Salomon de Brosse

Architect, born in Verneuil, NC France. Related to Du Cerceau, he became architect to Marie de Médicis. He designed various palaces, including le Palais du Luxembourg in Paris (1615–20), the Palais de Justice in Rennes, Louis XIII's hunting lodge (1624–6), and the nucleus of the palace of Versailles. His work is characterized as classical and massive.

Salomon de Brosse (1571?, Verneuil-sur-Oise, France–9 December 1626, Paris) was the most influential early 17th-century French architect, a major influence on François Mansart.

De Brosse greatly influenced the sober and classicizing direction that French Baroque architecture was to take, especially in designing his most prominent commission, the Luxembourg Palace, Paris (1615-1620), for Marie de' Medici, whose patronage had been extended to his uncle. Salomon de Brosse simplified the crowded compositions of his Androuet du Cerceau heritage and contemporary practice, ranging the U-shaped block round an entrance court, as Carlo Maderno was doing at Palazzo Barberini, Rome, about the same time.

Other buildings that he designed include:

the facade of the Church of Saint-Gervais, Paris (1615-1621) the Parliament House of Rennes (1618) (now a Palace of Justice) the aqueduct of Arcueil (1624) the château of Blérancourt (ca 1619) the château of Coulommiers (1615), for Catherine Gonzaga, duchesse de Longueville. Salomon de Brosse and the Development of the Classical Style in French Architecture from 1565 to 1630 (in series Zwemmer Studies in Architecture, no.