THE MARQUISE OF POMPADOUR AND THE MARQUIS OF DE MARIGNY

1

Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour (1721–64), played an important role in the development of the visual and decorative arts. Because of her privileged access to King Louis XV as his official mistress, however, the marquise profoundly influenced the course of architecture during the second half of the eighteenth century.

2

Working for the interests of her family, she convinced Louis XV to appoint Charles-François Lenormant de Tournehem, her protector, to the directorship of the Bâtiments du Roi. She then groomed her younger brother Abel-François Poisson de Vandières (1727–81) to replace Tournehem. A two-year tour of Italy concluded Vandières’s training. Under the supervision of Charles-Nicolas Cochin, Jean-Bernard Leblanc and Jacques-Germain Soufflot, he studied the urbanism of Turin, compiled plans of recent Italian theatres, and surveyed the Greek ruins at Paestum. His mentors imprinted on their pupil their project to ‘regenerate’ French art after its purported decadence blamed on the Rococo (early eighteenth-century decorative style known for its fanciful organic forms), best represented by Germain Boffrand’s exuberant Salon de la Princesse at the Palais de Soubise in Paris (1739; Key Buildings, p. xxx, fig. 60.24).

3

At the helm of the Bâtiments in 1751, Vandières – who was ennobled in 1754 as Marquis de Marigny and then again in 1774 as Marquis de Menars – piloted emblematic royal projects. He toiled to restore the prestige of the crown with the construction of the École Militaire (1751–82) and the Place Louis-XV (1748–75; Key Buildings, p. xxx, fig. 60.2) in Paris, both by the First Architect of the King, Ange-Jacques Gabriel. The marquis also promoted young talent. To Gabriel’s discontent, he brought in Soufflot to rehabilitate the Louvre Palace (1755–58; Key Buildings, p. xxx, fig. 60.14), left incomplete after the departure of Louis XIV for Versailles. He also entrusted Soufflot with the prestigious commission for a new Abbey Church of Sainte Geneviève (1755–91; altered 1791–1818; Key Buildings, p. xxx, fig. 60.23) in Paris. The marquis selected two young architects, Marie-Joseph Peyre and Charles De Wailly, for a new theatre in Paris to house the royal theatre company, the Comédie-Française. Their design became the model for theatres as civic monuments throughout France, including the Théâtre Graslin in Nantes (1780–88, fig. 60.25) and the Grand Théâtre in Bordeaux (1773–80; Key Buildings, p. xxx, fig. 60.41). Thanks to his enlightened artistic policy, the Marquis de Marigny led the crown to build the most innovative buildings of late eighteenth-century France.