The French architects formed two groups: one represented pure adherence to the classical style of building, the other had raised irregularity and flirtatiousness to a pitch. Each of these two directions laid claim to a particular territory. In exterior architecture the requirements of the first group were met; the ornamentation of the interior spaces presented the second group with the so-called architectural ornamentation, with a broad field of activity. This second group, using the widespread technique of copper etching, helped the new decorative style to reach predominance.
Integrated into this second group were the decorative artists. Amongst the most famous of these are Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier (1693-1750), Gilles-Marie Oppenord (1672-1742) and François de Cuvilliés (1698-1768), who had also been active in Munich. Their powers of invention and the richness of their imagination can be seen through their engravings and drawings. It also becomes clear here that Italian grotesque was the basis of French ornamentation. The ornamental artists also exerted a considerable influence on the other ornamentation of public buildings, particularly on the blacksmith’s work on balustrades, banisters and wrought iron gates.
In French architecture in the 17th century, there was a counter-movement against the pompous, heavy Baroque style of Charles Le Brun (1619-1690), with a strict classicism that predominated in the extension of the Louvre by Claude Perrault (1613-1688). His main works as an architect are the eastern and southern external façades of the Louvre (the eastern side is the famous Colonnade). Perrault, in addition to his work as a doctor, was also a philologist and an art theoretician. He translated Vitruvius’s Ten Books about Architecture and wrote a system of column orders which lasted for many years.
However, an original French style of building was created only by the leading architect of the age, Jules Hardouin-Mansart (1646-1708), who at the young age of 30 was named Court Architect to his sovereign and invented the most effective decorative forms of the Baroque style with the structural rigidity of classicism. The sphere of his major work was in fact the Palace of Versailles with its chapel, royal chambers and the Grand Trianon, built for the last mistress and presumably secret wife of Louis XIV, the Marquise de Maintenon (1635-1719), and restored by Napoleon I (1769-1821), as well as the Orangerie. The most important of his artistic works is without a doubt the dome of Les Invalides (the former hospital in Paris for war veterans) completed in 1708, the cupola of which is a masterly combination of monumental effect and French elegance. Jules Hardouin-Mansart, in all of his works, created the foundations for the elegant decorative lines of the architecture and the ornamentation of the façades.