Jean-Baptiste de La Quintinie (1 March 1626 – 11 November 1688) was a French lawyer,

gardener A gardener is someone who practices gardening, either professionally or as a hobby. Description A gardener is any person involved in gardening, arguably the oldest occupation, from the hobbyist in a residential garden, the home-owner suppleme ...

and

agronomist An agriculturist, agriculturalist, agrologist, or agronomist (abbreviated as agr.), is a professional in the science, practice, and management of agriculture and agribusiness. It is a regulated profession in Canada, India, the Philippines, the ...

who served under

Louis XIV , house = Bourbon , father = Louis XIII , mother = Anne of Austria , birth_date = , birth_place = Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France , death_date = , death_place = Palace of Vers ...

. Named director of the royal fruit and vegetable gardens by the king in 1670, he created between 1678 and 1683 the

Potager du roi The ''Potager du roi'' (), near the Palace of Versailles, produced fresh vegetables and fruits for the table of the court of Louis XIV. It was created between 1678 and 1683 by Jean-Baptiste de La Quintinie, the director of the royal fruit and ...

("King's vegetable garden") near the

Palace of Versailles The Palace of Versailles ( ; french: Château de Versailles ) is a former royal residence built by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, Yvelines, Versailles, about west of Paris, France. The palace is owned by the French Republic and since 19 ...

Biography

Jean-Baptiste de La Quintinie was born on 1 March 1626, in

Chabanais Chabanais (; oc, Chabanès) is a commune in the Charente department in southwestern France. Geography The river Vienne passes through Chabanais. The village is located in the Rochechouart impact structure. The ancient asteroid impact crater ...

, in the

Charente Charente (; Saintongese: ''Chérente''; oc, Charanta ) is a department in the administrative region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine, south western France. It is named after the river Charente, the most important and longest river in the department, an ...

, now part of the

Nouvelle-Aquitaine Nouvelle-Aquitaine (; oc, Nòva Aquitània or ; eu, Akitania Berria; Poitevin-Saintongeais: ''Novéle-Aguiéne'') is the largest administrative region in France, spanning the west and southwest of the mainland. The region was created by t ...

.He was the second of the three sons of Guillaume de La Quintinie, a tax prosecutor, and Françoise Morand, a daughter of a surgeon family, . He studied at the

Jesuit , image = Ihs-logo.svg , image_size = 175px , caption = ChristogramOfficial seal of the Jesuits , abbreviation = SJ , nickname = Jesuits , formation = , founders ...

college of

Poitiers Poitiers (, , , ; Poitevin: ''Poetàe'') is a city on the River Clain in west-central France. It is a commune and the capital of the Vienne department and the historical centre of Poitou. In 2017 it had a population of 88,291. Its agglomerat ...

. Destined for a legal career, he continued his education at the Faculty of Law of the same town. He then left his native region for Paris where he became a lawyer at the Parliament.

In the French capital, he stood out for his writing skills. This earned him the task of instructing the only son of Jean Tambonneau, president of the general accounting office. He accompanied son on a trip to Italy, impressed by the gardens he visited there, he became fascinated by horticulture. Shortly after his return from Italy, Jean Baptiste de la Quintinie gave up his legal activities to devote himself fully to gardening. He began to read the ancient authors dealing with

agronomy Agronomy is the science and technology of producing and using plants by agriculture for food, fuel, fiber, chemicals, recreation, or land conservation. Agronomy has come to include research of plant genetics, plant physiology, meteorology, and ...

, such as

Columella Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella (; Arabic: , 4 – ) was a prominent writer on agriculture in the Roman Empire. His ' in twelve volumes has been completely preserved and forms an important source on Roman agriculture, together with the wo ...

Varro Marcus Terentius Varro (; 116–27 BC) was a Roman polymath and a prolific author. He is regarded as ancient Rome's greatest scholar, and was described by Petrarch as "the third great light of Rome" (after Vergil and Cicero). He is sometimes calle ...

Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: t ...

Pliny the Elder Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/2479), called Pliny the Elder (), was a Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic '' ...

and to practice in the gardens of the Hôtel Tambonneau. Potager du Roi

He then visited England twice and earned the esteem of

King James II James VII and II (14 October 1633 16 September 1701) was King of England and King of Ireland as James II, and King of Scotland as James VII from the death of his elder brother, Charles II, on 6 February 1685. He was deposed in the Glorious Re ...

, who offered him the job of managing his gardens. The Frenchman declined the offer, preferring to return to his home country. In 1662, La Quintinie married Marguerite Joubert, with whom he had three sons; Jean, Michel, and Gabriel. He then acquired skills and a reputation for creating magnificent gardens that permitted him to work for such notables as

Louis II de Bourbon-Condé Louis may refer to: * Louis (coin) * Louis (given name), origin and several individuals with this name * Louis (surname) * Louis (singer), Serbian singer * HMS ''Louis'', two ships of the Royal Navy See also Derived or associated terms * Lewis (d ...

Chantilly Chantilly may refer to: Places France *Chantilly, Oise, a city located in the Oise department **US Chantilly, a football club *Château de Chantilly, a historic château located in the town of Chantilly United States * Chantilly, Missou ...

