Robert de Cotte
life
Robert de Cotte (1656 – 15 July 1735) was a French architect-administrator, under whose design control of the royal buildings of France from 1699, the earliest notes presaging the Rococo style were introduced. First a pupil of Jules Hardouin-Mansart, he later became his brother-in-law and his collaborator. After Hardouin-Mansart's death, de Cotte completed his unfinished projects, notably the royal chapel at Versailles and the Grand Trianon.
Born in Paris, Robert de Cotte began his career as a contractor for masonry, working on important royal projects between 1682 and 1685, when he was made a member of the Académie royale d'architecture and architect of the Court, ranking third in importance after Mansart's seldom-credited assistant François Dorbay. On his return to France after a six-month sojourn in Italy (1689–1690), in the company of Jacques Gabriel, he became the director of the Manufacture des Gobelins, where not only the famous tapestries, but also royal furnishings were produced; even designs made under his direction for wrought iron balustrading are to be found among the eight volumes of drawings for the Gobelins, and for other public and private commissions, conserved at the Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliothèque Nationale. In 1699, when Mansart was made Surintendant des Bâtiments, a position otherwise invariably reserved for a noble layman, de Cotte became his second-in-command in an executive function, charged with overseeing all the files of drawings, the stocks of marble and other materials including those for the royal manufactures of the Gobelins and Savonnerie, with overseeing the bidding process with contractors and with liaison with the Académie, of which he was made a member that same year.
From 1708, Robert de Cotte was Premier architecte du Roi and director of the Académie royale d'architecture. He was in charge of the Bâtiments du Roi, which had been organized by Hardouin-Mansart into the prototype of all modern architectural offices, where the roles of director, comptroller, inspector, architect and draftsman were specialized, and the personalities involved submerged under the aegis of the Premier Architecte. The last years of Louis XIV are not on the whole periods of intense activity at Versailles, where the single great enterprise, already in progress at de Cotte's accession, was the Chapel, completed in 1710; there the decorative designs were actually the work of Pierre Lepautre.
With the Régence during the minority of Louis XV, coinciding with de Cotte's maturity, the artistic lead in France passed smoothly in 1715 from the Bâtiments du Roi to the work being done by Gilles-Marie Oppenord for the Regent, Philippe, duc d'Orléans, at the Palais Royal in Paris. No new architects were added to the rolls of the Bâtiments du Roi. De Cotte, one of Europe's most prominently-placed architects, served by a rigorously-trained staff, was free to accept private commissions, assisted during his later years by his son Jules-Robert de Cotte (1683–1767). Balthasar Neumann, in Paris to consult him over the building operations at Würzburg, found him and his son grandly occupied.
With the death of Lepautre in 1716, de Cotte turned for the invention of ornaments to the sculptor François-Antoine Vassé, "responsible for all that is of creative significance in De Cotte's later works, as Lepautre had been in the previous period". He died in Passy (now part of Paris).
Born in Paris, Robert de Cotte began his career as a contractor for masonry, working on important royal projects between 1682 and 1685, when he was made a member of the Académie royale d'architecture and architect of the Court, ranking third in importance after Mansart's seldom-credited assistant François Dorbay. On his return to France after a six-month sojourn in Italy (1689–1690), in the company of Jacques Gabriel, he became the director of the Manufacture des Gobelins, where not only the famous tapestries, but also royal furnishings were produced; even designs made under his direction for wrought iron balustrading are to be found among the eight volumes of drawings for the Gobelins, and for other public and private commissions, conserved at the Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliothèque Nationale. In 1699, when Mansart was made Surintendant des Bâtiments, a position otherwise invariably reserved for a noble layman, de Cotte became his second-in-command in an executive function, charged with overseeing all the files of drawings, the stocks of marble and other materials including those for the royal manufactures of the Gobelins and Savonnerie, with overseeing the bidding process with contractors and with liaison with the Académie, of which he was made a member that same year.
From 1708, Robert de Cotte was Premier architecte du Roi and director of the Académie royale d'architecture. He was in charge of the Bâtiments du Roi, which had been organized by Hardouin-Mansart into the prototype of all modern architectural offices, where the roles of director, comptroller, inspector, architect and draftsman were specialized, and the personalities involved submerged under the aegis of the Premier Architecte. The last years of Louis XIV are not on the whole periods of intense activity at Versailles, where the single great enterprise, already in progress at de Cotte's accession, was the Chapel, completed in 1710; there the decorative designs were actually the work of Pierre Lepautre.
With the Régence during the minority of Louis XV, coinciding with de Cotte's maturity, the artistic lead in France passed smoothly in 1715 from the Bâtiments du Roi to the work being done by Gilles-Marie Oppenord for the Regent, Philippe, duc d'Orléans, at the Palais Royal in Paris. No new architects were added to the rolls of the Bâtiments du Roi. De Cotte, one of Europe's most prominently-placed architects, served by a rigorously-trained staff, was free to accept private commissions, assisted during his later years by his son Jules-Robert de Cotte (1683–1767). Balthasar Neumann, in Paris to consult him over the building operations at Würzburg, found him and his son grandly occupied.
With the death of Lepautre in 1716, de Cotte turned for the invention of ornaments to the sculptor François-Antoine Vassé, "responsible for all that is of creative significance in De Cotte's later works, as Lepautre had been in the previous period". He died in Passy (now part of Paris).