Pavillon de Marsan



The Pavillon de Marsan or Marsan Pavilion was built in the 1660s as the northern end of the Tuileries Palace in Paris, and reconstructed in the 1870s after the Tuileries burned down at the end of the Paris Commune. Following the completion of the joining of the Louvre and the Tuileries in the 1850s and the demolition of the Tuileries' remains in the early 1880s, it is now the northwestern tip of the Louvre Palace. Since 1897 it has been part of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, a separate institution from the Louvre.

History
The pavilion was originally built in 1666, based on a design by Louis Le Vau. The exterior was similar to that of its southern pendant, the Pavillon de Flore. On its south side, the Pavillon de Marsan was connected to Le Vau's pavilion for the stage of the Théâtre des Tuileries, completed in 1661. On the Pavillon de Marsan's east side, Le Vau constructed the first bay of the North Wing, heading toward the Louvre. The south façade of the North Wing replicated the courtyard façade of its southern pendant, the Grande Galerie; it remained a one-bay stub until the wing was extended by Percier and Fontaine in 1807–1812. For each of these façades Le Vau employed the giant order, which had first been used over sixty years earlier by Henry IV's architect(s) for the Pavillon de Flore, the Petite Galerie of the Tuileries and the western section of the Grande Galerie.

A project to locate the Cour des Comptes in the Pavillon de Marsan was stillborn, even though the building was used in the late 19th century to store archives of that institution. In 1897 the Pavillon and Aile de Marsan were eventually given over to the Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs, which remodeled it from 1898 to 1905 under designs by Gaston Redon assisted by Paul Lorain. The Arts Décoratifs Library opened in 1904 and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs opened in May 1905.

Decoration
The pavilion is adorned with abundant architectural sculpture, as with other parts of Lefuel's work at the Louvre. An unusual feature is the use of copper for the wings of an allegorical winged lion above the southern pediment facing the Carrousel Garden, created by Théodore-Charles Gruyère in 1878. Further east are a series of eight pediments with allegorical sculptures, namely Astronomy (by Gabriel Thomas); Accounting (above Science and Art, by Pierre-Jules Cavelier); Architecture (above Masonry and Ironwork, by Louis-Ernest Barrias); Plenty (above Wheat Harvest and Grape Harvest, by Mathurin Moreau); Legislation (above Charlemagne and Moses, by Hélène Bertaux); the birth of Venus (above Sea and Wind, by Henri-Charles Maniglier); unidentified theme (above Mercury and Hercules, by Amédée Donatien Doublemard); and Peace (by Frédéric-Louis-Désiré Bogino).