The Art and Architecture of Versailles edited by

Robert P. Maccubbin and David F. Morrill

Papers presented at The Versailles Colloquium- 1985 Organized by Guy Walton and W. Howard Adams

Volume 17, n.s., 2 May, 1993

EDITOR Robert P. MACCUBBIN

CORRESPONDING EDITORS

MANAGING EDITOR David F. MORRILL

Patrick BRADY (U11iversity of Tenntssee) I Morris R. BROWNELL (University of Nevada at Reno) I Peter V. CONROY, Jr. (U11ivernty of Illinois at Chicago) I Harold J. COO K (Umversity of Wuco11s111) I Cissie FAIR­CH ILDS (Syracuse U111vm1ty) I Beatrice C. FI NK (Univm1ty of Maryland) I Karl J . FINK (St. Olaf College) I Carol H. FLYNN (Tufts U11ivm1ty) I Gregory L. FREEZE (Brm1dtis Umvmity) I Richard LEPPERT (Umvm1ty of Mmnesota) I M11zi MYERS (UniversityofCaliforrua at Los Angeks) I G. S. ROUSSEAU (Umversity of Califoniia at Los Angelt>} I H. Grant SAM PSON (Quenr's U111vm1ty, Kmgston) I Randolph TR UM BACH (City Umvrrsity of New York) I Leland E. WARREN (Kansas State Umvmity) I John WILTON-ELY (University of Hull) I Calhoun WINTON (Umvmit)' of Maryland)

ADVISORY EDITORS Miles CHAPPELL (Fine Arts) I William HAUSMAN (Economic History) I Dale E. HOAK (British Historv) I James LIVINGSTON (History of Religious Thought) I J ames N. MCCORD (British Hist01y) I john L. MCKNIGHT (History of Science) I Adam POTKAY (English Literature)/ l homas f. SHEPPARD (French 1-fotoiy) I Talbot J. TAYLOR (Lmguistu Ideas)

FILM FORUM EDITOR Jeffrey L. L. JOHNSON

EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS Jennifer DUSSUNG, Nolan MARCllAND, & Katherine RAWSON

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Eighteenth-Century Life (!SS 1 0098-2601)

Projects by Robert de Cotte for the Church of Saint-Louis de Versailles in the Parc-aux-Cerfs

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The rapid growth in the early eighteenth century of the Parc-aux­Cerfs, a new district in the southern quarter of the town of Versailles, produced an urgent need for a parish church to serve the local pop­ulace.1 When Louis XV attained his majority in 1722 and the court returned to Versailles, the Crown determined to sponsor a foundation dedicated to Saint-Louis, the French royal saint and ancestor of the Bourbon dynasty. 2 Robert de Cotte (1656/57-1735) was the logical choice for the commission, since he functioned as Premier Architecte du Roi in the years 1708 to 1734, during which time he played an important supervisory role in the decoration and remodeling of several rooms in the Palace of Versailles.3 The Saint-Louis project is significant within the context of de Cotte's oeuvre because it is the single instance of a commission for a longitudinal basilica.

The design and construction of Saint-Louis de Versailles developed in two phases. During the first phase, 1724--ca. 1730, de Cotte drew up plans for a pair of structures lying adjacent to each other: a house for the Lazarist priests, called the Logement des Peres de la Mission, which was built immediately ( 1724- 27); and a large Latin-cross basilica to be erected when funding was available.4 As a temporary measure until the basilica was constructed, religious services for parishioners took place in the Chapelle Provisoire de Saint-Louis located in the Logement des Peres. At first Saint-Louis was a succursal chapel of Notre-Dame de Versailles, the parish church of the northern Ville Neuve; independent parish status was granted in 1730.5

During the second phase in the development of Saint-Louis, 1742-54, construction was carried out on the basilica itself. The definitive plans were the work of Jacques Hardouin-Mansart de Sagonne, who used de Cotte's projects as a point of departure in achieving the present structure. Its baroque presence still lends an air of royal splendor to the Parc-aux-Cerfs.

