Richard Mique
Richard Mique (18 September 1728 — 8 July 1794) was a neoclassical French architect born in Lorraine. He is most remembered for his picturesque hamlet for Marie Antoinette at Versailles, which, however, is not particularly characteristic of his working style.
He was born at Nancy, the son of Simon Mique, an architect and entrepreneur of Lunéville and grandson of Pierre Mique also an architect. Following their example,[1] he became an architect in the service of duke Stanislas Leszczynski, ex-king of Poland and father of the queen of Louis XV of France; following the death of Héré de Corny, Mique participated as premier architecte in Stanislas' grand plans for reordering and embellishing Nancy, his capital as Duke of Lorraine. Stanislas made him a chevallier of the Order of Saint-Michel and maneuvered unsuccessfully to have Mique placed on the payroll of the Bâtiments du Roi.[2] Following his patron's death in February 1766, Mique was called to France the following October, at the suggestion of the Queen's Polish confessor. His official career in France was initially stymied by the influence of Ange-Jacques Gabriel, premier architecte, and his main clients were a series of royal ladies; for the Queen he built her convent, prominently sited in the town of Versailles, on lands formerly at the edge of the park belonging to Mme de Maintenon's Château de Clagny, of which eleven hectares were consigned to the Queen by Louis XV. At the Queen's death, her daughter Mme Adelaide completed the project.
Mique must have gained the confidence of the Dauphin and the Dauphine, for upon the accession of the Dauphin as Louis XVI in 1774, Migne was appointed intendant et contrôleur général des bâtiments du Roi; he succeeded Gabriel as premier architecte to Louis XVI the following year, thus overseeing the last works carried out at Versailles before the Revolution. He purchased a seigneurie in Lorraine, which completed his transformation to courtier-architect. [[Image:Marie Antoinette amusement at Versailles.JPG|thumb|280px|l'Hameau de la Reine He laid out the queen's garden at the Petit Trianon from 1774 to 1782, in collaboration with the painter Hubert Robert; the design was based on sketches by the count de Caraman, an inspired amateur of gardening. He was responsible for the Hameau de la Reine "one of the first instances... of pre-Victorian kitsch" (Higonnet 2002).
He was arrested in company with his son as parties to a conspiracy to save Marie Antoinette, whose favoured architect he had been, and brought before a revolutionary tribunal. A summary trial on 7 July 1794 condemned both men to death the following day (31 Messidor an II) just weeks before the fall of Robespierre and the end of the Terror.
Pierre de Nolhac, the historian of the Château de Versailles, in Le Trianon de Marie-Antoinette (1914), found Mique to have been "un artiste savant, habile, et digne de plus de gloire"[3] A street in the city of Versailles commemorates his name.
[[Image:TempleOfLove.jpg|thumb|left|280px|Temple de l'Amour at the Petit Trianon]]
Works
- 1762 : His first known design, for a kiosk in the gardens of Lunéville.
- 1763-64 Two gates for the city of Nancy: the Porte Sainte-Catherine and the Porte Stanislas already show the neoclassical taste..
- 1765 : Plans for the Sainte-Catherine barracks at Nancy.
- 1767-72 : Buildings for the Ursuline convent of the Queen in the town of Versailles. Now Lycée Hoche. Migne's early plans were rejected.The third, executed design has a some similar to Jacques-Germain Soufflot's Church of Sainte-Genevieve in Paris.
- 1775-84 : All the structures, including the bridge, that form the picturesque hamlet, the Hameau de la Reine in the garden of the Trianon at Versailles. Mique carried it out in its naturalistic jardin anglo-chinois laid out in collaboration with the painter Hubert Robert; for inspiration, he was directed to visit the Anglo-Chinese park at Ermenonville (Higonnet 2002: 29).
- 1775-85 : Church of the Carmelites Basilica of Saint-Denis, for Madame Louise, sister of the King, who had become a nun in the convent at Saint-Denis. Mme Louise dictated in detail the subjects for the sculptural decorations. The neoclassical building, with a Corinthian portico adapted from the Roman Maison Carrée at Nîmes, was consecrated 28 May 1784.
- 1778-79 : The private theatre of Marie Antoinette at the Petit Trianon.
- 1778-81 : The octagonal Belvedere (1778-81)[4], consecrated to the Seasons, the Pavillon du Rocher and the Temple de l'Amour[5] in the newly-informal gardens of the Petit Trianon at Versailles. The Temple of Love, visible from the Queen's bedroom, was the setting for many of the fêtes (Higonnet 2002: 28)
- 1780 : Hotel de l'Intendance, Versailles
- 1780s : Château de Bellevue, alterations in the interior (demolished) and alterations to the park, which required 42,000 new trees and a hermitage, for Mesdames, the daughters of Louis XV.
- 1782 : Consolidation of the tower at the Cathédrale of Orléans (1782-1787)
- 1785 : Modifications at the Château de Saint-Cloud for Marie Antoinette (demolished)
- 1785 : Boudoir for Marie Antoinette in the Petits Appartements of Versailles.
Notes
- ^ He may have followed the courses of Jacques-François Blondel in Parid.
- ^ Twice politely refused by the marquis de Marigny (Higonnet 2002: 26)
- ^ A learned and skilled artist, worthy of more fame" (quoted in Higonnet 2002).
- ^ A version of the circular Temple of Vesta, Tivoli.
- ^ It was built to house Edmé Bouchardon's Love fashioning a bow from the club of Hercules, now at the Musée du Louvre.
References
- Higonnet, Patrice, 2002. "Mique, the architect of royal intimacy" in Michael Conon, Bourgeois and Aristocratic Encounters in Garden Art (Dumbarton Oaks)