Roman Republicans, fasces and festivals: the French occupation of Rome, 1798-99, from the archives of the Museo Napoleonico

Apollo, Jan, 2004 by Eleanor Tollfree

(5) On the altered circumstances for French architects during the Revolution, see Louis Hautecoeur, L'art sous la Revolution et l'Empire en France, 1789-1815, Paris, 1953, vol. V, and Allan Braham, The Architecture of the French Enlightenment, London, 1980, p. 251. Attracted by the patronage of Catherine the Great, several French architects, such as De Thomon, went to work for the Russian court, where artists, including the sculptor Falconet, had also worked earlier in the century. Even Diderot had spent some time at the Russian court. Architects such as Rondolet and Durand devoted their time to writing architectural works instead.

(6) See James Leith, Space and Revolution: Projects for Monuments, Squares and Public Buildings in France, 1789-1799, London, 1991, chapter 6, pp. 151-213.

(7) Ibid., pp. 138-39.

(8) On this project, see the excellent account by Marie-Louise Biver, Le Pantheon a l'epoque revolutionnaire, Paris, 1982; Braham, op. cit., pp 81-82; and Leith, op. cit., pp. 112-15 and 139-41.

(9) We must be careful about employing the term 'revolution' here, however, since many new building opportunities, and even the creation of statues and festival structures to the Revolution, involved the adaptation of earlier buildings of artistic models.

(10) See, for example, A.-C. Gruber, Les grandes fetes et leurs decors a l'epoque de Louis XVI, Paris, 1972.

(11) Leith, op. cit.

(12) Jardin's design for a sepulchral chapel (1747) was intended to commemorate the celebrated dead. In the following year, he designed a monumental bridge lined with obelisks and columns decorated with ship's prows, which was to acclaim the hero returning to the city (this is reproduced in ibid., p. 13). Dufourny produced a similar academic design for a cemetery (ibid., p. 14). Examples of Revolutionary pyramids include the one incorporated in the design for the Festival of the Federation held on the Champ de Mars in 1772. In addition, an anonymous artist is said to have designed an immense quadrilateral pyramid three hundred feet high, crowned with a Temple of Liberty, for the site of the Bastille (ibid., p. 55).

(13) Perhaps the first architect in France to design a space of this kind was Giovanni Nicolo Servandoni, who proposed the construction of an amphitheatre on the outskirts of Paris to accommodate royal festivals (ibid., p. 8). The amphitheatre frequently recurs as a subject for academic designs. The so-called 'visionary' architects, such as Boullee, particularly praised the architectural form of the Roman Colosseum, and in 1781 a study was made by the Abbe Brotier of the political use made by the Romans of circuses (ibid., pp. 16-22).

(14) For a more detailed consideration of the Festival of the Federation, see ibid., pp. 43-53.

(15) On Revolutionary festivals in Paris, see Mona Ozouf, La fete revolutionnaire, Paris, 1976, and Marie-Louise Biver, Fetes revolutionnaires a Paris, Paris, 1979.

(16) Reproduced in Leith, op. cit., p 118. For a detailed analysis of the Festival of Unity and Indivisibility and the monuments constructed for the occasion, which were designed by David, see ibid., pp. 130-34. For a useful delineation of the role of David in connection with Revolutionary festivals, see David Lloyd Dowd, Pageant-Master of the Republic: Jacques-Louis David and the French Revolution, Lincoln, NA, 1948.