The subject of this paper is the first phase of activity, evidence for which consists of a series of nineteen drawings from the de Cotte studio kept in the Cabinet des Estampes of the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.6

Some of these were cited by Alfred Marie in his article on the church of Saint-Louis, published in 1979. However, Marie was cognizant of the ground plans only, and was not aware that several elevations and

Eighteenth-Century Life 17 (May 1993): 182-193 IC 1993 by The johns Hopkins University Press

183

sections are also extant. Moreover, he did not pursue a detailed ar­chitectural analysis of the first phase of activity, since the focus of his essay was the church as built. Consequently, I should like to expand upon his work in several ways, beginning with a discussion of the sur­viving drawings for the Logement des Peres. Then, through a close reading of the series of ground plans for the basilica, I will show that de Cotte drew up three proposals in sequence for the church. It will be apparent that the agents of the king approved the second of these. Furthermore, by considering the elevations alongside the plans, I shall clarify de Cotte's dependency on French and Italian precedents in his handling of the basilican type. Finally, I will use the succession of drawings as a demonstration of the process by which ideas were con­ceived and developed in the royal architectural office, the Service des Batiments du Roi.

We begin with the Logement des Peres. Extant drawings of this building are of particular importance, since the house was razed in 1760 to provide space for the present bishop's palace (Gallet, p. 14; Marie, "Saint-Louis," pp. 18-20). The Logement may be studied in the plan approved and dated 8 April 1724 by Louis-Henri de Bourbon, Premier Ministre, and the due d'Antin, Surintendant des Batiments du Roi (fig. 1, upper right-hand side).7 The Logement stands on the southwest corner of the site near the ambulatory of the basilica, to which it was eventually attached (the church portal faces north, an unusual but acceptable orientation, given the urban site). Modest living quarters for the religious community are situated in the south part of the Logement and on the upper stories. The Chapelle Provisoire de Saint-Louis oc­cupies over half of the interior space on the first and second floors. The chapel's plan derives from the figure of a Latin cross, with the main altar at the end of the longitudinal axis. Subsidiary altars are located in the left transept and in chapels appended to the nave along the right-hand side. There are two entrances, one accessible from the churchyard on the main axis of the interior space, and the other located in the right transept, facing the rue de Satory.

Three sheets of drawings unknown to Marie comprise the only re­maining interior and exterior views of the Logement des Peres (figs. 2-4).8 They are in the drafting style associated with de Cotte's atelier­drawn almost entirely freehand with a brush, boldly shaded to give a striking impression of depth, and sparingly colored with tinted washes. Evidently these are early proposals, since they do not match the existing ground plans in all details. The fac;ade on the rue de Satory is conceived as a symmetrical composition of extreme sobriety (fig. 2). Unadorned square-headed windows conceal the arrangement of rooms within. The arched shape of the central doorway, which gives onto the right transept of the chapel, reappears in the arched gateways leading alternately to the enclosed churchyard on the left and the service court on the right. The classical orders are not present; the only reference to classical tradition is the triangular pediment capping the central bay.

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l. Robert de COTTE (1656/57-1735). Plan, second project, Saint-Louis de Versailles and Logement des Peres de la Mission (1724). Pen and black ink with green wash. Bibliotheque Nationale, Cabinet des estampes, Va 421 , 1450 (Photo courtesy Bibliotheque Nation­ale).

185

A cross section of the Logement, which depicts a northward view, reveals that the chapel was two stories in height and had a balcony permitting access to the upper level (fig. 3). The fiat ceiling over the chapel would have allowed habitable spaces on the third story, as in­dicated in the drawing. In the building as constructed, however, part of the upper floor was occupied by a domical vault that covered the area of the crossing. The section also shows a faintly sketched suggestion of a bell tower rising at the apex of the roof.

In addition to the elevation and the cross section , a plan and an elevation of the sanctuary of the Chapelle Provisoire bear further wit­ness to the arrangement of the interior (fig. 4). Notations of dimensions in de Cotte's (?) handwriting affirm his paternity of the scheme. The proposal calls for a series of semicircular steps leading to the high altar. The altarpiece is bordered by paneled pilasters and crowned by a seg­mental arch echoing the motif employed in the street elevation. The frame for the painting features a broad semicircular arch at the top and joined volutes below, elements frequently employed in designs for interior paneling produced under de Cotte's supervision.9

Turning to extant plans and elevations for the basilica of Saint-Louis, we find that de Cotte's goal was to create a magnificent church whose design would mirror Notre-Dame de Versailles, the chief architectural monument in the Ville Neuve (1684-86). 10 The latter basilica was the work of de Cotte's mentor and predecessor as Premier Architecte, Jules Hardouin-Mansart. Although not simultaneously visible, both churches face toward the major east-west axis of the town, the avenue de Paris. Furthermore, de Cotte respected the dual function of Saint-Louis: as a royal commission it required a degree of grandeur appropriate for the king, who would occasionally worship publicly there; as a parish church it needed various spaces for the rituals performed daily by the clergy for the local inhabitants. Close inspection of the surviving plans, and particularly of transitional drawings and pasted-on corrections, reveals a series of three alternative solutions conceived sequentially, of which the second received official approval in April 1724.

