SOUFFLOT, Jacques-Germain

(1713-1780)

   The leading French architect of the 18th-century Neo-Classical style, Jacques-Germain Soufflot worked during a turbulent time of French history, which ultimately erupted in the French Revolution. By the middle of the 18th century, the Neo-Classical style was increasingly viewed as the favored style of the Age of Enlightenment, while the "decadence" of the prevailing Rococo, seen as the aristocratic style, became discredited in France. The Church of Sainte-Geneviève, also called the Panthéon, built in Paris by Soufflot from 1755 to 1792, epitomizes this reemerging classicism. Here, Soufflot combined the ancient and Renaissance classicism he saw while traveling in Italy with the monumentality of the Baroque style to create a massive church with a colossal columned portico that supports a triangular pediment. Like that of Christopher Wren's Baroque Cathedral of Saint Paul in London, Soufflot's dome rises up on a tall drum that features a colonnade of freestanding columns. Despite its importance, the chaotic time leading up to the Revolution impeded construction of the church and led to its unusual history. During its construction, the French government, needing to replenish its treasury after losing its colonial territories to England during the Seven Years' War, took over the property with the intention of selling it. Then, in 1791, the church was transformed into a secular Temple of Fame that honored those who died in the French Revolution. Under Napoleon, the building reverted to a Catholic church, then a nondenominational religious temple, and then a physics laboratory. Today the Panthéon remains one of the most important architectural monuments in Paris, while Soufflot is credited with the establishment of a monumental form of the classical idiom in 18th-century Paris that created a definitive break with the Rococo.