Designed as a “chiesa alla romana”, a church in roman style, as Francesco Rucellai wrote in his Diary, the plan of the Church is the result of the combination of centralised plan with a longitudinal axis, the cross covered by a dome. Anthony Blunt suggested that the plan of the Church in Rome of San Carlo ai Catinari by Rosato Rosati must have been a model for the chapel (later, we will verify this assertion). The Church gives us the occasion to compare its facade and architectural orders to contemporary Parisian churches to test the difference between Le Mercier and the other French architects. Le Mercier designed the front alla romana as a pure classical front, according to the facades of last Italian churches. Indeed, he intended to keep distance from the pastiche architectural of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont: the architectural orders of the Sorbonne, if compared to Saint-Étienne ones, reveal their correctness and sobriety. 15 Le Mercier kept a distance from the scarce orthodoxy of the Church of Saint Gervais façade, by Salomon De Brosse, with its curved pediment, and from the Jesuit church of Saint Paul-Saint Louis, both with three architectural orders superimposed, a typically French solution. We must remember an engraving by the frère François Derand representing the church façade conserved in the CCA collection. The facade of the Sorbonne chapel and its dome became a source for different churches in Paris. Church of Val-de-Grâce, and above all the Église des Invalids, by Jules HardouinMansart (in the CCA collections there are some important engravings of this church). I must underline that I have not mentioned here all the architectures by Le Mercier, not even all his best-known architecture (ha was also architecte du Roi), but only a few of them. I cannot forget to mention, anyway, the Pavillon de l’Horloge in the Cour carrée of the Louvre, probably the best known of all Le Mercier’s architectures (in the image a souvenir d’Italie: the capitals in the ground floor central passage are a copy of those of the Capitol or Campidoglio, in Rome). 16 Representation of power and antiquarian interests Richelieu ordered to the painter Philippe de Champaigne many portraits in which his architectures are in the background (consider the images: Palais Royal; the Sorbonne Chapel, here Richelieu has one of his hands on a coffin; Richelieu sitting, a tiny model on the table, it is a clock with an architectural shape). The portraits indicate that, of course, Richelieu gave great importance to his building activities. There are also some poems, evidently ordered by Richelieu, in which many of his buildings are compared to classical architecture and described as examples of classical beauty, notably in poetry and prose by Jean Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin. Through architecture, we can say, Richelieu was setting up or was giving form to a program of Magnificentia, in which his cultural and artistic interests went together with the representation of political power. 17 Jacques La Mercier had the heavy task to transform into architecture the dreams of his patron and master: in many of the architecture he designed for Richelieu, he invented new solutions, looking not too much to French exempla, but Classical models, contemporary Italian and ancient Roman architecture. Despite this and the importance of his architectural production, scholars have never shown a deep interest in Jacques Le Mercier. We can find only a few essays about some of his architectures, and often it happens that Richelieu is considered the real architect of all his buildings, Le Mercier, a simple executor of his will. To explain the reasons for the lack of research about Le Mercier, anyway, is not so difficult: only a few of his architectures survive, the others having been destroyed or completely changed; besides the engravings mentioned above, only a few drawings of Le Mercier architectures survive, and they are probably by his hand; we have no statements or theoretical writings, of course, but only devis or contracts by his hand. Le Mercier’s Inventaire aprés decès In 1996, I discovered in the National Archives in Paris an unpublished document that gets a new light on Le Mercier and his work: it is the Inventaire aprés-deces, the inventory of all the things he possessed, written after his death, in 1654** (the compte rendu of Georges Wildenstein, “Le goût pour la peinture dans la bourgeoisie parisienne au début du règne de Louis XIII”, Gazette des Beaux-Arts,1958, contains the first mention of the inventory, but the author and his equipe did not study it; the same in a note in Claude Mignot’s PhD thesis on Pierre Le Muet, where again the inventory was mentioned but not studied at all). 