THE STYLE OF LOUIS XV. 



403 



treatment is reversed, 

 for the concavity is con- 

 fined to the lower part, 

 while the upper consists 

 of a feature of circular 

 plan with angle but- 

 tresses. On these stand 

 bescrolled clocks 

 guarded by fluttering 

 angels with garments 

 blown about by the 

 wind. Meissonnier also 

 proposed to touch up 

 the older parts of St 

 Sulpice into harmony 

 with this facade, by 

 adding curvilinear dor- 

 mers to the transepts 

 at the foot of a roof 

 shaped like a great wave 

 surging up, with a ges- 

 ticulating angel on its 

 crest, to a florid open 

 lantern over the inter- 

 section. 



OTHER FACADES. 

 Neither this nor any 

 building of so pro- 

 nounced a rococo char- 

 acter was carried out, 

 and the front of the 



aisleless church of St Louis du Louvre was the nearest approach to it. 

 It was built (1740) by Thomas Germain, more celebrated as a goldsmith 

 and sculptor than as an architect, to replace the old Gothic church of 

 St Thomas du Louvre which had collapsed the year before during 

 mass on the heads of the canons, killing seven of them. The whole 

 of its front was convex, but in the lower storey the curve swung out 

 again into concave wings. 



The cathedral of St Louis at Versailles (1743-54), where, as at 

 St Sulpice, the tower was in the line of the chapels, by Jacques 

 Hardouin Mansart de Sagonne, follows all the established practices of 

 plan and arrangement, and is distinguished from the ruck only by its 

 happy proportions. The architect closely followed his grandfather's 

 work at Notre Dame in the same town, even to the squat proportions 



387. PARIS : DESIGN FOR FACADE OF ST SULPICE, 

 BY J. A. MEISSONNIER (1726). No SCALE, 