In laying out the First Project (fig. 5), de Cotte rejected the Italianate basilican plan exemplified above all by the church of 11 Gesi:t, Rome (Vignola and Giacomo della Porta, 1568-73), with its broad nave and attendant side chapels, which had been adopted in France by Frarn;ois Mansart and others during the seventeenth century (Va 421, 1448, 1453). Instead, like Hardouin-Mansart, de Cotte chose a more tradi­tional, essentially medieval floor plan, similar to that of the great French Gothic churches, such as Notre-Dame de Paris (begun 1163). In both de Cotte's First Project for Saint-Louis and Hardouin-Mansart's plan of Notre-Dame de Versailles, aisles line the nave and an ambulatory encircles the sanctuary, thus allowing ease of movement through and around the interior. The profusion of chapels bordering the consid­erable length of each cruciform plan provides a large number of altars to facilitate the saying of Mass and other devotions. The location of the crossing midway down both plans ensures a large choir area for

2. De COTTE. Elevation, Logement des Peres de la Mission (1724). Brushed black ink with blue wash. Bibliotheque Nationale, Cabinet des estampes, Va 78h, t. 3, 1457 recto (Photo courtesy Bibliotheque Nationale).

3. De COTTE. Cross section, Logement des Peres de la Mission (1724). Brushed black ink with grey wash. Biblio­theque Nationale, Cabinet des es­tampes, Va 78h, t. 3, 1457 verso (Photo courtesy Bibliotheque Na­tionale).

4. De COTTE. Plan and elevation, Chapel Provisoire de Saint-Louis (1724). Pen and black ink with watercolor. Bibliotheque Nationale, Cabinet des estampes, Va 78h, t. 2 . 1456 (Photo courtesy Bibliotheque Nationale).

5. De COTTE. Plan, first project, Saint-Louis de Versailles (1724). Pen and black ink with grey wash. Bibliotheque Nationale, Cabinet des estampes, Va 421, 1453 (Photo courtesy Biblio­theque Nationale).

187

communal prayer and chanting of the Divine Office. Finally, the ar­rangement of the choir stalls just beyond the crossing, and the dispo­sition of the transepts, aligned with the side chapels, are comparable in both plans.

In his First Project de Cotte also borrowed from another design by Hardouin-Mansart. The interpenetration of spaces around the oval Chapelle de la Vierge, which overlaps the ambulatory at the end of the main axis (fig. 5), is based on Hardouin-Mansart's composition of in­tersecting circular and oval spaces in the domed Chapelle de la Vierge at the sanctuary end of Saint-Roch, Paris (1706-10). 11 Like the plan of Saint-Roch, the Saint-Louis proposal requires the placement of three altars in sequence down the main axis: the high altar in the choir, followed by altars in the Chapelle de la Vierge and the Chapelle de la Communion at the far end.

De Cotte conceived the fa<;ade of Saint-Louis as a focal point within the urban complex, rising above a flight of steps to dominate an open square. 12 No elevation is extant for the First Project, but the plan sug­gests that the Premier Architecte initially devised a portal similar to Har-

188

6. De COTTE. Plan, third pro­ject, Saint-Louis de Versailles (ca. 1724-30), detail. Graphite. Bibliotheque Nationale, Cab­inet des estampes, Va 448f, 1446 (Photo courtesy Biblio­theque Nationale).

douin-Mansart's fal;ade for Notre-Dame de Versailles (fig. 4). The paired columns visible in de Cotte's plan on either side of the entrance were probably intended to support superimposed columns that in turn carried a pediment, the whole arrangement thus forming an aedicule. In the same plan, pilasters bracket the end bays of the fac;ade, which presumably were intended to support towers.13 De Cotte altered Man­sart's conception in one respect. Instead of closing the portal by means of a door on the central axis, he opened the vestibule to the street. Although rarely used in French churches, the open vestibule was a device commonly employed in French domestic architecture, since it allowed a visitor to alight directly from a carriage into a sheltered space during inclement weather.

On a duplicate plan of the First Project, de Cotte made important revisions to the fac;ade and transept areas by pasting over them newly drawn swatches of paper, thus producing the second of his three proj­ects for Saint-Louis (fig. 1) (Va 421 , 1450, 1450b). The chief modifi­cation of the interior space consists of the extension of rectilinear tran­septs from the body of the church. The larger transepts allow prominent entrance vestibules, while retaining the concave disposition of the tran­sept altar walls.

