Church of the Madeleine

The church of the Madeleine is located on the Place of the Madeleine in the {{VIIIe}} district of Paris. She constitutes a perfect illustration of the neo-classic architectural style.

Its construction was spread out over 85 years because of the political disturbances in France at the end of the 18th century, and at the beginning of the 19th century. The political changes of the time made some on several occasions modify the destination and the plans

Conceived by Napoleon I {{er}} like a temple with the glory of its Large army in 1806, the building failed to be transformed into 1837 in railway station, the first of Paris, before becoming a church in 1845.

History

The old church of the Madeleine

At the 18th century, the Rue Saint-Honore crossed the ramparts of Paris by a monumental door located roughly at the level of current the Rue of Castiglione. Beyond this door, as from the 16th century, a suburb known initially under the name of Culture developed the Bishop then of Ville the Bishop because it was placed under the Suzeraineté of the bishop of Paris since a concession going up with the king Dagobert I {{er}}.

To serve this suburb, a vault, attested since 1238, was replaced by a church dedicated to Sainte Marie-madeleine, Sainte Marthe and holy Lazare, whose king Charles VIII posed the first stone in 1492. It was probably located at the site of current the n° 8 Boulevard Malesherbes.

In front of the increase in the population of the suburb of the City the Bishop, the church was increased twice, in 1659 and 1698. But after the annexation of the suburb to the capital, in 1722, it became necessary to consider the construction of a new church on a new site. Whereas one stopped, according to the party suggested by the architect Angel-Jacques Gabriel, the installation of the news place Louis XV, one planned to build it in the transverse axis of the new place, at the end of future the Royal Rue, on a ground occupied, according to the old plans, by the hotel of Chevilly.

The old church unused in 1765, sold in 1767 and was demolished in 1801.

The project of Telling of Ivry

The plans of the new church of the Madeleine were ordered in 1757 with Pierre Telling of Ivry (1698 - 1777), architect of the duke of Orleans. he proposed a building in form of Latin cross surmounted by small a dome whose project was approved formally in 1764.

The first stone had been posed under the reign of Louis XV, the August 3rd 1763, by the king in person. The foundations were dug and the base started to rise when Telling of Ivry died in 1777. Etienne-Louis Boullée imagined a new project respecting the already established foundations, but Telling of Ivry was ultimately replaced by one of its pupils, Guillaume-Martin Couture says “the Young person”, who completely altered the party of his predecessor and, while taking as a starting point the project of Jacques-Germain Soufflot for the church Holy-Genevieve, proposed a church in form of Greek Croix, surmounted by a vaster dome, and preceded by a Portique decorated of a Corinthian Ordre.

When the French revolution burst, the barrels of the column S of the Madeleine rose until the height of the capital X, as a drawing representing shows it the funeral ceremony in the honor of Jacques-Guillaume Simonneau, mayor of Étampes, on June 3rd 1792. But the period was not very favourable with the construction of churches, and work was completely stopped on decree of the National Assembly, on December 30th 1791. The direction of the Building industries then rented the basements with a wine merchant (1794) and various pieces of the enclosure to craftsmen.

Under the Consulate (1799 - 1804), work remained outstanding.

Revolutionary hesitations and projects of Vignon

Many architects had proposed projects for the completion of the building. Jacques-Guillaume Legrand and Jacques Molinos had imagined to include it in an immense palate intended to shelter the national Convention: the room of the meetings would have been placed in the chorus while a vast circular building would have sheltered the offices. Jacques-Pierre Gisors proposed to install there the National library or the Opéra.

An imperial decree of February 21st 1806 assigned the real unit to the Banque de France, the Bankruptcy court and the Bourse de Paris. The architect Pierre-Alexandre Vignon (1763 - 1823) was charged to draw up the plans of the new building, but the project was abandoned on the authorities of the bankers and the tradesmen, who considered the site too far away from the district of the businesses.

Ultimately, the December 2nd 1806, with the camp of Poznań in Poland, the Emperor Napoleon I {{er}} signed a decree for the construction of one temple to the glory of the French Armies. According to the explanatory memorandum: “The Monument whose Emperor invites you today to trace the project will be most majestic, most imposing of all those which its vast imagination conceived and which its extraordinary activity can make carry out. It is the reward which the winner of the Kings and the People, the founder of the empires, decrees with his victorious army under his orders and by his genius. The posterity will say: it made of the heroes and could reward heroism. Inside the monument, the names of all the combatants of Ulm, Austerlitz and Iéna will be registered on marble tables, the names of died on tables of solid gold, the names of the departments with the figure of their quota on money tables. ”

A contest was launched in which eighty artists took part. The project of the architect Pierre-Alexandre Vignon was adopted by the Emperor himself, against the opinion of the imperial Academy: a Peripteral temple , return to antiquity, inspired of the Greek architecture and Roman.

Construction

A little later one demolishes all that had been built within Seam and work progressed quickly until in 1811, date on which they last being stopped for lack of money. After the countryside of Russia of 1812, Napoleon renonça with the temple of Glory, and returned to the primitive project of a church: “That will we make temple of Glory? he says to Montalivet. Our great ideas on all that are well changed… It is to the priests that our temples should be given to be kept: they get along better than us to make ceremonies and to preserve a worship. That the Temple of Glory is from now on a Church: it is the means of completing and of preserving this monument. ”

When the Bourbons found their throne, work was quite advanced: the foundations were finished, the base had been set up, the drawn up columns and the side walls started to rise; it remained to cover the building and to decorate it. The king Louis XVIII had ordered in August 1816 that the new church would be an expiatory monument with the memory of Louis XVI, of the queen Marie-Antoinette and Mrs Elisabeth. This vocation was to be translated only in the decoration of the building and thus did not deteriorate the overall plan. But the funds missed, and Louis XVIII ends up making build in the vicinity, on his personal cassette, the expiatory Chapelle. Vignon, which remained in charge of work, had all the sorrows of the world to advance its building site and died in 1828 without to have been able to finish its work.

It was replaced by his collaborator, Jacques-Marie Huvé which finally managed to make accelerate work when occurred the Révolution of 1830. For Louis Philippe, wire of regicide, there was obviously no question of continuing the program of the Bourbons of the elder branch. After having one moment planned to transform the building into railway station, it confirmed its destination of church, but decided that it would be only one parochial. The law of 1834 releasing a credit of 6 million for building sites of public utility in order to reabsorb unemployment made it possible to complete work in 1842. The church was devoted on October 9th 1845 by M {{gr.}} Affre, archbishop of Paris.

References

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