The Louvre Colonnade is the easternmost façade of the Palais du Louvre in Paris. It has been celebrated as the foremost masterpiece of French Architectural Classicism since its construction, mostly between 1667 and 1674. The design, dominated by two loggias with trabeated colonnades of coupled giant columns, was created by a committee of three, the Petit Conseil, consisting of Louis Le Vau, Charles Le Brun, and Claude Perrault. Louis Le Vau's brother, François Le Vau, also contributed. Cast in a restrained classicizing baroque manner, it interprets rules laid down by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius, whose works Perrault translated into French (1673). Its flat-roofline design, previously associated with Italy and unprecedented in France, was immensely influential. Description Little that could be called Baroque can be identified in the Colonnade's cool classicism that looks back to the 16th century. The use of one central and two terminal pavilions is typically French, while the main entrance, a pedimented avant-corps, resembles a triumphal arch or temple front. The simple character of the ground floor basement sets off the paired Corinthian columns, modeled strictly according to Vitruvius, against a shadowed void. This scheme of coupled columns on a high podium goes back as far as Bramante's House of Raphael (1512). The effect of the Colonnade has been likened to that of an ancient Roman temple whose elevations have "been flattened, as it were, into a single plane." Crowned by an uncompromising Italian balustrade along its distinctly non-French flat roof, the whole ensemble represents a ground-breaking departure in French architecture. History of the design Louis Le Vau, the King's First Architect at the time of the death of Cardinal Mazarin in 1661, completed the south wing of the Louvre's Cour Carrée in 1663. He had already started designing the east wing around 1659 and by late 1663 began laying the foundation. On 1 January 1664, Jean-Baptiste Colbert purchased the post of Surintendant des Bâtiments du Roi from Antoine de Ratabon and suddenly halted all work on the east wing. He invited other French architects to submit designs, in effect starting a competition. He later extended his invitation to four Roman architects, including Pietro da Cortona and Gian Lorenzo Bernini, and sent them Le Vau's designs. Among the French projects submitted at that time were two of special interest: one (lost) shown anonymously by Claude Perrault, a physician and scientist, and one by François Le Vau,