ABSTRACT
This chapter revisits the political context behind the formation of the Académie royale d'architecture in 1671, focusing on the roles played by its first director, François Blondel, and its founder, the minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert. Historians have long been ambivalent about these two figures. In the first place, Blondel was neither trained nor initially celebrated as a designer, a circumstance that has always made his appointment difficult to explain. Moreover, as a theorist he has proved an awkward subject for a historiographical tradition that typically favours the study of built work over that of written commentary. Although Blondel held a privileged place in Colbert's system of architectural patronage, it led only to a handful of important commissions. This circumstance has perhaps prevented historians from fully appreciating his role in defining the new architectural culture that emerged under Louis XIV and that lasted until long after the end of the ancien régime.
