Architecture : $b nineteenth and twentieth centuriesHitchcock, Henry-Russell
History
Architecture : $b nineteenth and twentieth centuries
Hitchcock, Henry-Russell
Architecture, Modern -- 19th century; Architecture, Modern -- 20th century
To restore the strength of the church, as the piety of the later
Bourbons demanded, priests had to be trained in quantity. The next
significant work undertaken in Paris after the Chapelle Expiatoire was
the Séminaire Saint-Sulpice in the Place St Sulpice by É.-H. Godde
(1781-1869); this was begun in 1820 and completed in 1838. So flat and
cold are its façades that the observer may readily fail to note that the
design somewhat approaches, perhaps unconsciously, the _quattrocento_
Florentine. However, it quite lacks the archaeological character of
Klenze’s Königsbau in Munich, designed only a few years later, or the
vigour and assurance of Wimmel & Forsmann’s Johanneum in Hamburg. In
fact, of course, it derives almost directly from Durand and not from any
careful study of Grandjean de Montigny’s _Architecture toscane_.
Somewhat more definitely Early Renaissance in detail are the Baths at
Mont d’Or, built by L.-C.-F. Ledru (1771-1861), a pupil of Durand, in
1822, and the Barracks in the Rue Mouffetard in Paris as extended in
1827 by Charles Rohault de Fleury (1801-75). Both exploit a rusticated
Tuscan mode somewhat as Klenze was doing in Munich, but much less
archaeologically.
Shortly after the Séminaire, Godde undertook several Paris churches.
Saint-Pierre-du-Gros-Caillou in the Rue St Dominique of 1822-3 replaced
a church destroyed in the Revolution. Finer and considerably larger is
Saint-Denis-du-Saint-Sacrament in the Rue de Turenne, built in 1823-35.
Both are barrel-vaulted basilicas in the tradition of Chalgrin’s
Saint-Philippe-du-Roule; the latter is rather elegant in its dry
severity, the former confused by various later additions behind the
altar. Notre-Dame-de-Bonne-Nouvelle of 1823-30 is smaller and more
modest, as are also two nearly contemporary Paris churches by A.-I.
Molinos (1795-1850), Saint-Jean-Baptiste in Neuilly of 1827-31 and
Sainte-Marie-des-Batignolles in the Place du Dr Félix Lobligeois in
Paris of 1828-9. All these churches lack externally the Grecian grandeur
of scale of the London churches of the period built by the Inwoods and
others (see Chapter 4), but the basilican plan provides interiors that
are considerably more interesting than the galleried halls with which
most English architects were satisfied at this time. Of course, such a
highly original interior as that of Soane’s St Peter’s, Walworth, of
1822 is in a different class altogether.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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