The Hôtel de Saint-Aignan

The Hôtel d’Avaux (1644-1650)

The mansion was built by Claude de Mesmes, the Count of Avaux, who served under Richelieu and Mazarin and was instrumental in negotiating the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The plans were drawn up by architect Pierre Le Muet, who owed his reputation to a work he had published in 1623, Manière de bâtir pour toutes sortes de personnes (How to Build for Every Kind of Person), and to the castles he had constructed at Pont-sur-Seine and Chavigny in Touraine, and Tanlay in Burgundy, between 1638 and 1645.

The site of the residence was the large, irregular-shaped plot of land on which stood the family home inherited by Claude d’Avaux in 1642. Having knocked down the existing building, Le Muet adopted the customary layout for large aristocratic residences, the main building set back from the street, across a large, virtually rectangular courtyard, that on entering looks square, with one wing branching off to the right (kitchen, servants’ hall and dining room on the ground floor, large gallery on the first floor, like the early design of the Hôtel de Sully). A corridor led to the little farmyard with sheds and stables, and an entrance direct from the street. On the left, Le Muet constructed a party wall in the same place as the one built by Philippe Auguste. Its symmetrical design reflected the right wing, with pilasters and imitation windows, creating a bogus wall.

Paul de Beauvillier, Duke of Saint-Aignan, who bought the mansion in 1688, had the gallery converted to apartments, and, leading up to them, a staircase partly overhanging the little courtyard. He used a small adjoining piece of land, purchased from a neighbour, to extend the right wing into the garden, and installed little apartments in it. He had the garden re-landscaped by André Le Nôtre creating a flowerbed, pool and trellis.

Confiscated in 1792, the mansion became the headquarters of the seventh municipality in 1795, then of the seventh arrondissement until 1823, before being divided into commercial premises of all kinds, which resulted in the building being split into different levels and raised, and the addition of other features. It was purchased in 1962 by the Ville de Paris, and listed as a historic monument in 1963. Renovation work took more than twenty-five years, with long periods of interruption. Apart from one or two 1690 additions, and with a few errors, (dormers on the courtyard side, ceiling of the first floor lower than the arches of the windows), the restoration works and some of the reconstruction (roofing, staircase), completed in 1998, reinstated the original mansion, restoring to French art one of the finest examples of classical Parisian architecture dating back to the regency of Anne of Austria.

The grand staircase

The Italian architect Vincenzo Scamozzi, who travelled to France at the beginning of the seventeenth century, was amazed that one entered via the stairway, even in large houses. The Hôtel de Sully still has this feature, but around 1640, the use of the hall, hitherto rare, became increasingly common. Here, as in the Château de Maisons, a hall, given noble treatment in the classical style, with niches and pilasters, leads to the staircase.

But, although the nineteenth-century alterations left the hall intact, the staircase was completely destroyed. Only archaeological traces remained (notches on the walls of the stairwell where the steps used to be, the ripping out of the vaults supporting the landings, balusters and fragments of the stringer). With the help of Le Muet’s plans, it was possible to reproduce the staircase, giving a clear idea of the original.

It was based on the staircase in the château at Maisons designed by François Mansart, itself a smaller version of the spectacular but unfinished one he had built at Blois. The staircase only goes up to the first floor, and the second floor is reached by a small staircase placed to one side. The upper landing encircles the stairwell around an oval opening, making it possible to see the calotte, the caplike vault, from below.

The trompe l’œil perspective on the calotte – in fact the only quadratura, excluding the stage – is a modern creation based on a sketch for the Hôtel d’Avaux. The original sketch however bears the explicit annotation “poin fait” (not done). Reinstating it is perhaps contrary to Claude d’Avaux’s decision and Le Muet’s ultimate choice to leave the calotte white.
The Hôtel de Saint-Aignan : The dining room

Around 1640, the dining room came into widespread use in large Parisian town houses. Here, the architect Le Muet skilfully places it in the wing at an angle, close to the kitchen, but separated from the service rooms by the corridor that leads to the farmyard.

The room was decorated in grisaille, which can be dated back to the initial works, around 1650. This décor, which is not mentioned in any of the old Paris guide books, had been forgotten and painted over. During the first restoration programme, it remained undiscovered, and was further damaged. Revealed during the second, more painstaking restoration effort, fragments of it have re-emerged: the symmetrical arrangement of the motifs enables us to reconstitute it almost entirely on paper, but a complete restoration would ruin the original.

No details of any commission have been found, but the style, which clearly evokes that of the Romans, is reminiscent of the grisaille décor of the gallery of the Château de Tanlay, painted in 1646 by Rémy Vuibert (1600-1652), under the supervision of Le Muet. Like Tanlay, this complex is one of the finest examples of the serene classicism now known as “Atticism”. The taste for classical figures and ornaments, light or monochrome paint, balanced compositions and figures in garments with pleated drapery was prevalent in Paris in the 1640s, after Poussin’s stay. Rémy Vuibert was one of the key exponents of this style.

Claude Mignot