PERRAULT, Claude, a celebrated architect, the brother of Charles, was born at Paris in the year 1613. His father, an advocate of the Parliament, caused him to study medicine, anatomy, and the mathematics; and he even took the degree of Doctor of Physic in the faculty of Paris. But Col-
bert having advised him to undertake a translation of Vitruvius, the studies in which he found it necessary to engage in order to understand that writer inspired him with a decided taste for architecture, and gave a new direction to his pursuits. When the Academy of Sciences was established in 1666, Perrault was admitted a member of this body, and was employed to furnish designs and building-plans for the Observatory. But this edifice, which, with all its merits, is in a heavy style, was far from giving any indication of the talents which Perrault afterwards displayed. His grand work is the palace of the Louvre, the façade of which was designed by him, and is certainly one of the noblest monuments of architecture in France. The building had been commenced, and even part of the façade raised, according to the designs of Laval. But Colbert, dissatisfied with these, appealed to the genius of other architects; and Perrault produced a design so superior to those of his competitors that it obtained a decided preference. Perrault furnished designs for other works, particularly the triumphal arch erected at the extremity of the Rue Saint-Antoine, the foundation-stone of which was laid on the 6th of August 1670; and in all his works he displayed that superiority of genius which was first exhibited in his translation of Vitruvius, particularly in the plates with which it was enriched, and which have ever been considered as masterpieces of their kind. The first edition of this work appeared in 1673, and the second in 1684, in 1 vol. fol.; after which the translator published an abridgement in 1 vol. 12mo; and a supplement, entitled Ordonnances des Cinq Espèces de Colonnnes selon la Méthode des Anciens, in 1 vol. fol. Of his other productions the principal are,—Essai de Physique, 1680-8, 2 vols. 4to, and 4 vols. 12mo; Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire Naturelle des Animaux, Paris, 1671-6, in folio; Recueil d'un grand Nombre des Machines de son Invention, Paris, 1700, in 1 vol. 4to. Claude Perrault assisted his brother Charles in preparing the memoirs relating to the establishment of the Academy of Sciences, and that of painting and sculpture, and took a warm interest in the success of that institution. He died at Paris on the 9th of October 1688, in consequence, it is believed, of having wounded himself whilst dissecting, in the Jardin du Roi, a camel which had died of some contagious disease.