Charles-Michel-Ange Challe

As part of the Academy of Rome, he also plays a leading role in the development of festive decorations, or farandoles, in the context of the carnival of 1748 and is brought to collaborate with the architects Louis-Joseph Le Lorrain, Ennemond- Alexandre Petitot and Charles-Louis Clérisseau who will reinforce his neoclassical way.

A prolific painter, he produced many pieces, showing the influence of François Boucher and Nicolas de Troy (Les Charmes multipliés, The Crowned Shepard), which enjoyed considerable success in France but also in Prussia, in all German states, England and Russia.

But his work for the Salon will earn him in 1763 violent criticism of Diderot after some praise on his Socrates on the Verge of Drinking Hemlock in 1761:"It looks like being painted a hundred years ago; but it is much older for the way than for the color.

"[3]In 1765, he presented a monumental painting: Hector Entering the Palace of Pâris which earned him unanimous negative reviews and dissuaded him from exhibiting the following years.

After the death of the sculptor and ornamanist René Michel Slodz in 1764, he was appointed, by a royal decree of 23 February 1765, Draftsman of the Chamber and Cabinet of the King, a position he obtained thanks to the support of the Duke d'Aumont in competition with other brilliant candidates (de Wailly, Bocquet, Géraud.)

This charge is then important to the court:"Machinist, composer of theater clothes and ballet costumes, organizer of funerals, artificer, scenery painter, in a word, man of common taste and easy elegance, such was the draftsman of the cabinet of His Majesty.

Thus he conceives the monuments of the infant Philippe de Bourbon, Duke of Parma, of Louis-Ferdinand, Dauphin of France, of Stanislas Leszczynski, King of Poland, of Elisabeth Farnese, Queen of Spain, of the Dauphine Maria Josepha of Saxony, of the Queen of France, of Charles-Emmanuel III of Savoy and finally of King Louis XV himself.

In 1770, he creates the ephemeral decoration of the marriage of the Dauphin, future Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette at Versailles and the Orangery with the assistance of Moreau the Younger who will succeed him:"This palace of the Sun, raised at one end of the canal, whose waters reflected torrents of light will remembered for a long time.

These groves and beds of fire, basins where the two elements seemed to be confused, the variety of amusements and shows distributed throughout the park to share the crowd.

In the last years of his life, he worked on a project to expand the city of Marseille which was first approved by Turgot, Minister of the Navy, before being abandoned.

His declining health did not allow him to participate actively in the decor of the Coronation of Louis XVI in Reims in June 1775, which will be directed by his assistant Moreau le Jeune .