Detail View: Archivision Base to Module 9: La Madeleine

Preferred Title:	La Madeleine
Alternate Title:	Église de la Madeleine
Image View:	Frontal view down the nave, looking towards the entrance
Creator:	Pierre Vignon (French architect, 1763-1828)
Location:	site: Paris, Île-de-France, France
Location Note:	8th arrondissement
GPS:	+48.870000+2.324167
Date:	consecrated 1842 (other); designed 1807 (design)
Cultural Context:	French
Style Period:	Neoclassical; Nineteenth century
Work Type 1:	church
Work Type 2:	memorial
Classification:	architecture
Material:	stone
Technique:	construction (assembling)
Measurements:	20 m (height, columns)
Inscription:	On frieze of the pediment: DOM SVB INVOC S M MAGDALENAE
Subjects:	architectural exteriors; rulers and leaders; Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821; Napoleonic Wars, 1800-1815; interior; oculus
Description:	From 1806 Vignon concentrated on completing the Madeleine, a church that had remained unfinished since the days of the ancien régime. In 1806 Napoleon ordered that a Temple de la Gloire de la Grande Armée should be erected there and Claude-Etienne Beaumont (1757-1811) emerged as winner of the limited competition (1807), but he was superseded by Vignon on Napoleon?s orders. He designed a vast peripteral Corinthian temple, with a single huge, barrel-vaulted interior, to form a counterpart to the distant Chambre des Députés by Bernard Poyet. Building work, however, never started; in 1815, Louis XVIII contemplated using the site for the Chapelle expiatoire dedicated to Louis XVI and another competition was held (1816), to which Vignon contributed. The enterprise was judged too expensive and it was decided to build the Madeleine as a parish church. Vignon retained the commission using his designs of 1807, subject to modifications, which included roofing the nave with three domes. The masonry of the exterior was vi
Collection:	Archivision Addition Module Four
Identifier:	1A2-F-P-M-C2
Rights:	© Scott Gilchrist, Archivision, Inc.