Jean Chalgrin

His neoclassic orientation was established from his early studies with the prophet of neoclassicism Giovanni Niccolò Servandoni and with the radical classicist Étienne-Louis Boullée in Paris and through his Prix de Rome sojourn (November 1759 – May 1763) as a pensionnaire of the French Academy in Rome.

His time in Rome coincided with a fervent new interest in Classicism among the young French pensionnaires, under the influences of Piranesi and the publications of Winckelmann.

In this church, which was built 1772–84, he revived a basilica plan that had not been characteristic of French ecclesiastical architecture since the sixteenth century.

[1][2][3][4] Towards the end of the French Revolution in 1798 Chalgrin threw up the buildings for the first Exposition des produits de l'industrie française, with an extremely tight deadline.

[5] After the Revolution Chalgrin extended the Collège de France and made alterations in the Palais du Luxembourg to suit it to its new use as the seat of the Directoire.