18 According to his biographers of the XVII century, Le Mercier was not wealthy, despite these relations and charges. Reading and deciphering the inventory, we can realise how Le Mercier spent his money: he had a collection of 70 paintings, a great group of drawings and engravings of the XVI and XVII centuries (among the authors we find Goltzius, Dürer, Simon Vouet, Le Brun, Tintoretto, Tempesta, Claude Mellan, Dorigny, and so on); he also had a collection of medals, bronzes and ancient marbles as well as a fascinating collection of scientific instruments. His library was much more astonishing: Le Mercier had more than 3.000 books, a part of which concerning architecture, mathematics and geometry, of course, but many others concerning an extensive range of arguments-topics, from history to mythology, from religion to literature, from philosophy to medicine. We can say that Le Mercier’s library is a rare and unique case if we compare it to the architects’ library of the XVII century that we know. 19 After the emotion, the problems came: how could this document be used? Could it say more about Le Mercier and his architecture? Generally, it allowed me to assert that Le Mercier had a large culture and that he was indeed aware and conscious of the program of Magnificentia he was setting up for the Cardinal. His culture was solid and “classic”, but I have also tried to link the inventory to Le Mercier’s architecture and biography. Here, I started from his voyage de Rome: as a souvenir of that trip, Le Mercier possessed “un grand tableau representant la ville de Rome”; we can wander that also the drawings of Caprarola, of the Thermes of Diocletian, the illustrations of “plusieurs chapiteaux, frises, feuillages, bastiments antiques de Rome” were the result of his studying Italian architecture. The inventory shows that Le Mercier had many Italian books (he probably could read not only Italian, but also Latin, considering the dictionaries in his library), dealing with literature (he had texts by Torquato Tasso, Marino, Petrarca … ) or, of course, with architecture, but also with religion and history: in his library, we can find Le Antiquita di Verona, by Caroto, or the books about Genoa by Rubens and Padova by Scardeone. I have said something about Le Mercier and Michelangelo: I can add that he not only possessed a lot of engravings d’aprés Michelangelo, but also engravings d’apres Raphael, Primaticcio, Parmigianino, Tintoretto, Palmezzano, Carracci, and so on. His voyage en Italie was fundamental, as you can see, and probably his interest in classical authors like Quintiliano, Ovidio, Cicerone, or Virgil derived from that early contact with Italy and the Renaissance culture. We can say something more also about the Sorbonne chapel. I have told that, from Blunt on, historians always considered the chapel Le Mercier as deriving from the plan of San Carlo ai Catinari in Rome. But among the drawings and engravings listed in the inventory, we find representations of l’église de Jésus, l’église de St.Jean Latran, Saincte Marie de 20 Rome…” and the views of many other churches in Rome. Moreover, the inventory of the library indicates that Le Mercier knew very well the experiments made during the XVI and the XVII century about “les plans complexes”, composed plans: he possessed not only the treatises by Serlio, Du Cerceau or Francini, but also those by Scamozzi, Montano, Palladio, and so on. So how can we say that in the Sorbon chapel, he merely copied the work of an unknown architect like Rosato Rosati was? It could be interesting to compare the plan and the “idea” of the village of RichelieuRichelieu ville with the contents of Utopia, the book by Thomas More that was in Le Mercier’ library…. Now I think it’s necessary to underline that Le Mercier indeed had a deep knowledge of Italian architecture and was involved in Classical and High Renaissance cultures. Probably, Richelieu chose him as his architect for all these reasons. Indeed, it gets more and more difficult to consider him as a mere executor. I must add, however, that the inventory reveals that Le Mercier’s culture and humanistic interests were counter-balanced by his scientific