14 FEMALE ARCHITECTURAL PATRONAGE IN EIGHTEENTH- CENTURY FRANCE Claire Ollagnier Though the presence of women on the architectural scene has been recognized, it remains poorly understood in all its facets. Yet from queen—or king’s mistress—to actress, noblewoman to petit bourgeois, women have played a key role in both architectural patronage and the evolution of tastes and ways of life. In France, female patronage provides a means not only of understanding the role played by women under the Ancien Régime, but also of examining the various criteria that determined how dwellings were laid out. Yet, to this day art historians have not yet studied the importance and influence of women in the modern world of domestic architecture. A recent analysis of aristocratic buildings in Paris in the first half of the eighteenth century found that, contrary to the theoretical precepts of the time, dis- tinctions between the living spaces of men and women in hôtels familiaux were actually of little importance. 1 This hypothesis contradicts beliefs previously held to be true. Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, for example, which was pub- lished in the mid-1700s, stated that an appartement de commodité intended for woman’s use contained a few additional rooms owing to the number of servants typically in their service, extra wardrobes, special dressing rooms, and so on. 2 Their observation suggested that the lifestyles adopted by women required specific archi- tectural arrangements. Just a few decades later Nicolas Le Camus de Mézières (1780) confirmed the existence of areas seemingly dedicated to women, indicating in his Le Génie de l’architecture ou l’analogie de cet art avec nos sensations that bedrooms had a number of accessories as they required a special wardrobe, a dressing room, a The Companions to the History of Architecture, Volume II, Eighteenth-Century Architecture, Edited by Caroline van Eck and Sigrid de Jong. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. UNCORRECTED PROOFS