has also been credited with the design of the (begun 1660) for Nicolas Lambert (who in 1644 had inherited from his brother Jean-Baptiste the Hôtel Lambert, built by Louis Le Vau in 1640–1644). At some point in this part of his career, François Le Vau visited Rome, probably before 1662–1663, when he joined the office of Bridges and Roads. Work for Colbert In 1662, François Le Vau began to work in the royal office of the Ponts et Chaussées (Bridges and Roads) under Louis XIV's minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert. This work continued until 1673. Project for the east façade of the Louvre Around the end of 1662, Colbert asked François Le Vau to prepare a design for the east facade of the Louvre, which François offered to present to Colbert in a letter of 4 December 1664. A large presentation drawing (Nationalmuseum, Stockholm; undated) and several engravings of designs by François, one by Isaac Durant and several by Claude Olry de Loriande, have been identified by several architectural historians as belonging to the project described in the letter of December 1664. The design is similar to the scheme that was eventually adopted in many important respects, in particular a trabeated, free-standing colonnade of coupled columns raised above the ground floor. The drawing shows two alternatives for an attic story (omitted as executed), with arched windows on the left (matching those of Pierre Lescot's Pavillon du Roi) and rectangular windows on the right. The dating of François Le Vau's Louvre project to 1662–1664 has been disputed by some authors, who suggest it was actually created sometime after 14 May 1667, when Louis XIV selected the colonnaded design proposed to him by the Petit Conseil, but before the decision to double the width of the south wing in the spring of 1668. Claude Perrault's brother Charles Perrault claimed in his memoirs that Claude was the sole author of the colonnade design. In 1670, when much of the facade was substantially completed, Olry de Loriande published a poem, Le superbe dessein du Louvre, in which, according to the architectural historian Robert W. Berger, he credits François Le Vau with the design. It begins with the following lines: O Palace, the most attractive in the universe, True miracle of art, worthy of the most beautiful verses, Since the profound wisdom of the great Colbert Destines you to be a masterpiece of the world, And since