Jean Marot (1619 – 15 December 1679) was a French architect and engraver of architectural views. Little has survived of his own architectural work, but his engravings of the works of others, primarily those published in the volumes referred to as the Petit Marot (c. 1659) and the Grand Marot (1686), were highly esteemed by his contemporaries and remain, despite numerous inaccuracies and distortions, among the most important sources concerning architecture in France up to the early part of the reign of Louis XIV.[1][2][3]
Born in Paris, he was the son of Girard Marot, a cabinetmaker of Netherlandish origin.[1] Early in his career Jean Marot worked for the print publisher Israël Henriet, for whom he engraved architectural views in collaboration with Israël Silvestre, who may have provided sketches and engraved landscapes, and Stefano della Bella, who engraved figures and other embellishments.[4] Among the architects whose designs Marot engraved (and interpreted) are Gianlorenzo Bernini, Salomon de Brosse, Jacques Lemercier, François Mansart, Louis Le Vau, Claude Perrault, and Jules Hardouin-Mansart.[5] Marot also engraved plates after Vignola, Scamozzi, Palladio, and Philibert de L'Orme.[1] Among the more notable buildings represented are the former Château de Richelieu, the Hôtel royal des Invalides, the Louvre in 1676, and the former Château de Madrid in 1678.[5]
His brother Jean-Baptiste Marot (born 1632) was a painter. In 1659 Jean Marot married Charlotte Garbran, whose sister Anne was married to Pierre Gole, a cabinetmaker to Louis XIV. This relationship was to prove advantageous for Marot's further career. The marriage documents include an inventory of his belongings with important information on the engraved copper plates in his possession at that time.[6] His son Daniel Marot was an engraver, who worked with his father in Paris, until he was motivated by anti-Protestant laws to emigrate to the Netherlands, where he became the primary designer for William of Orange. Another son, Jean Marot II, likely worked as an engraver with his father, and later, after becoming a Catholic, as an architect in the Bâtiments du Roi (1686 to 1702).[1][7]
Jean Marot died in Paris.
If the likely publication date of the first edition is known, that is the one given. Many of the online copies linked here are later editions, which can vary in content. The list is not complete.
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