Architect, physician, and physicist, born in Paris, France, the brother of Charles Perrault, author of the Contes. With François d'Orbay, Claude built the colonnade of the Louvre (1667). Other works include the Paris Observatoire, and he also published an illustrated translation of the Roman architect Vitruvius in 1673.

Though Claude Perrault (Paris, 1613 - Paris, 1688) is best known as the architect of the eastern range of the Louvre in Paris, he also achieved success as physician and anatomist, and as an author, who wrote treatises on physics and natural history.

Aside from his influential architecture, Perrault is best regarded for his translation of the ten books of Vitruvius, the only surviving Roman work on architecture, into French, done at the instigation of Colbert, and published, with Perrault's annotations, in 1673. As physician and physicist with a degree of doctor from the University of Paris, Perrault became one of the first members of the French Academy of Sciences when it was founded in 1666.

In the competition for the new range of building for the Louvre he was successful over all rivals, even Bernini, who had travelled from Italy expressly for the purpose.

Perrault also built an Observatory, the church of St-Benoît-le-Bétourné, designed a new church of Ste-Geneviève, and erected an altar in the Church of the Little Fathers, all in Paris. Perrault's design for a triumphal arch on Rue St-Antoine was preferred to competing designs of Charles Le Brun and Louis Le Vau, but was only partly executed in stone.

His brother, Charles Perrault, is remembered as the classic reteller of the old story of Cinderella among other fables.

Resources

Mémoires pour Servir à L’histoire Naturelle des Animaux, by Perrault, Claude (1613-1688) : Memoir's for a natural history of animals: containing the anatomical descriptions of several creatures dissected by the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris. Introduction by Alberto Pérez-Gómez to Indra Kagis McEwen's translation of Perrault, Claude.