The significant change incorporated in the fac;ade of the Second

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189

7. De COTTE. Plan, third project, Saint-Louis de Versailles (ca. 1724-30). Pen and brush and black ink. Bibliotheque Nationale, Cab­inet des estampes, Va 448f, 1447 recto (Photo courtesy Bibliotheque Nationale).

Project is the elimination of the lateral bays. Despite the lack of a surviving portal elevation, it is clear from the plan that the architect enhanced the central bay in a subtle way. Two freestanding columns, placed somewhat further from the adjacent walls than in the First Project, partially screen the open vestibule from the square. No direct precedent for this arrangement exists in French ecclesiastical architec­ture. However, de Cotte knew the device from Italian baroque church fa~ades. For example, during his Italian study trip of 1689-90 he drew a plan of the open vestibule of Pietro da Cortona's Santa Maria in Via Lata, Rome (1658-62). 14 Like the Roman example, the plan of Saint­Louis features apse-like concavities on either side of the central vesti­bule.

The Third Project for Saint-Louis developed out of the second scheme: a group of five plans and three elevations that permit further observation of artistic decision-making in the de Cotte atelier (Va 448f, 1446-1447 recto and verso, 1454; Va 421, 1449). One of the plans is clearly transitional, the only remaining pencil sketch in the entire suite of drawings (fig. 6). The exterior contour of the ambulatory wall is now simpler in outline, the right transept is curvilinear in plan, the chapels lining the nave are more shallow, and the fa~ade employs freestanding columns to a greater degree. These changes were subsequently incor­porated into the definitive plan, sketched in pen in de Cotte's rapid style (fig. 7). Here the left transept takes on the curvilinear shape of

190

8. De COTTE. Cross section of nave and side aisle, elevation of fafacle, and longitudinal section of narthex, third project, Saint-Louis cle Versailles (ca. 1724-30). Brushed black ink with grey wash. Bibliotheque Nationale, photographic montage of Cabinet des es­tampes, Va 448f, 1447 verso (Photo courtesy Bibliotheque Nationale).

its counterpart, and the first and second floors of the multi-columnar fac;ade are indicated in the left and right halves of the plan. The most important new feature from the liturgical point of view is the exchange of elements in the choir. The choir stalls are now situated along the inner periphery of the ambulatory, while the high altar has moved to the crossing, where it is freestanding and double-faced-one altar to­ward the nave and the other toward the sanctuary. In an almost the­atrical conception, the altar, surrounded at the rear by choir stalls, has become the focal point of the church. One final change incorporated in the plan is the repositioning of the altars in the side chapels from the exterior walls to the walls facing the entrance, so that they would be visible simultaneously to the worshipper upon entering the church.

A cross section of the Third Project appears on the verso of the pen­and-ink sketch (fig. 8, left). It gives a composite view of the interior as seen when facing in the direction of the inner wall of the fac;ade. The vertical lines of the Corinthian pilasters decorating the piers and wall surfaces throughout the basilica are continued in corresponding ribs on the vault. The flying buttresses supporting this vault on the exterior are survivors of medieval construction techniques.

A sketch of the fac;ade and a section of the vestibule, both in the fluid style associated with de Cotte, have survived on the verso of the same sheet (fig. 8, center and right). On the lower story of the portal, engaged columns bracket the side doors, while in the center the paired columns of the aedicule are repeated in paired columns located per­pendicular to the wall on either side of the entrance (visible in the

191

section and on the plan, fig. 7). The result is a total of twelve columns ranged across the lower story, eight of which are echoed by columns and pilasters on the upper level. The side doors are placed in concave niches that enhance the curvilinear theme of the design, and the fac;ade is terminated by pilasters intended to have the effect of solid piers when viewed diagonally. Low concave walls, present only in the plans, mark the transition from the fac;ade to the street.

The flourish of columnar accents on the exterior recalls the fac;ade of Hardouin-Mansart's Dome des lnvalides, Paris, in whose construc­tion and decoration de Cotte had participated (1678-91). 15 In addition, the fac;ade for the Third Project clearly shows the influence of Roman baroque portals, particularly the fac;ade of SS. Vincenzo ed Anastasio, which is comparable in its massing of freestanding columns (Martino Longhi the Younger, 1646-50).16 De Cotte drew the plan of this church during his Italian sojourn. Even so, in the design for Saint-Louis he avoided typically Italian baroque details, such as encased pediments and the crowded overlapping of elements.