involvement. I have mentioned above his collection of scientific instruments. Still, in his library, too, we find traces of this involvement: he possessed all one could find about perspective (by authors going from Vignola to Barbaro, from Du Cerceau to Accolti, from Sirigatti to Jean Cousin), and tens of books about mathematics and geometry, some of them by authors like Simon Stevin, Tartaglia, Alhazen, Euclid…I think that for this sort of “doubleness”, Le Mercier could be considered as a critical figure in the passage from French High Renaissance to the further development of French architecture (I am thinking about architects like Claude Perrault) interested more in scientific matters, than in archaeological references or Classical rules. 21 I think we have, now, some more information about our architect; so, we can go back to the problem of the Long Gallery, to see if there is something more to say about his querelle with Poussin. Le Mercier, Poussin and the project for the Long Gallery of the Louvre Nicolas Poussin, describing Le Mercier’s arrangement of the Grande Galerie, complains about the project. Above all, he complains “la grandeur des quadres”, the dimensions of the paintings that should have to decorate the vault. Those paintings wrote Poussin “étaient placé au milieu de la voute, et justement sur la tete des regardans, qui se seroient s’il faut ainsi dire, aveuglez en pensant le considerer”. According to this description, le Mercier had arranged the vault by compartments: considering the length of the gallery itself (more a passage than a gallery), I think we must believe in the correctness of Poussin’s description; more difficult is to accept what he writes about the dimensions of those paintings, that is to say, the incorrectness of the dimensions defined by Le Mercier compartments. Going on with his complaints, in the same letter, Poussin made the today famous distinction between “voir simplement” (simply seeing, looking at) and “voir avec raison” (to see through reason), referring to the correctness of vision or representations to perspective’s rules. Carl Goldstein has pointed out that Poussin copied all these statements from Daniele Barbaro’s treatise Pratica della prospettiva. Anthony Blunt and Carl Goldsmith discovered that Poussin's theoretical principles concerning vision came literally from Alhazen Optics and Daniele Barbaro. In the inventory of le Mercier’s books, you can find Barbaro’s treatise and Alhazen book***: I do not think we can assert that Le Mercier could not commit a mistake, but it is enough to give birth to some doubts. 22 Of course, we have no drawings or engravings of Le Mercier’s arrangement (consequently, I have no images to refer to); moreover, there is no document about this project, no contracts or descriptions of the works to be executed. For these reasons, I consider that the only way to understand a little more about this matter could be to study all the galleries designed and conceived by le Mercier (if they exist or have existed). First, then, to research and verify if Le Mercier used perspective laws or visual laws to arrange his architecture on other occasions. I am still studying the contracts for the Gallery in Château Richelieu and Palais Royal. I can say a little now about them: it’s sure, however, that in Château Richelieu Le Mercier used compartments for the main gallery's ceiling and that some tableaux-paintings had to decorate it. In Le Mercier's way, these compartments were as Classical as they could be. “Coquilles, arpies, cartouches, festons” (regarding Serlio’s treatise) decorated them. Concerning visual principles or “accorgimenti” in his architecture, we can see a map showing the Sorbonne Chapel and its piazza. 23 Designed by Le Mercier and strongly desired by Richelieu (the Cardinal almost ruined himself to buy and later destroy all the private houses built there). Here Le Mercier had to calculate precisely the dimensions of this “piazza”, together with the dimensions and height of the Church. Furthermore, the cupola-dome had to be visible from the piazza itself, clearly related to the facade pediment. Remember that Palladio, in Venice, studied something similar for his Church of the Redentore. Going on, we can say something also about the “point de vue”, mentioned in some of Richelieu’s letters, of the Château Richelieu. From this unique point, one could see the extension of the chateau itself and the enfilade of the village’s main street. This “point of view” was indeed projected. The ensemble was designed and conceived according to it. Even more interesting is a contract is written by Le Mercier and dated 1638. I found it in the National Archives in Paris and concerns the socle or base for the statue of Louis XIII erected in the Place Royale, today Place des Vosges. It was an equestrian monument, destroyed later, during the Revolution (the sculpture reference relies on Marco Aurelio's statue in the Capitol in Rome). 