Étienne Dupérac

Remains of the Baths of Constantine in Rome, etching by Dupérac (c. 1575)

Étienne Dupérac (or du Pérac) (–March 1604) was a French architect, painter, engraver, and garden designer. He is most well known for his topographical studies of Rome and its ruins in the late 16th century.

Rome Dupérac was born in Bordeaux and arrived in Rome in 1550, where he became a skilled designer and engraver. and a book of forty engravings of Roman monuments and antiquities, I vestigi dell'antichità di Roma (Rome, 1575). the text that must have accompanied the drawings has not survived, and Dupérac's authorship has been called into question. The book is part of the collection of the Morgan Library & Museum in New York (acc. no. MS M.1106).

Dupérac's engravings of modern Rome, such as the carrousel in the Cortile del Belvedere or his bird's-eye view of the Villa d'Este,

France On his return to France by 1578, Dupérac was commissioned to paint the Cabinet des Bains at the Château de Fontainebleau, and may have designed some of the gardens. He has also been credited with the design of the gardens at Anet, as architect to the duke of Aumale. As architect to Henri IV beginning in 1595, he may have designed the terraced gardens at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and was engaged in work at the Tuileries in Paris .