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Notes
“la sublime conception de l’Ecole d’Athènes par Raphaël” (Boullée 1976: 134, fol. 119r). I would like to thank Profs. Basile Baudez, Christian Michel and Victor Tschudi, as well as my two anonymous reviewers, for their insightful comments and suggestions on the draft of this article.
For an analysis of temporality in Early Modern architectural images, focusing on an earlier period but providing essential methodological insights, see Tschudi 2017. This field and line of enquiry are only now beginning to be widely explored, and the present article thus hopes to contribute to the dissemination of an interest in temporality within Early Modern architectural studies. A broader theoretical framework on perceptions of historical time is provided by Koselleck (1985) and Hartog (2003). On anachronisms within ancient culture and its Western reception, see Rood, Atack and Phillips (2020).
These are preserved at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (catalogue numbers for the perspective views: RESERVE HA-57-FT 4 and RESERVE AG-134-BOITE FT 7). A third drawing is at The Morgan Library, New York, accession number 2017.17. Minor differences between these drawings include the surface treatment of the background arch, as well as the presence or not of a sculpted frieze around the roof opening, and of two figures at the right-hand foot of said arch, whose pictorial role is to indicate that this space is accessible.
Boullée 1785.
Boullée 1976: 134-135, fol. 119v-123r. Differences between the two versions of the text are minor: besides reformulations and the provision of details regarding the history of the commission process, the manuscript from the 1790s chiefly reflects the Revolutionary context within which it was penned, thus omitting all mention of Louis XVI, as well as the statue of the monarch that was suggested in the earlier, printed version.
Boullée 1785: 3-5; Boullée 1976: 135, fol. 121v-122v.
Pérouse de Montclos 1974: 25. Pérouse notes several cases where the smaller project led to a larger one, for example when Boullée’s suggestion for the Madeleine church provided a model for his ideal basilique. In the case of the library, however, it was the project for a very large building near Place Vendôme that was transformed into the far more realistic proposal analysed here. (Boullée 1785: 2; Boullée 1976: 135, fol. 121r)
This is of course largely due to the absence of windows, a consequence of the use of a pre-existing courtyard surrounded by other interior spaces. Yet this conception is also typical of Boullée, who expressed his aversion for “multiplied openings … within a façade” (Boullée 1976: 131, fol. 110r), instead favouring buildings with windowless exteriors and top lighting, even when other solutions were available (see for instance his project for a National Palace; also Pérouse de Montclos 1969: 116). The architect’s inclination to isolate buildings – and especially their interiors – from the surrounding environment is revealed by the various terraces or colonnaded courtyards he places around them. See Boullée 1976: 129, fol. 104v. The courtyard he planned for the entrance to the library constitutes a case in point, which has been carefully analysed by Nicholas Pacula (2017). For a different interpretation of Boullée’s take on urban environments, see Madec 1986: 105-121.
On the rapid evolution of the modalities of architectural drawing during the French eighteenth century, see Baudez (2012 and 2021).
On the Paris art market during this period, see Patrick Michel (2007: chiefly 279-280). Jean de Cayeux (1989) documents the prices at which Hubert Robert sold many of his paintings.
The most evocative selection of pictures from this context remains the catalogue of the 1976 exhibition Piranèse et les Français (Brunel, 1976).
The epigraph to Boullée’s treatise, quoting Correggio, is “Ed io anche son pittore”. See also Pérouse de Montclos 1994: 12-14. Henry (2006) has carefully compared Boullée’s architectural drawings to Roger de Piles’s artistic theory and to the aesthetics of Early Modern painting. On Raphael’s importance for French painters, see Rosenberg 1994: especially 134-135. Boullée’s bas reliefs inspired by the School of Athens adorn the pediments of his projects for Versailles and the Madeleine church. In the latter example, the colonnaded gallery represented as a quasi-bidimensional bas-relief on the pediment also announces the tridimensional colonnaded nave inside the building, thus creating a complex interplay between image and space.
It has also been suggested that Raphael’s fresco was itself based on the typologies of stage sets then being developed in Renaissance Italy (Joost-Gaugier 2002: 86).
The best examples, among many possible choices, are probably Charles de Wailly’s drawing for Athalie (1783; Paris, Bibliothèque-musée de l’Opéra, ESQUISSES ANCIENNES-5 (1)) and François-Joseph Bélanger’s gallery for Alceste (1784; ESQUISSES ANCIENNES-5 (4)).
