page_title: Louvre Palace
section_title: 17th–18th centuries
hierarchical_section_title: Louvre Palace / History / 17th–18th centuries
caption_attribution_description: Paris Palais du Louvre Pavillon de Flore
context_page_description: The Louvre Palace is a former royal palace located on the Right Bank of the Seine in Paris, between the Tuileries Gardens and the church of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois. Originally a fortress built in the medieval period, it became a royal palace in the fourteenth century under Charles V and was used from time to time by the kings of France as their main Paris residence. Its present structure has evolved in stages since the 16th century. In 1793 part of the Louvre became a public museum, now the Musée du Louvre, which has expanded to occupy most of the building.
context_section_description: In the early 17th century, Louis XIII began the doubling of the length of the Lescot Wing to the north. His architect, Jacques Lemercier, designed and completed the wing by c. 1642. His central pavilion subsequently became known as the Pavillon de l'Horloge, after a clock was added in 1857. Lemercier also began construction of the first part of the north wing heading east.
  In 1659, Louis XIV instigated a phase of construction under architect Louis Le Vau and painter Charles Le Brun. Le Vau oversaw the remodelling and completion of the Tuileries Palace, and at the Louvre, the completion of the carcass of the north wing, the doubling of the length of the south wing, the decoration of the Pavillon du Roi, the creation of the Grand Cabinet du Roi (a new gallery parallel to the Petite Galerie), and a chapel. Le Brun decorated the Galerie d'Apollon. The landscape architect André Le Nôtre redesigned the Tuileries garden in the French style, which had been created in 1564 by Catherine de' Medici in the Italian style.
  The Cabinet du Roi consisted of seven rooms west of the Galerie d'Apollon on the upper floor of the remodeled Petite Galerie. Many of the king's paintings were placed in these rooms in 1673, when it became an art gallery, accessible to certain art lovers as a kind of museum. In 1681, after the court moved to Versailles, 26 of the paintings were transferred there, somewhat diminishing the collection, but it is mentioned in Paris guide books from 1684 on, and was shown to ambassadors from Siam in 1686.
  Commissioned by Louis XIV, a committee of architects, the Petit Conseil, comprising Le Vau, Le Brun and Claude Perrault, designed the east facade of the Louvre, often referred to as the Louvre Colonnade, its most distinctive feature; it was begun in 1667 and mostly completed by 1674, during the reign of Louis XIV, but the wing behind it was not finished until the 19th century with the advent of Napoleon. The definitive design is attributed to Perrault, who made the final alterations needed to accommodate a decision to double the width of the south wing.
  The east facade is crowned by an uncompromising Italian balustrade along its distinctly non-French flat roof, it was a ground-breaking departure in French architecture. The severe design was chosen over a design provided by the great Italian architect Bernini, who had journeyed to Paris specifically to work on the Louvre. The rhythmical paired columns form a shadowed colonnade with a central pedimented triumphal arch entrance raised on a high, rather defensive base, in a restrained classicizing baroque manner that has provided models for grand edifices in Europe and America for centuries. The Metropolitan Museum in New York, for one example, reflects the Louvre Colonnade design.
  Perrault was also responsible for the doubling of the width of the south wing, covering Le Vau's south facade, and adding a new facade more compatible with the east facade. He also designed the north wing's city-side facade, and is thought to have been responsible for the design of the north, east, and south facades of the Cour Carrée.
caption: Jacques Androuet II du Cerceau's Pavillon de Flore (1595), as rebuilt by Hector Lefuel in 1861
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