François d'Orbay

François d'Orbay (1634–1697) was a French draughtsman and architect who worked closely with Louis Le Vau and Jules Hardouin Mansart.

D'Orbay was born in Paris and likely received his early training as an architect from his father, who was a master mason and entrepreneur. In the late 1650s he became an assistant to the architect Louis Le Vau, when the latter was working on the Château de Vincennes.

In 1660 Le Vau sent d'Orbay to Rome for further study. While in Rome, d'Orbay created an ambitious but unexecuted design for a stair in front of the Trinità dei Monti, as well as three buildings adjacent to the church. He probably returned to Paris before the end of 1660.

Commissioned by Anne of Austria, d'Orbay designed and built the entrance to the church of the convent of the Prémontrés de la Croix-Rouge in 1662. A friend, the sculptor Étienne Le Hongre, executed the patron's coat of arms and the bas-relief of the attic (The Eucharist Carried by Angels). The church was located between the rue de Sèvres and the rue du Cherche-Midi in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, but was demolished in 1719.

In 1663 d'Orbay received an official post with the Bâtiments du Roi, working mainly as a draughtsman under Le Vau, the Premier Architecte du Roi. D'Orbay produced numerous drawings for the Louvre, Versailles, and the Collège des Quatre-Nations. After Le Vau's death in 1670, d'Orbay was left in charge of completing much of the ongoing work, sometimes introducing significant changes to Le Vau's original designs.

At Versailles he is thought to have been primarily responsible for the design of the Escalier des Ambassadeurs^[] (decorated by Charles Le Brun), although d'Orbay apparently relied very heavily on an earlier design by Claude Perrault for a stairway at the Louvre.

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