View source for Jacques-Germain Soufflot

{{Short description|French architect (1713–1780)}}
{{Refimprove|date=December 2020}}
{{Infobox architect
|name                 = Jacques-Germain Soufflot
|image                = Jacques-Germain Soufflot (1713 -1780).jpg
|caption              = Portrait by [[Louis-Michel van Loo]]
|nationality          = French
|birth_date           = 22 July 1713
|birth_place          = [[Irancy]], [[Kingdom of France]]
|death_date           = {{Death date and age|1780|8|29|1713|7|22|df=yes}}
|death_place          = [[Paris]], [[Kingdom of France]]
|alma_matter          =
|practice             = 
|significant_buildings=
|significant_projects = 
|significant_design   = 
|awards               = 
}}
'''Jacques-Germain Soufflot''' ({{IPA|fr|ʒak ʒɛʁmɛ̃ suflo}}, 22 July 1713 &ndash; 29 August 1780) was a French [[architect]] in the international circle that introduced [[neoclassicism]]. His most famous work is the [[Panthéon, Paris|Panthéon]] in [[Paris]], built from 1755 onwards, originally as a church dedicated to [[Saint Genevieve]].

== Biography ==
Soufflot was born in [[Irancy]], near [[Auxerre]]. In the 1730s he attended the [[French Academy in Rome]], where young French students in the 1750s would later produce the first full-blown generation of Neoclassical designers. Soufflot's models were less the picturesque [[Baroque]] being built in modern Rome, as much as the picturesque aspects of monuments of antiquity.

After returning to France, Soufflot practiced in [[Lyon]], where he built the ''Hôtel-Dieu'', like a chaste riverside street facade, interrupted by the central former chapel, its squared dome with illusionistic diminishing coffers on the interior. With the [[Temple du Change]], he was entrusted with completely recasting a 16th-century market exchange building housing a meeting space housed above a loggia. Soufflot's newly made loggia is an unusually severe arcading tightly bound between flat [[Doric order|Doric]] pilasters, with emphatic horizontal lines. He was accepted into the Lyon Academy.

A more creative trip to Italy was made when the mature Soufflot returned in 1750 in the company of the future [[Marquis de Marigny]], the talented young brother of [[Madame de Pompadour]], who was being groomed for his future as director of the King's Buildings (''[[Bâtiments du Roi]]''). On this trip Soufflot made a special study of theaters. In 1755 Marigny, the new Director General of Royal Buildings, gave Soufflot architectural control of all the royal buildings in Paris. In the same year, he was admitted to the Royal Academy of Architecture. In 1756 his [[opera house]] opened in Lyon.

[[File:Pantheon paris.jpg|thumb|300px|The [[Panthéon]], Paris.]]
The Panthéon is his most famous work, but the Hôtel Marigny built for his young patron (1768&ndash;1771) across from the [[Élysée Palace]], is a better definition of Soufflot's personal taste. Soufflot died in Paris in 1780, and is buried in the Panthéon next to [[Voltaire]]. 

Like all the architects of his day, Soufflot considered the classical idiom essential. He stood out for his "strictness of line, firmness of form, simplicity of contour, and rigorously architectonic conception of detail"<ref>Sharp, Dennis (1991). ''The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Architects and Architecture'', p.&nbsp;145. New York: Whitney Library of Design. {{ISBN|978-0-8230-2539-8}} .</ref> which contrasted sharply with the late Baroque and Rococo architecture of his contemporaries.

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

== External links ==
{{commonscat inline|Jacques-Germain Soufflot}}
*{{Structurae person|id=d001738|name=Jacques-Germain Soufflot}}
*{{findagrave|20865}}
{{ACArt}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Soufflot, Jacques-Gabriel}}
[[Category:1713 births]]
[[Category:1780 deaths]]
[[Category:People from Yonne]]
[[Category:18th-century French architects]]
[[Category:Burials at the Panthéon, Paris]]
[[Category:French neoclassical architects]]
[[Category:Members of the Académie royale d'architecture]]