Blondel, François

(1618-1686)

   mathematician, military engineer, diplomat, architect, theorist

   Born in Ribemont, near Saint-Quentin, François Blondel, who had a solid scientific and literary background and had traveled throughout Europe, was entrusted by the French government with important diplomatic missions, notably to Egypt, Constantinople, and the Antilles. There, he built fortifications, developed the urbanization plans for Rochefort, and restored the ancient bridge at Saintes. He entered the Academy of Sciences, as the protégé of jean-baptiste colbert and helped to establish the Royal Academy of Architecture (1671). Drawing freely from Roman models, he built the triumphal arch at the porte Saint-Denis in paris (1671-72), and was one of the principal theorists of the classical dogma, extolling the imitation of the "Ancients" and the architecture of the Italian Renaissance, while condemning the "fantasies and excesses" of the Italian baroque. His conception of a single, universal, and rational beauty (Cours d'architecture, 1675) was opposed within the academy by claude perrault.