Jules Hardouin-Mansart

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Les Invalides

On 1 March 1676 François-Michel le Tellier, Marquis de Louvois, the Minister of War, summoned Hardouin-Mansart to take over construction of Les Invalides, the enormous hospital and chapel the King was building in the center of Paris for his pensioned and wounded soldiers. The project had been begun in 1671 by Libéral Bruant, and some of the residential buildings were completed and already occupied, but the centerpiece, the chapel for the soldiers, had not been begun. The King was not satisfied with the plans that were offered to him by Bruant, and complained about the slowness of the work. On 1 March 1676 Louvois dismissed Bruant and summoned Hardouin-Mansart, who was little known outside the royal household, and asked him to take over the church.

The chapel originally planned by Bruant for the veterans was relatively modest in size and decoration. Hardouin-Mansart proposed a much more grandiose project with two adjoining parts; a choir for the pensioners, and a majestic domed royal church for the King. This was beyond what the Minister had proposed, but it apparently pleased the King, and, after long discussion, Hardouin-Mansart was given the project not only for the church, but for the Hôtel as well. Hardouin-Mansart briskly organized and completed the construction of residences and infirmaries for the pensioners. In 1676 he began work on the choir, the portion of the church intended for the pensioners. By the summer of 1677 the roof was in place, and in April 1678 he was able to order the woodwork of the stalls, and in 1679, the cabinetry for the organ.

The work on the royal chapel proceeded more slowly. Its distinctive feature was the dome, one of the earliest constructed in Paris, following the church of the Val-de-Grâce, designed by his great-uncle, François Mansart and Jacques Lemercier (1645–1667), and the Collège des Quatre-Nations (1662–1670). His original plan called for a single great space under the dome, and painted decoration on the interior of the dome. However, while the work was in progress, the French army suffered reverses in the Netherlands, and the Superintendent of Finances, Colbert, was slow in providing funding. Hardouin-Mansart had to modify the original plan, eliminating the painted ceiling, and redesigning the dome with an interior dome, not visible from the outside. He mounted the dome on two successive drums, giving it greater height than the earlier Paris domes. He commissioned the sculptor François Girardon to make statues illustrating the themes of the building, the virtues of the Saints and the French Kings. By 1690 a large group of sculptors was at work at statues for the niches of the façade. The war was followed by a financial crisis; work was halted entirely in 1695, and did not resume until the war ended in 1699. Once the war ended, constructed resumed, and the royal chapel was finally consecrated, in the presence of the King, on 22 August 1706, not long before the death of Hardouin-Mansart. It remains his most famous work.

Jules Hardouin-Mansart

Jules Hardouin-Mansart

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Les Invalides

The Palace of Versailles

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