Jean-Baptiste Colbert Jean-Baptiste Colbert (; 29 August 1619 – 6 September 1683) was a French statesman who served as First Minister of State from 1661 until his death in 1683 under the rule of King Louis XIV. His lasting impact on the organization of the countr ...

in Sceaux and

Nicolas Fouquet Nicolas Fouquet, marquis de Belle-Île, vicomte de Melun et Vaux (27 January 1615 – 23 March 1680) was the Superintendent of Finances in France from 1653 until 1661 under King Louis XIV. He had a glittering career, and acquired enormous wealth ...

Vaux-le-Vicomte The Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte (English: Palace of Vaux-le-Vicomte) is a Baroque French château located in Maincy, near Melun, southeast of Paris in the Seine-et-Marne department of Île-de-France. Built between 1658 and 1661 for Nicolas Fo ...

and to collaborate with

André Le Nôtre André Le Nôtre (; 12 March 1613 – 15 September 1700), originally rendered as André Le Nostre, was a French landscape architect and the principal gardener of King Louis XIV of France. He was the landscape architect who designed the gar ...

Charles Le Brun Charles Le Brun (baptised 24 February 1619 – 12 February 1690) was a French painter, physiognomist, art theorist, and a director of several art schools of his time. As court painter to Louis XIV, who declared him "the greatest French artist of ...

and

Louis Le Vau Louis Le Vau (1612 – 11 October 1670) was a French Baroque architect, who worked for Louis XIV of France. He was an architect that helped develop the French Classical style in the 17th Century.''Encyclopedia of World Biography''"Louis Le Vau", ...

. Following the disgrace of the superintendent of finance (

) in 1661, Louis XIV gave him the job of designing and managing the

Versailles The Palace of Versailles ( ; french: Château de Versailles ) is a former royal residence built by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, about west of Paris, France. The palace is owned by the French Republic and since 1995 has been managed, u ...

vegetable garden. Later in 1670, the king created for him the title of Director of the royal fruit and vegetable gardens. Between 1678 and 1683, he designed and built the

. The location was chosen for its proximity to the Palace of Versailles and was referred to as the 'stinking pond', referring to a parcel that was so wet as to not be suitable for most types of gardening. Once the nine-hectare site had been drained and filled in,^:9 it was divided into a central square and 29 enclosed gardens. Blason de Jean-Baptiste de la Quintinye

Built with the objective of supplying the tables of the royal court with fresh produce, the

provided several tons of fruit and vegetables each year. The garden also became a site for horticultural experiments. To satisfy the king's desires, Jean Baptiste de La Quintinie developed cultivation techniques for off-season production –

strawberries The garden strawberry (or simply strawberry; ''Fragaria × ananassa'') is a widely grown hybrid species of the genus '' Fragaria'', collectively known as the strawberries, which are cultivated worldwide for their fruit. The fruit is widely ap ...

at the end of March,^:11,

asparagus Asparagus, or garden asparagus, folk name sparrow grass, scientific name ''Asparagus officinalis'', is a perennial flowering plant species in the genus ''Asparagus''. Its young shoots are used as a spring vegetable. It was once classified in ...

in winter or lettuce in December. He also contributes to the improvement of the cultivation of fruit trees, particularly their

pruning Pruning is a horticultural, arboricultural, and silvicultural practice involving the selective removal of certain parts of a plant, such as branches, buds, or roots. The practice entails the ''targeted'' removal of diseased, damaged, dead, ...

, an activity that the king enjoyed practising himself. In 1687 he was annobled by Louis XIV and chose a chevron azure with two stars and a tree as his coat of arms., Jean Baptiste de La Quintinie died on 11 November 1688 in Versailles. A few days after, Louis XIV said to his wife, "Madame, we have suffered a great loss that we can never repair".

Gardening manual

In 1690, his second son Michel de La Quintinie supervised the posthumous publication of ''Instruction pour les jardins fruitiers et potagers, avec un Traité des orangers, suivi de quelques réflexions sur l'agriculture ("''Instruction for fruit and vegetable gardens, with a treatise on orange trees, followed by some thoughts on agriculture"'').'' The work was published in two volumes by Editions Claude Barbin.

References

Bibliography

Garrigue, Dominique (2001). Jardin et jardinier de Versailles au grand siècle. Edition Champs Vallon ISBN 2876733374 Menapace, Luc (2019). Jean de La Quintinie, créateur du Potager du roi, ''Le blog de Gallica'', 6 novembre 2019 https://gallica.bnf.fr/blog/06112019/jean-de-la-quintinie-createur-du-potager-du-roi?mode=desktop Perrault, Charles (1697–1700). ''Les hommes illustres. Tome 2 / qui ont paru en France pendant ce siècle, avec leurs portraits au naturel'' (in Old French). pp. 84–85.http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb438942897 {{DEFAULTSORT:La Quintinie, Jean-Baptiste de 1626 births 1688 deaths French gardeners Court of Louis XIV Palace of Versailles People from Charente University of Poitiers alumni