- André Mollet
André Mollet (died before
16 June 1665 ) was a French garden designer, the son ofClaude Mollet —gardener to three French kings—and the grandson of Jacques Mollet, gardener at thechâteau d'Anet , where Italian formal gardening was introduced to France.Royal appointment
André Mollet became royal gardener to Queen Christina in Stockholm. His lasting record is his handsomely-printed folio, "Le Jardin de plaisir" ("The Pleasure Garden"), Stockholm 1651, which he illustrated with meticulous
copperplate engravings after his own designs, and which, with an eye to a European aristocratic clientele, he published in Swedish, French and German. In his designs the rich patterning ofparterres , which had formerly been a garden feature of interest in isolation, was for the first time arranged in significant relation to the plan of the house. André Mollet's designs coordinated the elements of scythed turf—making its debut here as an essential element of garden design—with gravel paths, basins andfountain s, parterres, "bosquet s" and "allée s.Summoned to England
André Mollet was summoned to England in the
1620s to lay out gardens forCharles I of England and perhaps the parterres atWilton House , [Karling p 18] but by1633 he was in the service of Prince Frederick Henry of Orange, for whom he laid out "parterres en broderie" that included the lion rampant of the prince's coat-of-arms, in turf and clippedboxwood , set in colored gravels atHuis Honselaarsdijk , and at the prince's other main residence,Huis ter Nieuburch nearRijswijk .Return to
France He returned to
France in1635 , but he was back in England by 1642, when he was designing gardens for Queen Henrietta Maria in Wimbledon. He presumably returned to France after the outbreak of the English Civil War later that year, and dropped from sight. In the autumn of1646 , a Swedish delegation arrived in Paris, led by Christina's favourite, the connoisseurMagnus Gabriel de la Gardie , who was so pleased with recent French developments in the art of gardens that he engaged André Mollet for the queen on the spot. Mollet took on two assistants and provided himself with orange and lemon trees and pomegranates, with myrtle, laurel trees and Spanish jasmine, [Karling, p. 21] all of which were tender and destined for anorangerie . He also procured tulip bulbs and ranunculus roots. Then there was a frustrating delay of a full season before the official confirmation arrived.Sweden
Mollet's stay in
Sweden lasted five years, during which he introduced to Sweden the French "parterres en broderie" patterned like Baroque textiles. He modernized the existing gardens linked to the royal palace in Stockholm and laid out a new garden in the outskirts of Stockholm on the site of a former hop-garden, the "Humlegården ". The introduction of aBaroque garden style in Sweden dates to this decade, with the encouragement of progressive Francophil architects likeNicodemus Tessin the Elder andJean De la Vallée , with whom Mollet had worked in Holland, together with the eager commissions from Swedish nobles that Mollet received. The results are documented inErik Dahlbergh 's topographical "Suecia antiqua et hodierna". Though Mollet left Sweden in1653 , his son Jean Mollet remained in Sweden for the rest of his life, and Médard Gue, one of André Mollet's original French assistants, assumed an independent role in Swedish gardening.Soon André Mollet was in
London , whence he received a passport to travel abroad once more in1653 . With theEnglish Restoration in1660 , conditions for ambitious garden-building were once more propitious, and André Mollet was listed as a royal gardener, gardener-in-chief forSt. James's Park . An English edition of "Le Jardin de plaisir" appeared in London in1670 , as "The Pleasure Garden."André Mollet's brother, the younger Claude Mollet, was passed over in favour of
André Le Nôtre as chief gardener at thePalace of the Tuileries , in1649 .ee also
Mollet's French predecessors in the art of gardening:
*Charles Estienne
*Jean Liebault
*Olivier de Serres
*Claude Mollet
*Jacques Boyceau Notes
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.
* [http://www.kb.se/suecia/om.htm Anne Scherman, "Erik Dahlbergh,"Suecia antiqua et hodierna"] (in Swedish)
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