One could pursue this investigation further by pointing out the broader similarity of Boullée’s library room – a stage-like space surrounded by stepped higher levels reached by an elaborate system of galleries and stairs – to his design for a Colisée, despite the difference in scale: the word amphithéâtre is used in his descriptions of both projects (Boullée 1976: 132 and 135, fol. 112v and 122r). Indeed, the term was then used not only for spaces devoted to spectacle, but also for lecture rooms, including that designed by Jacques Gondouin for the École de Chirurgie. Besides, Anthony Vidler (2015: 81) has perceptively observed the similarity between Boullée’s library interior and Piranesi’s Scuola antica etching, which also shows stepped levels around a central flat plane.
Interestingly, the amphitheatre in the Bibliothèque du Roi would not have been occupied by viewers, but by books, which Boullée describes as a decoration, and even a “spectacle des livres” (Boullée 1976: 135, fol. 122r). In his descriptions of projects for the Colisée and Théâtre, Boullée also posited that the best decoration is constituted by the spectators and their costumes, especially the dresses of elegant ladies (Boullée 1976: 127, 129 and 132 , fol. 97v, 98r, 104v and 112v). This interesting inversion of the conventional direction of the gaze thus also applies to the Bibliothèque: the spectators are now in the centre, in a stage-like space, observing the decoration (books) that occupies what would normally have been the amphitheatre’s seating spaces.
Pérouse de Montclos 1994: 12.
Although this title was not given to the fresco by Raphael himself, it remains compatible with the idea – expressed in a 1508 speech by Battista Casali in the Sistine Chapel – according to which Pope Julius II’s literary patronage had created a “new Athens” in Rome (Rowland 1997: 139). The exact formula The School of Athens has been used as a title for the fresco since the seventeenth century (see Wood 1988) and appears in Boullée’s own treatise (1976: 134, fol. 119r). Roger de Piles (1708: 56), however, noted that the philosophers he recognised in the painting had not all lived in Athens. Several recent interpretations also place Roman authors in the picture, but it appears likely that Boullée – following the scholarship then available – would have thought of them as Greek. See Joost-Gaugier 2002: 81.
Piles 1708: 75-93; Dezallier d’Argenville 1762: 5.
It also appears difficult to prove, as has sometimes been suggested, that Boullée wished to posit the centrality of specific branches of learning by placing them in the foreground, within a patch of daylight (which, incidentally, is positioned differently in the print than in the drawing). The group on the right (Fig. 3) has simply been transposed from a similar position in Raphael’s fresco. Moreover, the kneeling figures are best suited to a foreground location, and the small attribute held by one of them – a compass – would become invisible if placed further from the pictorial plane. The globe, however, does offer a more interesting hint at the contents of the library, since Boullée’s plans indicate a separate chamber in which Coronelli’s famous giant globes would be kept. The presence of a smaller globe in the gallery image is thus a reference both to Raphael’s fresco and to the existence of celebrated belongings of the Bibliothèque du Roi that remain invisible in the picture. On the symbolism of globes in Boullée’s library project, see Paula Young Lee (1998).
This period witnessed the development of the idea of a “museum”, which still remained ill-defined in the late eighteenth century: the distinction between libraries and museums remained blurred, as can be observed in Boullée’s own projects. See Vogt 1969: 218. The idea of a “sum of human knowledge” (“somme des connaissances humaines”) has also been suggested in Pérouse de Montclos’s analysis of this picture (1969: 167).
The Encyclopédie (1751-1772: vol. 2, 230) insists on the library of Alexandria in its article “Bibliothèque”.
To be precise, the School of Athens was also linked to a library, since the Stanza della Segnatura originally housed the Pope’s collection of books (Hall 1997: 6). Raphael’s virtual architecture, designed as a decoration for a library wall, thus became – in Boullée’s vision – a project for a real space that would, itself, contain a library. One might have argued that this continues the interplay between virtuality and reality that defines the connection between Raphael and Boullée’s works, were it not for the fact that the Stanza’s original function had been forgotten during the intervening centuries. It remains noteworthy, however, that Raphael and Boullée both deemed the School of Athens picture to be ideally suited to a library.
“on se croit inspiré par les mânes de ces hommes célèbres ”; “le désir de marcher sur les traces de ces grands hommes” Boullée 1976: 134, fol. 119r.
