Pierre Contant d'Ivry

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Contant d'Ivry's Neoclassical screen across the cour d'honneur of the Palais-Royal, Paris
Contant d'Ivry's Neoclassical screen across the cour d'honneur of the Palais-Royal, Paris

Pierre Contant d'Ivry (Ivry-sur-Seine, 11 May 1698– Paris 1 October 1777) was a French architect and designer working in a chaste and sober Rococo style and in the Goût grec phase of early Neoclassicism.

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An Architecte du Roi from 1728, Pierre Contant d'Ivry spent his career working for the French Crown and for an aristocratic private clientèle: the contrôleur Machault d'Arnouville, the princes de Soubise and de Croÿ, and baron Bernstorff, the Danish ambassador. Though he was not formally received into the Académie royale d'architecture until 1751, he was the architect attached first to Louis François I de Bourbon, prince de Conti between 1737 and 1749[1], then to Louis-Philippe, duc d'Orléans (1725–1785), for whom he transformed interiors of the Palais-Royale, Paris, in 1754, designs that were widely admired and published by Diderot and d'Alembert in the Encyclopédie, 1762, where Blondel praised their "correct middle pathway between two excesses, that of the heavy weight of our ancients and that of frivolity"[2].

In 1757, he presented a project for the new Église de la Madeleine, Paris, for which he drew inspiration from Jacques-Germain Soufflot's Église Sainte-Geneviève. Though the foundation stone was laid by Louis XV in 1763, funds lagged, and after Contant d'Ivry's death, the plans were modified, then the partially-built structure was razed and begun anew.

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[edit] Principal commissions

  • Château de Bizy, Vernon (Eure), for the maréchal de Belle-Isle (ca 1740, partly destroyed).
  • Hôtel d'Évreux, 19 Place Vendôme, Paris : grand staircase and boiseries (1747).
  • Château d'Arnouville at Arnouville-lès-Gonesse, for Jean-Baptiste de Machault d'Arnouville. He collaborated there with Jean-Michel Chevotet, (1751–1757).
  • Palais-Royal, Paris: After a fire in 1763, Contant d'Ivry rebuilt the central block, with its facade on the cour d'honneur and the monumental staircase (1765) [1]. He provided décors for two main rooms, the salle de la section des Finances du Conseil d'État, (notably for the carved fielded panels of its double doors and its ceiling cornice) and the neoclassical salle à manger of the duchesse d'Orléans, (1765; now the salle du Tribunal des conflits), one of the earliest neoclassical interiors in Paris.
  • Château de Saint-Cloud
  • Project for the Abbey and church of Pentemont, rue de Bellechasse at rue de Grenelle, Paris (published 1769): The structures as built were to another design.
  • Hôpital général, Valenciennes (1750)
  • The new palace Saint-Vaast d’Arras, Arras.
  • Église Saint-Wasnon at Condé-sur-Escaut (1751).
  • Château de Stors (Oise): Chapel for the prince de Conti.

[edit] Garden designs

  • Château de Chamarande (Essonne).He provided a theater en plein air, an orangerie, a buffet d'eau, belvedere and designs for an ornamental vegetable garden.
  • Château d'Heilly (Somme).
  • Château de Bizy at Vernon (Eure).
  • Château des Conti at L'Isle-Adam (Val-d'Oise).
  • Château de Stors at L'Isle-Adam (Val d'Oise). The park and the monumental terraces.

[edit] Furniture designs

  • Console table, gilded wood, c 1750-55; set of four wall lights, 1756. The Getty Center, Los Angeles.

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ He was replaced in this position by Jean-Baptiste Courtonne.
  2. ^ "juste milieu entre deux excès, celui de la pesanteur de nos anciens et celui de la frivolité"

[edit] References

  • Jean-Louis Baritou, Chevotet, Contant, Chaussard, Paris, Délégation à l'Action Artistique de la Ville de Paris, La Manufacture, 1987, ISBN 2-904638-98-9
  • Frédéric Dassas, Les Résidences du Prince de Conti, mémoire de maîtrise d’histoire de l’art sous la direction d’Antoine Schnapper, Paris IV-Sorbonne, 1995.
  • Svend Ericson, Early Neo-Classicism in France
  • Michel Gallet. Les architectes parisiens du XVIIIe siècle, Editions Mengès, Paris (France) , ISBN 2-85620-370-1, 1995.
  • Gabrielle Joudiou, L’Architecte Contant d’Ivry à L’Isle-Adam et à Stors, in Les Trésors des Princes de Bourbon Conti, Editions Somogy, May 2000, pp. 107-111.
  • Gabrielle Joudiou, "L’art des jardins chez Contant d’Ivry" in Annales du Centre Ledoux II, 1998.
  • Gabrielle Joudiou, "Contant d’Ivry et les jardins classiques au XVIIIe siècle " in Jardins du Val-d’Oise, 1993.
  • Gabrielle Joudiou, "Pierre Contant d’Ivry" in Un cabinet d’architectes au siècle des Lumières, sous la direction de J.L. Baritou et D. Foussard, La Martinière, Paris, 1987, pp. 86-181.
  • Elyne Olivier-Valengin, "Le château des princes de Bourbon Conti à L’Isle-Adam", in Les Trésors des Princes de Bourbon Conti, Editions Somogy, pp. 112-123.

[edit] External links

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