In a similar way to
the preceding
century, the
churches of the
seventeenth
and eighteenth
centuries have a
coldness quite
different from the
German and Flemish
Baroque or the
Italian. When the
Renaissance style
first appeared in
the early sixteenth
century, there was
no great need for
new church building,
the country being so
well endowed from
the Gothic
centuries.
St-Étienne-du-Mont
(1517-1620) and
St-Eustache
(1532-89), both in
Paris, show how old
forms persisted with
only an overlay of
the new style.
It is with the
Jesuits in the
seventeenth century
that the Church
embraced the new
style to combat the
forces of rational
disbelief. In Paris
the churches of the Sorbonne
(1653) and Val-de-Grâce
(1645) exemplify
this, as do a good
number of other
grandiose churches
in the Baroque
style, through Les
Invalides at the
end of the
seventeenth century
to the Panthéon
of the late
eighteenth century.
Here is the Church
triumphant, rather
than the state, but
no more beguiling.
The architect of
Les Invalides was Jules
Hardouin Mansart
, a product of the
academy, who also
greatly extended the
palace of Versailles
and so created the
Cinemascope view of
France with that
seemingly endless
horizon of royalty.
As an antidote to
this pomposity, the Petit
Trianon at
Versailles is as
refreshing now as it
was to Louis XV, who
had it built in 1762
as a place of escape
for his mistress.
And even more so is
this true of that
other pearl formed
of the grit of
boredom in the
enclosed world of
Versailles - La
Petite Ferme,
where
Marie-Antoinette
played at being a
milkmaid, which
epitomizes the
Arcadian and
"picturesque"
fantasy of the
painters Boucher and
Fragonard.
The lightness and
charm that was
undermining official
grandeur with
Arcadian fancies and
Rococo
decoration was,
however, snuffed out
by the Revolution.
There is no real
Revolutionary
architecture, as the
necessity of order
and authority soon
asserted itself and
an autocracy every
bit as absolute
returned with Napoléon,
drawing on the old
grand manner but
with a stronger
trace of the stern
old Roman. One
architect, Claude
Ledoux , was
highly original and
influential, both in
England and Germany.
And the visionary
millennialist Boullée
could also be said
to be a child of
Revolutionary times,
though it is likely
that such men were
inspired as much by
the rediscovered
plainness of the
Greek Doric order as
by radical politics.
In Paris it was
not the democratic
Doric but the
imperial Corinthian
order that
re-emerged
triumphant in the
church of the Madeleine
(1806) and, with the
Arc de Triomphe
like some colossal
paperweight,
reimposed the
authority of
academic
architecture in
contrast to the
fancy-dress
architecture of
contemporary Regency
England.
