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
A much larger and more prominent church than any of Godde’s or Molinos’s
is Notre-Dame-de-Lorette in the Rue de Chateaudun, one of the few really
distinguished products of this dull period. It was the result of a
competition held in 1822 which was won by Lebas, Brongniart’s
collaborator on the Bourse (Plate 18B). This five-aisled edifice was
built at very great expense in 1823-36 and sumptuously decorated with
murals that added as much as a sixth to the total cost. The basic model
is again the Early Christian basilica but here interpreted in thoroughly
Classical terms, with a tall temple portico rivalling those of London at
the front and no vaults or arches except at the east end. Evidence of a
certain eclecticism is the rich coffering of the ceiling in panels
alternately square and cruciform; so also is the introduction of a domed
chancel before the apse. Both features are certainly of _cinquecento_
inspiration.
To modern eyes, attuned to the late fifth-and sixth-century basilicas
of Ravenna, Notre-Dame-de-Lorette certainly has a far less Early
Christian air than Ziebland’s Bonifazius Basilika in Munich of the
next decade; but doubtless the great Imperial basilicas of Rome of the
fourth and early fifth centuries, notably Santa Maria Maggiore with
its trabeated nave colonnade, were originally something like it. In
any case, Lebas’s church is a highly typical monument of Romantic
Classicism and a major one. In France, as elsewhere, the accepted
range of precedent now extended well beyond Greek and Roman antiquity
to include Italian models of fifth- and of sixteenth-century date, if
very little from the centuries between. Even before the construction
of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, the Belgian-born P.-J. Sandrié and Jacob
Silveyra (1785-?) in building a big Parisian synagogue in the Rue
Notre-Dame-de-Nazareth in 1819-20 had also followed rather closely the
basilican formula.
The most important Parisian church of the second quarter of the century,
Saint-Vincent-de-Paul off the Rue Lafayette, is also a five-aisled
classical basilica (Plate 19). This was begun in 1824 by Lepère, but
work was soon suspended. When it was carried to completion in 1831-44
Lepère’s son-in-law J.-I. Hittorff (1792-1867) took over, and he has
generally received credit for the whole job. In utilizing a rising site,
which required terraces and flights of steps in front, and in providing
two towers, Lepère and Hittorff gave their church more prominence and a
richer, if rather clumsily organized, three-dimensional interest.[61]
Hittorff’s archaeological studies in Sicily had made him an enthusiast
for architectural polychromy, and to contemporaries the great novelty
about Saint-Vincent-de-Paul was the proposal to use enamelled lava
plaques on the exterior.[62]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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