Two volumes on the country house built for pleasure rather than for state: its distribution into apartments of parade, of society and of convenience, the planning of its garden, and the light ornament of its interiors: the architecture of the Rococo, written by the man who would become its critic.
Jacques-François Blondel (1705–74), not to be confused with the seventeenth-century François Blondel, was the most influential teacher of architecture in eighteenth-century France. His first book, written when he was about thirty, treats the maison de plaisance: a house outside the city for the owner’s enjoyment, set in its garden, whose plan is organised for comfort (commodité) and privacy as much as for display.
Blondel shows how the rooms should follow one another in enfilade from a central salon, which is often oval or round and projects into the garden; how the garden front and the garden itself should be designed together; and how interiors may be decorated with the delicate carving and mirrors of the day, though he already warns against the wilder rocaille. His later Architecture françoise (1752–56) and Cours d’architecture (1771–77) took a sterner, classical line.
The book, part by part
I Volume I: Distribution and gardens
The site and plan of the pleasure house; apartments and their sequence round a central salon; the garden laid out on the axes of the house.
II Volume II: Decoration
Interior decoration: panelling, chimneypieces, mirrors, ceilings and the proper place of ornament.