Claude Mollet (ca. 1564 – shortly before 1649), ''premier jardinier du Roy'' — first gardener to three French kings, Henry IV,

Louis XIII Louis XIII (; sometimes called the Just; 27 September 1601 – 14 May 1643) was King of France from 1610 until his death in 1643 and King of Navarre (as Louis II) from 1610 to 1620, when the crown of Navarre was merged with the French crown. ...

and the young

Louis XIV LouisXIV (Louis-Dieudonné; 5 September 16381 September 1715), also known as Louis the Great () or the Sun King (), was King of France from 1643 until his death in 1715. His verified reign of 72 years and 110 days is the List of longest-reign ...

— was a member of the Mollet dynasty of French garden designers in the seventeenth century. His father was Jacques Mollet, gardener at the Château d'Anet, where

Italian Renaissance garden The Italian Renaissance garden was a new style of garden which emerged in the late 15th century at villas in Rome and Florence, inspired by classical ideals of order and beauty, and intended for the pleasure of the view of the garden and the land ...

ing was introduced to France and where Claude apprenticed, and his son was André Mollet, who took the French style to Holland, Sweden and England. Claude Mollet00

In the woodcuts in

Olivier de Serres Olivier de Serres (; 1539–1619) was a French author and soil scientist whose '' Théâtre d'Agriculture'' (1600) was the accepted textbook of French agriculture in the 17th century. Biography Serres was born in 1539 at Villeneuve-de-Berg, A ...

' work dedicated to Henry IV, ' (Paris 1600), the plans laid out in royal gardens are by Claude Mollet, a friend of the author, who praises Mollet's designs for the herbs and shrubs speaking in letters, devices, cyphers, coats-of-arms, frames, ships and other things, imitated with marvelous industry and patience. As de Serres did, Mollet maintained two tree nurseries, in the outskirts of the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, west of Paris. He claimed to have introduced

boxwood ''Buxus'' is a genus of about seventy species in the family Buxaceae. Common names include box and boxwood. The boxes are native to western and southern Europe, southwest, southern and eastern Asia, Africa, Madagascar, northernmost So ...

as an edging to his parterre patterns, each like "un tapis de Turquie" ("a Turkish carpet") isolated in . Mollet's volume ''Théâtre des plans et jardinages'', which contains autobiographical information, was published by his son in 1652, after his death. The manuscriptThe manuscript is in the

Bavarian State Library The Bavarian State Library (, abbreviated BSB, called ''Bibliotheca Regia Monacensis'' before 1919) in Munich is the central " Landesbibliothek", i. e. the state library of the Free State of Bavaria, the biggest universal and research libra ...

, Munich (Karling, p. 8, note 6) was written many years before, about 1613–15, and revised over the years. A handsome calligraphic copy now at

Dumbarton Oaks Dumbarton Oaks, formally the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, is a historic estate in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. It was the residence and gardens of wealthy U.S. diplomat Robert Woods Bliss and his wife ...

was dedicated to Louis XIII shortly before the King's death (1643).In it he acknowledged the influence upon him of Étienne Dupérac, the architect of Saint Germain-en-Laye. Mollet states that Henry IV commissioned him to lay out the terraces at the new Château of Saint Germain-en-Laye in 1595 and thereafter at the

Palace of Fontainebleau Palace of Fontainebleau ( , ; ), located southeast of the center of Paris, in the commune of Fontainebleau, is one of the largest French royal châteaux. It served as a hunting lodge and summer residence for many of the List of French monarchs ...

, and at Montceaux-en-Brie as well as at the

Tuileries Garden The Tuileries Garden (, ) is a public garden between the Louvre and the Place de la Concorde in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, France. Created by Catherine de' Medici as the garden of the Tuileries Palace in 1564, it was opened to the public in ...

, where he was in charge throughout his active career (Karling, p. 7) and where the central garden axis that he remade after depredations by soldiers in 1593 has been extended far to the west, as the '' axe historique'' of Paris.

Notes

External links

Online version of André Mollet's "Le jardin de plaisir"

References

*Sten Karling, "The importance of André Mollet", in ''The French Formal Garden'', 1974. Elizabeth B. MacDougall and F. Hamilton Hazlehurst, editors (Dumbarton Oaks) This is the basis for the information in this article. {{DEFAULTSORT:Mollet, Claude 17th-century French writers 17th-century French male writers French didactic writers French astrological writers French garden writers French Baroque garden designers 1560s births 17th-century deaths Members of the Académie royale d'architecture French male non-fiction writers Architects from Versailles