Jean-Joseph Kapeller

Kapeller was also a major figure in freemasonry in the city, becoming grand master of the Chevaliers de l'Orient lodge.

His father Jean-Georges had been born in Meilen, Zurich and married Marie-Anne Daignan in Marseille on 11 January 1701, the year before Jean-Joseph's birth.

[A 2] The couple had two children, Marie-Eugénie (called "widow Mullard" in Jean-Joseph's will of 1778[A 3]) and Pierre-Paul (a painter and teacher who was made an associate of the Académie in 1753 and settled in the Spanish colonies in South America, specialising in still lives of shellfish[4] and exhibiting at the Académie de peinture in 1757).

[6] The previous years' issues of the Almanach historique de Marseille by Grosson showed that Kappeler already ran a "school of mathematics, drawing and of civilian and military architecture" in his home on rue d'Aubagne.

[A 4] According to professor Régis Bertrand, Kapeller seems to have retained his roles at the Académie until 1787 : an octogenarian, he was thus replaced by architect Jacques Dageville (1723–1794).