Since the Third Project is the most fully developed design in the series, we may ask why it was not the one that received official approval. The answer appears to be that it was produced some time after the initial period of activity in April 1724. Since the plan of the Logement des Peres is included in only two of the five plans for the Third Project, and its layout shows the form as built, it is reasonable to assume that the Logement was either under construction or already completed by then. Even so, we cannot be certain of when the Third Project was conceived-whether in 1724, soon after the granting of official approval for construction; in 1727, when the Logement was in use; or as late as 1730, when the problem of accommodating lay worshippers was more pressing, and efforts were undertaken to elevate the succursal chapel to independent parish status. It was not unusual for architects in the Biitiments to revise an approved design at a later date. In any case, the Third Project represents de Cotte's final solution, prompted in part by liturgical requirements.

This final scheme formed the basis of de Cotte's design for the fac;ade of Saint-Roch, Paris (erected 1736-38). 17 Ironically, it was Saint-Roch that provided the chief source for the portal of Saint-Louis as ultimately built by Mansart de Sagonne ( 17 42-54), who added end bays with towers similar to those employed by de Cotte in his First Project. The ground plan of the present basilica is also largely based on de Cotte's First and Second Projects (Marie, "Saint-Louis," pp. 21-22). Several years ago Pierre Moisy intuited that the similarities shared by Mansart de Sa­gonne's final design for Saint-Louis de Versailles and Jacques V Ga­briel's plan for the Cathedral of La Rochelle (1741; also dedicated to Saint-Louis) were due to the use of a common model. 18 We are now in a position to see that this model was de Cotte's series of designs for Saint-Louis de Versailles. As Architecte Ordinaire (second in command at the Biitiments), Gabriel was familiar with these projects in the 1720s,

192

and when he became Premier Architecte in 1734, he had at his disposal the collection of drawings from de Cotte's office. Thus although de Cotte's proposals for the basilica of Saint-Louis were themselves never realized, they had a measurable impact on designs for later basilican churches.

Robert Neuman~.&.. Florida State University tf-.;'

~·NOTES~ ..

l. For the development of the Parc-aux-Cerfs, see Alfred Marie, "L'eglise Saint­Louis de Versailles," Histoire et archeologie dans Les Yveslines, no. 5 (1979): 17- 18, reprinted in Alfred Marie andJeanne Marie, Versailles au temps de Louis XV, 1715-1745 (Paris, 1984), pp. 88-91. An early 18th-century plan (undated) in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, Estampes, Va 78h, t. 2, 1635, shows the extreme regularization of the sector, based on a grid pattern, and the space allotted in the northwest corner for the new basilica, bordered by the rues de Satory, des Tournelles, Saint-Honore, and d 'Anjou.

2. For the Gothic church of the southern Vieux Quartier, Saint-Julien, pulled down by Louis XIV in 1681 in order to provide a site for the Grand Commun, see Marcel Lfry, "Une visite ~ l'eglise Notre-Dame de Versailles," Revue de l'histoire de Versailles et de Seine-et-Oise 14 (1912): 209-12. Its position near the eastern Hank of the first Orangerie is visible at the far left of Pierre Patel's Aerial View of Versailles (1668). That a new church had long been intended for a site to the southeast of the chiiteau is certain from a plan of the palace and town (1669-70; Stockholm, Nationalmuseum THC 2) and the Bird's Eye View of Versailles from the East by Lieven Cruyl ( 1684). For the plan and drawing, see respectively Guy Walton, Versailles d Stockholm (Stockholm, 1985), pp. 23-25; and Walton, "Lievin Cruyl's Works for Versailles," in Art, the Ape of Nature: Studies in HonM of H. W. Janson, ed. Moshe Barasch & Lucy Freeman Sandler (N.Y., 1981), pp. 425-37.

3. Robert Neuman, "Robert de Cotte," in Macmillan Encyclopedia of Architects, 4 vols. (N.Y., 1982), 1:528-31.

4. For the dating see abbe Gallet, Eglise Saint-Louis de Versailles (Versailles, 1897), p. 4.

5. When Versailles was designated a bishopric in 1791, the Lazarists departed from their parishes in the town. Saint-Louis was consecrated as a cathedral in 1843. For the ecclesiastical background, see Gallet, pp. 1-68; Jacques Levron, La cathedrale Saint-Louis de Versailles (Lyon, 1967), pp. 3-14.

