412 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 



SERVANDONY. The style of Louis XVI. was in a large measure 

 the creation of two architects, Jean Nicolas Servandony (1695-1766), 

 and Jacques Germain Soufflot (1714-80), both citizens of Lyons, a city 

 always in close contact with Italian thought, 



When Servandony went as a young man to Florence to study under 

 Giovanni Paolo Panini, a painter of the Campagna and of the Roman 

 ruins, and afterwards to Rome itself, he fell under the influence of 

 the new Italian Classicism. Returning to France in 1724, he, soon 

 after, became the designer of the decorations of the Paris Opera. An 

 enthusiasm for ancient art inspired his work there, as well as that of 

 his master Panini, who was employed to design the decorations in 

 honour of the birth of the Dauphin (1729). The uncompromising 

 simplicity and lofty nobility of their Roman temples and porticoes 

 could not fail to strike eyes accustomed to twirls and flourishes and 

 elaborate prettiness, as something altogether new. It was a fresh 

 breeze from the garden bursting in on the oppressive atmosphere of 

 a conservatory. The admiration excited, if not yet very widespread, 

 was sufficient to secure the first prize in the competition held for the 

 facade of St Sulpice in 1733 for Servandony's design (see pp. 454-6), 

 which was almost as far removed from the academic tradition, by its 

 departure from established methods of composition, as it was from the 

 rococo by its virile simplicity and absence of affectation. Within the 

 same decade as this facade, the rising power of the classical reaction 

 was exhibited in several important works, among which are the Fontaine 

 de Grenelle (Fig. 393) by the sculptor Edme Bouchardon (1739), and 

 the new buildings of the Hotel-Dieu at Lyons by Soufflot (1737). 

 Servandony himself seems to have carried out no other work of 

 importance. The staircase in straight flights, which he added to the 

 Hotel d'Auvergne by L' Assurance, was in strong contrast to the pre- 

 valent practice of his day, and the design he submitted in the com- 

 petition for the " Place pour le Roi " had a more Roman character 

 than the rest. But he worked as much on theatrical and other 

 temporary decorations as on architecture, and being of a roving 

 disposition was only fitfully in practice in Paris. 



J. A. GABRIEL AND J. G. SOUFFLOT. The death of Boffrand and 

 most of the chief exponents of the rococo manner occurring before or soon 

 after 1750, the leading positions in the profession were left to Jacques 

 Ange Gabriel and Soufflot, who were both by this time well advanced 

 in life, and had therefore grown to manhood during the height of the 

 rococo movement. Their works are the most important in the new 

 style, but the difference in their methods is typical of the tendencies 

 of the day. This difference is largely accounted for by their circum- 

 stances. Gabriel was the descendant of a long line of architects, and the 

 representative of a family long connected with the Academy and the 



