Biography

French Jesuit priest and architect. Entering the novitiate of the Society of Jesus in 1611, he studied in Rouen and La Flèche, was ordained a priest in 1621 and studied theology in Paris (1621-22). He had also taught grammar at Rennes (1615-18) and mathematics at La Flèche (1618-21). He worked first as an architect at the Jesuit college in Rouen, where from 1622 to 1629 he was praefectus fabricae; then as architectus at the college in Rennes, where he supervised the building works; at the college of Orléans, for which he provided plans in 1632; and, above all, at the Jesuit church in Paris, Saint-Louis (now Saint-Paul-et-Saint-Louis). In plans for the latter he found himself in competition with Étienne Martellange. Both sets of plans were submitted to Rome; those by Martellange were preferred, and he began work on the church in 1627. Two years later, however, the Father Provincial brought in Derand, who found the building erected to a height of two metres. He finished it in 1641, including the vaults and the great façade on the Rue Saint-Antoine, the first stone of which was laid in 1634.

Derand's style is very different from the architectural propriety sought by Martellange: it is Baroque in its expressiveness, its use of strong chiaroscuro and its abundance of sculptural decoration. The façade of Saint-Paul-et-Saint-Louis, visibly inspired by that of Saint-Gervais by Salomon de Brosse (1616), is a great stone screen, scarcely pierced by openings, in which attention is focused on its articulation of columns and niches.

Derand was a theoretician of stereotomy and in 1643 published a treatise on it, which was much used. An album of drawings of designs for doors, windows and chimneypieces (Paris, Louvre), called the 'Album Derand' on the strength of an inscription Der or Dev, has been attributed to him, though probably erroneously.