24 Well, what has a socle to do with perspective or visual laws? Nothing at all, we can say. But in his treatise La Perspective curieuse (1638), and in his Thaumaturgus Opticus (1646) le père minime Jean François Niceron wrote about this equestrian statue, giving great importance to the height of the base itself: only a correct size would have allowed looking at the horse Daniele da Volterra in all its beauty****. I think that Le Mercier was very proud to see his work mentioned in Niceron’s book about perspective (and, of course, a copy of the book was listed in Le Mercier’s inventory). Besides, I can add that Niceron’s book deals with perspective’s aberrations, too, like anamorphosis (see the image: a drawing reveals an elephant when reflecting in a mirror). 25 Referring again to Le Mercier inventory, it’s essential to remember that, among his scientific instruments, there were mirrors to be used in this kind of experiments, and it seems he was the only architect to possess such tools. Finally, Le Mercier‘s architecture is the result of a remarkable stereotomy. The Sorbonne chapel, whose cupole-dome was the first -in Paris- wholly stone-built. Look at the section of the dome. The tiny internal chapels, side by side to the main navata and the portico of the court entrance, show interesting stone-cutting and shapes. 26 In Paris, in this period, stereotomy begun to be more and more related with projection theory and perspective, above all in the results reached by Girard Desargues. So, stereotomy is also profoundly related to perspective (this could be an exciting subject concerning Le Mercier, possibly a future research topic). Of course, as you have seen, I am obliged to refer to other projects of le Mercier for talking about the Gallery because, as I said, there is no document or drawing concerning the gallery. I hope I will be able to find records and pictures during my future research. Anyway, I think it is more and more difficult to believe in Poussin’s words and his complaint about Le Mercier's project's inappropriate use of perspective laws. A rapid glance-look at Poussin’s project can help us to explain the real reasons for the polemic between the architect and the painter. Before arriving in Paris, in a letter, Poussin asked, “de ne peindre pas en plat-fond”, he didn’t want to paint ceilings, but it seems that in the Long Gallery, he had this task precisely. Let’s look at Poussin drawings for the gallery itself: many scholars wrote a lot about the contents of the “tondi”, the painted reliefs, and the actual source used by Poussin for the history of Hercules, the subject of the decorations. Now, I’m trying to understand what Poussin was looking at when he was sketching these round pediments and this 27 “Persian order” (everybody knows that Poussin rarely used “inventions” in his work). He was using maybe some antiquities sketches of the Cassiano Dal Pozzo Paper Museum, or in the drawings reproducing Roman antiquities by Pirro Ligorio, I’m working on this ( last slide, the Gallery with Poussin’ arrangement, the pediments with their Persian order over the windows, “rolled” on the vault). It’s evident, however, that Poussin had in his mind an arrangement “all’antica”- a Classical arrangement (I’m asking myself what he could have seen in Rome, or treatises about architecture,…). My research is still in progress, and I have no conclusions to offer. But I’m convinced that we have traces enough to say that in the Gallery did not take place an opposition between Baroque and Classicism, as it is often said, and as Anthony Blunt asserted*****. We must look at the querelle between the architect and the painter as an occasion in which two different ways of conceiving “Classic” and classicism were facing. From one side, we have Le Mercier and his classicism deriving from Italian architecture of the XVI and XVII century and founded over a solid culture, a classicism that the early absolutism chose for representing itself. On the