One of the two versions of the library project, not illustrated in the perspective views, includes statues in the gallery, which are undoubtedly those of famous philosophers and scholars. These figures, whether ancient or modern, would have inflected the temporality of the design and of the drawing if they had been included. Boullée’s textual description of the library in 1785 also mentions two statues under the arches at either end of the room, one representing Minerva, the other Louis XVI. Significantly, his drawing only shows the Minerva statue, which can function both within an understanding of the picture as an ancient Greek scene (all the more since she was, precisely, the patron goddess of Athens) or as a modern French space.
The chief exceptions are the projects for Versailles and the Paris opera house, which are amongst the more realistic of Boullée’s projects, and are designed to be used by members of a highly hierarchical social structure including the monarchy itself (the figures descending the stairs in the Opéra pictures are likely the royal couple, surrounded by their guard and retinue).
Koselleck 1985: xxii-xxiii.
“Paris aujourd’hui ne cède en rien aux savants d’Athènes et de Rome” Le Fevre 1759: viii.
Mercier 1782: 18-19.
See for example an anonymous painting at the Musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, MV 2976. Also a print published by Jean François Daumont between 1755 and 1775 (for example British Museum, 1901, 1022.649).
See the following prints: Claude Nicolas Malapeau after Jean Jacques Lagrenée, [1795] (copy in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, QB-1 (1791-07-11)-FOL); Anonymous, [1791] (copy in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, QB-1 (1791-07-11)-FOL); Abraham Girardet after Pierre Gabriel Berthault, 1798 (copy in the British Museum, 1861,1012.34).
In Raphael’s time, Rome was also referred to at least once as a “new Athens” (Rowland 1997: 139), though Boullée would not have been aware of this. Besides, Henry Keazor suggests that other eighteenth-century artworks referring to Raphael’s fresco also aimed to present modern sites as the “New Athens” (notably Potsdam, as well as – once more – Paris, in a painting from 1794, postdating Boullée’s drawing). Keazor 2021: 125 and 159.
The topic of Boullée’s intellectual inspirations, and of the modern philosophers quoted in his treatise, has been analysed most recently by Brancasi (2014).
See for example Jacques-Louis David’s Study for a Costume of a Civil Official, c. 1792, Minneapolis Institute of Art, 65.43.1.
“l’architecture […] antique que nous avons aujourd’hui” D’Aviler 1691: Preface.
“des pensées d’embellissement pour cette capitale, et des projets de place dont se seraient honorés les plus habiles architectes de l’antiquité.” Patte 1765: 120.
“Le porche de l’école de chirurgie est encore plus conforme à la manière des anciens” Peyre 1795: 17.
“la simplicité du plan, ainsi que la décoration générale et particulière, donne à cette construction la forme et l’air de ces temples antiques, et font un ensemble qui réussit assez.” Blaizot 1775: 54-55.
“les principes des Grecs et des Romains”; “développer les principes des anciens et nous les approprier” Peyre 1795: 5 and 22.
Among many possible examples, one might quote the Architectural Cappricio with Bridge and Triumphal Arch (Barnard Castle, Bowes Museum), which strongly recalls Peyre’s project for the Hôtel de Condé and Pierre Rousseau’s Hôtel de Salm.
“Le goût est invariable, il est indépendant de la mode. L’homme de génie ne gagne que ce que les siècles qui l’ont précédé ont laissé perdre” Ledoux 1804: 20.
“ne suis-je pas, en quelque sorte, fondé à avancer que l’architecture est encore dans son enfance … ?” Boullée 1976: 119.
These sometimes include Egyptian or Mesopotamian forms, which suppose a yet more complex vision of architectural creation’s relation to history, although they do not concern the case under consideration here. Lankheit 1973: 19; Middleton 1990.
The interpretation of this space as a gymnasium, based on Vitruvius’s descriptions, appears in Fréart de Chambray 1662: 108. The hall represented in the School of Athens is now generally considered to have been inspired by Bramante’s project for Saint Peter’s. Several art historians have argued that the pagan philosophers – thus figured within a church interior – are advancing towards an altar crowned by the Holy Trinity, featured in the Disputation of the Holy Sacrement on the opposite wall of the Stanza della Segnatura (see for instance Verdon 1997). This is however a twentieth-century interpretation that would not have been available to Boullée, who would moreover have known the School of Athens only through prints, and perhaps remained unaware of its spatial relation with other images. For an analysis of the architecture represented in Raphael’s fresco, see Lieberman 1997.
