André Le Nôtre
(Paris, 1613-id., 1700) French architect and garden designer.From his father and grandfather, famous royal gardeners, he learned everything about the art of gardening, although he also trained as an architect and painter.In 1637 he succeeded his father as royal gardener, in the performance of which he became one of the most famous garden designers of all time.Of the numerous works that he carried out (complete projects, extensions or modifications), his great creation was, without a doubt, the gardens of Versailles, where he imposed a geometric conception later known as the French garden and much imitated until the 18th century, when the English garden.The gardens of Le Nôtre, of monumental conception, are characterized by varied compositions in which geometric flowerbeds, flowers, fountains and sculptures are combined.His other works include the Vaux-le-Vicomte park, the transformations carried out in the Tuileries, and the Chantilly and Sceaux parks.He also worked in England, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands.
André Le Nôtre
For his achievements in Vaux-le-Vicomte and Versailles, the Parisian André Le Nôtre is considered the main representative of garden urbanism in the Baroque.Although one could speak of a rational idea (we must not forget that Descartes is the son of this same period), the gardens of Le Nôtre (origin of what is usually called the French garden, in opposition to the statism of the Renaissance gardens ) are both a playful and festive place and a scene restricted to the nobility, who want to impress.The use of great perspective, with its long-distance dimensions, makes these gardens a place of ostentation, a space that, apart from secluded and sensual places, such as the labyrinth, is conceived more to see than to walk.
The first great work of André Le Nôtre was the planimetry of the gardens of the palace of Vaux-le-Vicomte, begun in 1661.In it this brilliant artist began in the new landscape structure in indissoluble relationship with architecture: never before had nature and the building formed a unitary whole.Everything found in Versailles, on the other hand, was already present in Vaux-le-Vicomte.With the fall from grace of Nicholas Fouquet, King Louis XIV saw in the members of the artistic team of Vaux-le-Vicomte the best architects for his great dream: Versailles.In this place near Paris, one of the most paradigmatic ensembles of the culture and absolutism of the Sun King would be built.
For the Palace of Versailles, the work of the architect Louis Le Vau, André Le Nôtre made a version on a large scale of his project in Vaux-le-Vicomte.Norberg-Schulz related the solutions of both palaces giving primacy to the first: "Le Nôtre's programmatic work is the garden of Vaux-le-Vicomte (1656-1661).The trident of the Italian villas is changed here to focus on the entrance, and after having followed the longitudinal axis through the palace and the main part of the garden, the movement radiates again to form another patte d'oie ", motif that was considered as the signature of Le Nôtre.
Gardens of the Palace of Versailles
The originality of the plans is manifested in various aspects: the flowerbeds and groves, for example, are not located one after the other, but next to each other, giving the space along the main axis a magnificent breadth.Already in Vaux-le-Vicomte the limits of the Italian gardens had disappeared; Instead of defining the space by limits, Le Nôtre used an open but regular system of routes.At Versailles the same basic scheme was used, albeit on a much larger scale and with more variety, particularly in the groves, where we find spaces that have names, such as Salle Verte, Salle de Dance, Salle du Conseil and Salle des Festins.The jungle scheme is still present in the Grand Parc, although it is highly domesticated, adapting it so that hunting parties can go quickly from one place to another.The entire area is structured by a large canal that indicates the main directions of the general plan.
The Versailles project, in In short, it represents the realization of the ideal of the 17th century city: the conjunction of authority and delimitation, but also of dynamism and openness.It is not surprising that André Le Nôtre's works were called Jardins d'intelligence .Le Nôtre applied his system to the gardens of a large number of palaces, from that of Trianon in Versailles to the remodeling of the gardens of Fontainebleau, through his projects for Clagny, the residence of Madame de Montespan; Chantilly, owned by Luis II de Borbón, the Grand Condé; Saint-Cloud, of the Duke of Orleans; Sceaux, of Prime Minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert, and in Meudon, of his successor Louvois, as well as in the palaces of Choisy and de Marly.
His urban projects, already mentioned that of the Tuileries, are completed with the planimetry of Saint-Germain and that of the Champs-Elysées.Its influence was notable in the 18th century, as evidenced by the gardens of the royal palace of Caserta (1752).Others focused more on the pomp of Versailles than on the sensibility of the author of his gardens, such as the eighteenth-century gardens of Schönbrunn, in Austria, Peterhof, in Russia, and La Granja, in Spain.
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