Exterior view

During the regency of Marie de M�dicis, architects like Salomon de Brosse, Fran�ois Mansart, and Louis Le Vau conducted intensive research into modern methods for resolving traditional building problems. They developed models of palace and church buildings which were to have lasting influence, not only for French Baroque architecture.

In the H�tel de la Vrilli�re Mansart showed how his new style could be applied to a town house; at Blois he had an even finer opportunity of showing its potentialities in a great château. Had it been completed Blois would have been a grander and more monumental version of Salomon de Brosse’s Palais du Luxembourg. However, of all his vast project only the central block and the quadrant colonnades were built, but this fragment is one of Mansart’s purest works. Blois is the direct descendant of de Brosse’s designs for Bl�rancourt and the Luxembourg. The masses have the same grand simplicity, and Mansart follows his master’s use of the super-imposed Orders to articulate them.

Mansart was more interested in the plastic structuring of the fa�ade than the reworking of the palace design. His masterpiece was the Gaston apartment at the Château de Blois, which he constructed for Gaston, duc d’Orl�ans, the brother of Louis XIII.