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The Château de Maisons (now Château de Maisons-Laffitte), designed by François Mansart from 1630 to 1651, is a prime example of French baroque architecture and a reference point in the history of French architecture. The château is located in Maisons-Laffitte, a northwestern suburb of Paris, in the department of Yvelines, Île-de-France. == History == The family of Longueil, long associated with the ''Parlement de Paris'', had been in possession of part of the seigneurie of Maisons since 1460, and a full share since 1602. Beginning in 1630, and for the next decades, René de Longueil, first president of the ''Cour des aides'' and then ''président à mortier'' to the Parlement de Paris, devoted the fortune inherited by his wife, Madeleine Boulenc de Crévecœur (who died in 1636), to the construction of a magnificent château. By 1649 he was able to spend the summer months in his new house, but works on the outbuildings continued after that date. Louis XIV visited Maisons in April 1651. The attribution to François Mansart was common knowledge among contemporaries. Charles Perrault reported its reputation: "The château of Maisons, of which he () had made all the buildings and all the gardens, is of such a singular beauty that there is not a curious foreigner who does not go there to see it, as one of the finest things that we have in France."〔Perrault 1696, "François Mansart, Architecte", (p. 87 ) (as in the original): "Le Chasteau de Maisons dont il () a fait faire tous les Bastimens & tous les Jardinages, est d'une beauté si singulière, qu'il n'est point d'Estrangers curieux qui ne l'aillent voir comme une des plus belles choses que nous ayons en France."〕 Nevertheless, the sole surviving document mentioning Mansart's name is a payment of 20,000 ''livres'' from Longueil in 1657, apparently occasioned by the final completion of the château. A pamphlet with the title ''La Mansarade'' accuses the architect of having realised, after completing the construction of the first floor, that he had committed an error in the plans and razed everything built so far in order to commence anew. Perrault emphasizes that the architect had the habit of remodeling certain parts of his buildings more than once, in a search for perfection. This length of time the construction required. At the death of René de Longueil, in 1677, the château passed to his heirs until 1732, and then in succession to the marquise de Belleforière, then to the marquis de Soyécourt. In 1777 it became the property of Louis XVI's brother the comte d'Artois, who carried out important interior transformations under the direction of his house architect François-Joseph Bélanger. These works were interrupted in 1782 for lack of funds. Maisons ceased to be kept up. Confiscated during the Revolution as "national goods", the château was sold in 1798 to an army provisioner, M. Lauchère, again in 1804 to maréchal Jean Lannes, and finally in 1818, to the Parisian banker Jacques Lafitte. Starting in 1834, Lafitte proceeded to develop the surrounding park as building lots; he tore down the fine stables to furnish construction materials for the purchasers. After his daughter the princesse de la Moskowa sold the château in 1850, it passed to M. Thomas de Colmar, and to the painter Tilman Grommé, who farmed out the small park and demolished the entrance gateway to the forecourt, enclosing the severely reduced space with a wrought iron grille brought from the Château de Mailly in Picardy. In 1905, the State purchased the château to save it from demolition. It was classed a ''monument historique'' in 1914. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Château de Maisons」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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