Within the French context, the most important publications on Greek architecture, leading to a total reconsideration of the history of ancient architecture, were those of Le Roy (1758) and Dumont (1769).
This issue gets yet more complex when one looks at other passages within Boullée’s architectural treatise, revealing contradictions or different parallel interpretations of his work by the architect himself. In the discussion of his Basilique, he describes an interior colonnade (lining a wall beneath a vault) as a reference to Greek architecture (Boullée 1976: 125, fol. 88v-89r and 92r): he may thus have perceived the similar motif in his library in the same way (he also uses the word “basilique” in his description of this space: Boullée 1785). However, he considered not only his basilica’s dome but also its barrel vault to be typical of the “Goths”: here he was thinking within a linear vision of architectural history rather than a cyclical one, yet not acknowledging the clear model for his barrel vault, which is ancient Rome. Indeed, while his treatise occasionally recognises his debt to Roman models – and his work is more closely related to ancient Rome and Renaissance Italy than to any other culture – it is simultaneously highly critical of the latter, preferring to quote Greece as his model. This may be due to the perceived starkness of Greek decoration, more suitable to Boullée’s intentions than the richer Roman ornamentation, yet it adds to the ambiguity concerning the architect’s own perception of his gallery design and of its possible Greekness.
Fréart de Chambray 1662: 113; Bellori 1695: 15 (Bellori uses the word “anacronismo”); Piles 1708: 78. For a detailed discussion of these descriptions, see Christian Michel 2007. A recent analysis of the anachronisms within Raphael’s fresco has been provided by Rood, Atack and Phillips (2020: 199-206) and by Nagel and Wood (2010: 347-365). The latter scholars (2010: 350) explain the anachronism of the School of Athens figures by analysing the fresco as a secular sacra conversazione image: this implies that Boullée’s drawing is unconsciously heir to yet another complex artistic tradition.
“Parcourez toute la terre, mais que je sache toujours où vous êtes, en Grèce, à Alexandrie, en Égypte, à Rome. Embrassez tous les temps, mais que je ne puisse ignorer la date du monument. Montrez-moi tous les genres d’architecture et toutes les sortes d’édifices ; mais avec quelques caractères qui spécifient les lieux, les moeurs, les temps, les usages et les personnes ; qu’en ce sens vos ruines soient encore savantes.” Diderot 1957-1967: vol. 3, 246.
Cochin (1771: 171) already reacted against this tendency, which is perhaps best represented by Lenoir (1798) and Valenciennes (1799: 392).
Voltaire 1751: 2-4. The essential difference is that, while Voltaire asserted that the fourth summit – followed only by decline – was the reign of Louis XIV, the late eighteenth century believed itself to still be progressing towards the peak of French cultural glory.
See for example Rood, Atack and Phillips 2020: 204-205; and Rowland 1997.
Blondel 1771-1776: vol. 1, 186.
See Keazor 2021.
This title, possibly misleading, was given to the picture long after Robert’s death.
Piranesi 1762: several plates, chiefly XII; Wood 1753: especially plate XXXV; Wood 1757: plates XXXV, XXXVI and XL.
Saint Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum, ГЭ-1294.
One must also note both works’ resemblance with Piranesi’s Braccio di città pensile and his Scuola antica print of 1750. See Vidler 2015: 81.
See Tschudi 2017.
For example, Hubert Robert depicted ancient figures holding a ceremony in Louis-François Trouard’s Chapelle des catéchismes in Versailles (the painting, known as L’intérieur d’un temple antique, is in the Dijon Musée des beaux-arts, CA 456). Charles de Wailly, in the aforementioned drawing, applies the same strategy as Boullée, by placing figures in ancient costume within his own design for the Odéon theatre. De Wailly was simultaneously a member of both the Academy of Architecture and that of Painting, the latter appointment probably constituting a means to publicise his architectural work by exhibiting drawings of his projects at the Salon. See Mosser / Rabreau 1979.
“Qu’est ce que l’architecture ? La définirai-je avec Vitruve, l’art de bâtir ? Non. … Nos premiers pères n’ont bâti leurs cabanes qu’après en avoir conçu l’image. C’est cette production de l’esprit … qui constitue l’architecture.” Boullée 1976: 119, fol. 70v.
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