Liberal Bruant

Libéral Bruant (ca 1635 - Paris, 22 November 1697), was a French architect best known as the designer of the Hôtel des Invalides, Paris, now dominated by the dome erected by Jules Hardouin Mansart, his collaborator in earlier stages of the construction. A comparison of Bruant's central entrance to the Invalides, under an arched cornice packed with military trophies with Mansart's Eglise du Dome (see Les Invalides), gives a clear idea of the difference between Bruant's High Baroque and Hardouin-Mansart's restrained and somewhat academic Late Baroque.

Libéral Bruant was the most notable in a family that produced a long series of architects active from the 16th to the eighteenth century.

In 1660, Libéral Bruant was the architect chosen for rehabilitations to Louis XIII's old arsenal (the Salpêtrière), which was being converted into a combination workhouse and orphanage. It is now the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital.

In the Marais district of Paris, the hotel particulier Bruant built for himself in 1685, at rue de la Perle no.1 now houses the Bricard lock museum (Musée de la Serrure). Its Baroque facade of golden limestone is enlivened by windows set into blind arches that march across its front and busts in oval reserves, all under a richly-sculptured pediment that is pierced by an oval window.

In 1671, he became one of the first eight members of the Académie royale d'architecture created by Louis XIV.

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