6. Two drawings bear inscriptions on the verso (Va 421, l 450b, 1451): "Plan projette pour la nouvelle paroisse clans le pare au cerf a versailles fait par M. De Cotte en lannee 1724."

7. Va 421, 1450, signed "Bon Louis," "hon ce 8 d avril 1724 le due dantin," and "ce projet [the basilica] a ete parellemen approuve par SAS le memejour." The ground plan of the Logement des Peres appears throughout the sequence of proposals with only minor variations in detail: Va 421, 1448-1450, 1450b, 1451, 1453; Va 448f, 1446. The second and third story plans, originally attached to the large site plans, are now mounted on separate sheets: Va 421 , 1449a, 1450a, 1450c. The definitive layout of the Logement as built is recorded in two identical series of plans independent of the projected basilica; these are not part of the Fonds de Cotte. The inscription "PLAN DE LA PAROISSE ST.

193

LOUIS DE VERSAILLES" indicates that they were drafted between I 730, when the chapel was elevated to parish status, and I 742, when construction began on the basilica: Archives des Yveslines, A 236; and Va 42I, H 186407. The latter is reproduced by Marie, "Saint-Louis," p. I 9. I am indebted to S. Roudihe, Conservateur of the Arch. Yveslines, for archival assistance at Versailles.

8. Va 78h, t. 3, 1457, recto and verso, not previously identified, since the sheet was incorrectly cataloged in the volume for Notre-Dame de Versailles; Va 78h, t. 2, 1456; Ha I8, t. 3, 2245.

9. Jean-Daniel Ludmann and Bruno Pons, "Nouveau documents sur la galerie de !'Hotel de Toulouse," Bulletin de la Sociiti de l'histoire de l'art franfais I979 (1 981): I 15-28. Projects for the decoration of the Chapelle Provisoire are discussed by Bruno Pons, De Paris a Versailles, 1699-1736 (Strasbourg, I986), pp. 2I7- I8.

10. Lery, pp. 2I6-31; Alfred Marie and Jeanne Marie, Mansart a Versailles, 2 vols. (Paris, 1972), 1: I60-68.

11. Fram;oise Hamon, "La Chapelle de la Vierge en l'eglise Saint-Roch a Paris," Bulletin monumental I 29 (1970): 229-3 7.

I2. For de Cotte as a designer of ecclesiastical portals, see Robert Neuman, "Robert de Cone and the Baroque Ecclesiastical Fac;ade in France," journal of the Society of Archi­tectural Historians 44 (1985): 250-65. For the development of such fac;ades in Italy, see Nathan T. Whitman, "Roman Tradition and the Aedicular Fac;;ade," journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 29 (I970): I08-23.

I3. Before the seventeenth century, paired rowers were reserved for cathedrals while parish churches normally had a single bell tower. By 1700 the question of whether a portal would include cowers, and how many, was of purely aesthetic relevance. See Franc;;oise Hamon, "Les eglises parisiennes du XVIII• siecle," Revue de l'art, no. 32 (1976): I2. An elevation in the Bibliotheque National Est. of a church fac;;ade for an unidentified but apparently similar project shows that towers were not always employed in such circumstances (Ha I8, t. 1, 1). In this instance, the broad lateral extensions of a full bay on either side of the fac;;ade lack towers, but they function as a convenient formal means of masking the side chapels of the nave. In addition, the predominance of the dome in this elevation raises the issue of whether at any point de Cotte intended to elevate the domical vault over the crossing of Saint-Louis on a drum so that it would have a prominent position on the exterior; of course, given the absence of a section of the crossing, and the difficulty of interpreting his plans in this regard, the question must remain moot.

I4. Bertrand Jestaz, Le voyage d'Jtalie de Robert de Cotte (Paris, 1966), pp. 130-3I, 266.

15. Bertrand Jestaz, l:hOtel et l'eglise des Invalides (Paris, I 990). 16. John L. Varriano, "The Architecture of Martino Longhi the Younger (1602-

I660)," journal of the Society of Architectural H istorians 30 (1971): lI I-14, fig. l ; Jestaz, Voyage d'ltalie, pp. I 28, 268.

17. Since de Cotte's earliest work at Saint-Roch dates from I 728, there is a slight possibility that his First Project for that fac;;ade and Third Project for Saint-Louis were conceived simultaneously. However, there is no direct evidence to substantiate the precise dating of either proposal.

I8. "Deux cathedrales franc;;aises: La Rochelle et Versailles," Gazette des Beaux-Arts 39 (1952): IOI-02.

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