Louis-Hippolyte Lebas

He was trained in the atelier of Percier and Fontaine, the favoured architects of Napoleon.

After Napoleon's exile he remained the assistant of Pierre François Léonard Fontaine, whose design for the sober Chapelle Expiatoire over the burial site of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette he oversaw in construction (1816-1824).

Lebas taught the History of Architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts, from 1840 to 1863.

In this teaching role, applying the art-historical method of Johann Joachim Winckelmann to the study of historical architecture, he set a mark on several generations of young French architects.

His daughter married the historian and civil servant Léon Halévy.