Saint-Sulpice church

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The Church of Saint-Sulpice is a Catholic church in Paris, France, on the east side of Place Saint-Sulpice, in the Latin Quarter of the 6th arrondissement. Only slightly smaller than Notre-Dame and Saint-Eustache, it is the third largest church in the city. It is dedicated to Sulpitius the Pious. Construction of the present building, the second on the site, began in 1646. During the 18th century, an elaborate gnomon, the Gnomon of Saint-Sulpice, was constructed in the church. Saint-Sulpice is also known for its Great Organ, one of the most significant organs in the world.

History

The present church is the second building on the site, erected over a Romanesque church originally constructed during the 13th century. Additions were made over the centuries, up to 1631. The new building was founded in 1646 by parish priest Jean-Jacques Olier (1608–1657) who had established the Society of Saint-Sulpice, a clerical congregation, and a seminary attached to the church. Anne of Austria laid the first stone.

Construction began in 1646 to designs which had been created in 1636 by Christophe Gamard, but the Fronde interfered, and only the Lady Chapel had been built by 1660, when Daniel Gittard provided a new general design for most of the church.[3] Gittard completed the sanctuary, ambulatory, apsidal chapels, transept, and north portal (1670–1678), after which construction was halted for lack of funds.

Gilles-Marie Oppenord and Giovanni Servandoni, adhering closely to Gittard's designs, supervised further construction (mainly the nave and side-chapels, 1719–1745). The decoration was executed by the brothers Sébastien-Antoine Slodtz (1695–1742) and Paul-Ambroise Slodtz (1702–1758).

In 1723–1724 Oppenord created the north and south portals of the transept with an unusual interior design for the ends: concave walls with nearly engaged Corinthian columns instead of the pilasters found in other parts of the church.

He also built a bell tower on top of the transept crossing (c. 1725), which threatened to collapse the structure because of its weight and had to be removed. This miscalculation may account for the fact that Oppenord was then relieved of his duties as an architect and restricted to designing decoration.

West façade

In 1732 a competition for the design of the west façade was won by Servandoni, who was inspired by the entrance elevation of Christopher Wren's Saint Paul's Cathedral in London. The 1739 Turgot map of Paris shows the church without Oppenord's crossing bell tower, but with Servandoni's pedimented façades mostly complete, still lacking, however, its two towers.

Unfinished at the time of his death in 1766, the work was continued by others, primarily the obscure Oudot de Maclaurin, who erected twin towers to Servandoni's design. Servandoni's pupil Jean Chalgrin rebuilt the north tower (1777–1780), making it taller and modifying Servandoni's baroque design to one that was more neoclassical, but the French Revolution intervened, and the south tower was never replaced.[7] Chalgrin also designed the decoration of the chapels under the towers.

The principal façade now exists in somewhat altered form. Servandoni's pediment, criticized as classically incorrect because its width was based on the entire front rather than the size of the order on which it rested, was removed after it was struck by lightning in 1770 and replaced with a balustrade. This change and the absence of the belvederes on the towers bring the design closer in spirit to that of the severely classical east front of the Louvre.[6] A double colonnade, Ionic order over Roman Doric with loggias behind them, unifies the bases of the corner towers with the façade; this fully classicising statement was made at the height of the rococo.[10]

Its revolutionary character was recognised by the architect and teacher Jacques-François Blondel, who illustrated the elevation of the façade in his Architecture françoise of 1752,[11] remarking: "The entire merit of this building lies in the architecture itself... and its greatness of scale, which opens a practically new road for our French architects." Large arched windows fill the vast interior with natural light. The result is a simple two-storey west front with three tiers of elegant columns. The overall harmony of the building is, some say, only marred by the two mismatched towers.

Another point of interest dating from the time of the Revolution, when Christianity was suppressed and Saint-Sulpice became a place for worship of the "Supreme Being", is a printed sign over the center door of the main entrance. One can still barely make out the printed words Le Peuple Français Reconnoit L'Etre Suprême Et L'Immortalité de L'Âme ("The French people recognize the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul")