Pierre Lescot

Architect, born in Paris, France. He studied architecture, mathematics, and painting. One of the greatest classical architects of his time, among his works are the screen of St Germain l'Auxerrois, the Fontaine des Innocents, and the Hôtel de Ligneris. His masterwork was the rebuilding of the Louvre.

Pierre Lescot (Paris c.1510 – Paris 1578) was a French architect active during the French Renaissance. A project put forward by the architect and theorist Sebastiano Serlio was set aside in favor of Lescot's, in which three sides of a square court were to be enclosed by splendid apartments while on the east, facing the city as it then was, the fourth side was probably destined to be lightly closed with an arcade.

Though Lescot was confirmed in his position after the king's death by his heir Henri II, and though he worked at the Louvre project until his death, only the west side and part of the south side were completed, comprising the present southwest wing of the Cour Carré, the Aile Lescot, or "Lescot Wing". The building executed in 1546–51 set the mold of French classicism: it is of two stories with an attic richly embellished with Jean Goujon's panels of bas-reliefs crowned by a sloping roof, a traditional feature of French building and practical in a rainy climate.

Lescot's career is so scantily documented it is not known whether he ever visited Italy, or whether his knowledge of Italian practice was derived through the architecture and engravings that issued from the School of Fontainebleau. All of Lescot's known works have sculptural decoration by Trebatti and by Jean Goujon, who collaborated with him at the Louvre. Unlike the other architects of the French Renaissance, Pierre Lescot was not from a line of masons but the son of a seigneur. His father, also Pierre Lescot, was sieur of Lissy en Brie and Clagny, not far from Versailles, seigneuries his son Pierre inherited. Although, according to a letter from Ronsard, Pierre Lescot busied himself zealously in early youth making drawings and paintings, and, after his twentieth year, with mathematics and architecture, his wealth and the duties of his offices appear subsequently to have interfered with his artistic activity.

See also the other outstanding architects of the French Renaissance:

Philibert Delorme Jean Bullant Androuet du Cerceau, a dynasty of designers and architects Jean Goujon