other side, we have Poussin and his archaeological and philological concept of what Classic had to be. The tendency represented in this occasion by Le Mercier will have more fortune in France than the archaeological ideas of Poussin. Was it only a problem of style, of form? I do not think. We need more research about this episode and the other persons involved in it, besides le Jacques Le Mercier and Poussin. That is to say, for example, François Sublet des 28 Noyers, Roland Fréart de Chambray, then linked to Poussin’s patron Cassiano dal Pozzo, to the Barberini family and Pope Urbano VIII…. * Letters and travel diaries of those who reached Paris before 1666 contains short descriptions of the Grande Galerie de Louvre. “We went through the Long Gallery, pav’d with white and black marble, richly fretted and painted a fresca. The front looking to the river, tho’ of rare work of carving, yet wants of the magnificance which a plainer and truer design would have contributed to it”, Memories of John Evelin, comprising his Diary from 1641 to 1705-06, ed. William Bray, London; “Di questa galleria detta de ritratti s’entra in un’altra grandissima lunga settecento passi, e larga 18 che risguarda sulla riviera questa non è finita di soffittare per didentro che appunt adesso si cominciono ad indorare i pilastri, et altri ordini di cornice di legno che lifanno attorno a dipigniere di chiaro scuro,e toccar d’oro la volta, o stuoia. È l’aspetto di fuora di questa galleria e bellissimo fatto a pilastri, et altri ornamenti di cornice di pietra, con il tetto a padiglione pur di lavagna ch’apparisce una così lunga macchina molto bella a gl’occhi de risgaurdanti”, Un’ambasciata, Diario di viaggio dell’Abate Giovan Fr.co Rucellai, 1643. The only image in the Gallery conceived by Poussin is in the lid of a snuffbox (Private collection, Paris). However, an idea, albeit approximate, of what it would have looked like perhaps is in the Gallery of the Château of Tanlay, decorated by Remy Vuibert. Vuibert, to whom Poussin refers in his letters as “Mon cher ami”, collaborated in the creation of the Grande Galerie. 29 Upon his departure for Rome, Poussin entrusted the painter with the guidance of the works at the Louvre. As a result, Vuibert decorated the recently restored Château de Tanlay Gallery was between 1646 and 1647. **Archives Nationales, Minutier Central, Paris, , Ét.XVI.260. The document dated 12 June 1654 is the inventory of the assets of Le Mercier's wife, who died shortly after her husband. ***According to Poussin "les grandeurs des quadres n'avoient aucune proportion avec leur distance, & ne se pouvoient voir commodément, parce que ces quadres étoient placéz au milieu de la voûte, & justement sur le tête des regardans, qui se seroient, s'il faut dire ensi, aveuglez en pensant les considerer”. Below, Poussin expresses his point of view on the laws of perspective and on the different ways "de voir les objets", that is to say "l'une en les voyant simplement, & l’autre en les considerant avec attention", distinguishing the "simple aspect" from the "prospect". The fact that Nicolas Poussin freely uses texts and observations without citing the sources should not be surprising. His "collecting citations" should be related to the learning techniques of Poussin's Roman milieu, with the new precepts of documentation and the "catalogue" practised, for example, by Cassiano Dal Pozzo. ****The devis for the pedestal, 18 May 1638, ordered by Cardinal Richelieu, signed and written by Jacques Le Mercier, is in Archives Nationales, Minutier Central, Ét.LXXXVI. Le Mercier was well aware of the whole scenography of the Place Royale. He takes decisions about the localization and exact measures of the entire group that “regardera l’entrèe de la dite place”, as of the pedestal height, and construction “les joinctz petits comme impercetibles,…au dessus enlevera et pozera ledit cheval de bronze et la figure au dessus bien retenue en pied comme dessudit”. Cfr. J.F.Niceron, Le perspective curieuse, Paris 1652 (1638), pp.116-117; Id. Thaumaturgus Opticus, Paris 1646. *****Anthony Blunt, using general categories, suggested reading Nicolas Poussin's "strictly Classical" positions in contrast to "the more or less illusionistic conventions" still used by Le Mercier", cfr. Id.," Poussin's decoration of the Long Gallery in the Louvre ", Burlington Magazine, XCVIII, 1951. Annalisa Avon CCA-Canadian Centre for Architecture Montréal (Canada) 19 February 1999 30