French architects and sculptors of the XVIIIth century (1900) (14764661845)

Sainte Geneviève (Panthéon)
Identifier: frencharchitects00dilk (find matches)
Title: French architects and sculptors of the XVIIIth century
Year: 1900 (1900s)
Authors: Dilke, Emilia Francis Strong, Lady, 1840-1904
Subjects: Architects Sculpture, French Sculptors
Publisher: London, G. Bell and sons
Contributing Library: Getty Research Institute
Digitizing Sponsor: Getty Research Institute



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d close to the ancient abbey. The plan, withwhich we are all familiar, was that of a Greek cross, three hundredand forty feet long, from the centre of which springs the great domeresting on four rectangular piers, which attracted criticism from the 1 Jules-Robert, son of Robert de Cotte. Marais calls him un petit brutal, andadds that he married (as his second wife) one of the two daughters of the Master ofthe Mint, de Launay, who died 1727, leaving them millions. 2 The lead once given by the Court was promptly followed by society. At theSalon of 1761 de Machy exhibited a painting commissioned by de la Live de Jully,of Linterieur de la nouvelle Eglise de Sainte Genevieve, dapres les projets deM. Soufflot. 8 Grimm, C. L., 15 Oft., 1764. Le Roy took occasion to publish his Histoirede la disposition et des formes differentes que les Chretiens ont donn£es a leurs templesdepuis le temps de Constantin-le-Grand jusqua nous. * This was destroyed in 1803. In gin. Pantheon, Mon. rel., t. ii. 36
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first as being too slight for safety. On May 6th, 1770, we are told, Theby Bachaumont, that the new church of St. Genevieve does not make classicprogress from lack of funds, and, in the meantime, the critics are busy Revival,finding fault. Patte, then architect to the Prince de Deux Ponts,had just then published a Memoire, in which he asserts that thepiers of the new church cannot possibly carry the cupola.1 Inthis pamphlet he describes those of St. Peters and the Invalides,which are of the same proportion as those of St. Genevieve, thoughcarrying in each instance a dome of inferior size. Soufflot repliedthat by the construction of his cupola he should demonstrate thepossibility of the feat, and the public set down Patte as an im-pudent fellow,2 who had never produced anything—Je hais,writes Grimm, cette vermine malfaisante —and compared him,to bis disadvantage, with Soufflot, already favourably known bythe dome which he had constructed at Lyons. The great church of which the gene