Angel-Jacques Gabriel

Angel-Jacques Gabriel is a French architect (First architect of the King) born with Paris the October 23rd 1698 and dead the January 4th 1782.

Biography

Angel-Jacques Gabriel is the son of the architect Jacques V Gabriel, who in particular constructed the hotel Peyrenc de Moras says also Biron (current Musée Rodin), and the grandson of the architect Jacques IV Gabriel.

Gabriel in Versailles

As of 1730, Angel-Jacques Gabriel replaces Robert de Cotte, almost blind, as architect of the Château of Versailles on behalf of the Building industries of the King. In 1742, he becomes First Architect of the King. He enjoys then the full confidence of Louis XV.

With the ornementist Jacques Verberckt, it creates the decoration of Versailles of the years 1730 - 1760, characterized by the recourse to raised white skirtings of gold, laid out in narrow panels occupying all the height of the plinth (with sometimes a very low ogee moulding) with the cornice, the thinning down even the removal of the cornice, the provision of ices in opposite, sometimes up to four in the same part.

Louis XV decides in 1751 to entirely rebuild the Château of Compiegne. Louis Dreux of Châtre is its pupil, then his collaborator.

From the years 1760 and in the years 1770, Gabriel invents a more sober decoration, inspired of the antique. The royal opera of Versailles (1765 - 1770), major work of the architect, the bathroom of Louis XV, or the library of Louis XVI (1774) are entirely new style known as Louis XVI , with return to the straight line, colonnades and medallions.

In this new style, the chief of work of Gabriel is incontestably the Petit Trianon (1760 - 1764), intended for Madam de Pompadour but completed after the death of the marchioness and whose first occupant will be Marie-Antoinette. Small castle of countryside, Small Trianon presents the originality to be built with the angle of a terrace, so that two of the frontages have a level of base which is not found on the two others; on these two frontages, the colossal Ordre is thus found resting directly on the ground.

Towards 1771, Gabriel tears off in Louis XV the approval of a project of complete repair of outsides of the castle around the Marble court: the Great Intention . It is a question of entirely repairing hones the frontages brick and stone of them, by removing the mannerisms baroques of the Great century, which seem errors of taste to the eyes of the architects of the 18th century, and by replacing the apparent roofs by platform roofs. The project is engaged and continued in spite of the death of Louis XV in 1774 and the withdrawal of Gabriel in 1775, before the lack of money does not result in stopping work, creating a regrettable dissymmetry that work of Alex Dufour at the 19th century will repair partly.

Louis Dreux of Châtre succeeds to him in 1776 with Compiegne and completes the construction of the Château of Compiegne. With this castle built between 1751 and 1788, Angel-Jacques Gabriel and Louis Dreux of Châtre carry out one of the most sober monuments of French neo-classic architecture.

Gabriel in Paris

Among the major achievements of Gabriel, one also counts the place Louis XV (today Place of the Harmony) and the Military academy in Paris.

Principal constructions

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