| Eugène Viollet-le-duc |
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Information About ™Eugène Viollet-le-duc |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT EUGèNE VIOLLET-LE-DUC | |
| 1814 births | |
| 1879 deaths | |
| french architects | |
| french architecture writers | |
| french military personnel of the franco-prussian war | |
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EARLY YEARS Viollet-le-Duc's father was a civil servant in Paris who collected books and his mother's Friday salons drew and refused to enter the '' Ecole Des Beaux-Arts ''. AS AN ARCHITECTURAL RESTORER In the early 1830s , the beginnings of a movement for the restoration of medieval buildings appeared in France . Viollet-le-Duc, returning in 1835 from a study trip to Italy , was ordered by Prosper Merimée to restore the Romanesque abbey of Vezelay . This work marked the beginning of a long series of restorations; Viollet-le-Duc's restorations at Notre Dame de Paris brought him into national attention. Viollet-le-Duc applied the lessons he had derived from Gothic Architecture , seeing beneath the atmospheric allure that drew his British contemporaries to especially what he conceived of its rational structural systems, to modern building materials such as cast iron. He practiced as archaeologically precise (for his time) a style of restoration as he could manage, but his own designs were remarkably innovative. His approach to both medieval and modern architecture was severely rational, in keeping with his own unsentimental appreciation of the Gothic achievement. At the same time, in the cultural atmosphere of the at Notre-Dame in 1862, and yet Napoleon III also commissioned designs for a luxuriously appointed railway carriage from Viollet-le-Duc, in 14th-century Gothic style (Exhibition 1965) Among his restorations were:
Restoration of the Château of Pierrefonds, reinterpreted by Viollet-le-Duc for Napoleon III , was interrupted by the departure of the Emperor in 1870 . He died in Lausanne in 1879 An exhibition, ''Eugène Viollet-le-Duc 1814-1879'' was presented in Paris, 1965. LEGACY Some of his restorations, such as that of the castle of Pierrefonds , were highly controversial because they did not aim so much at accurately recreating a historical situation as much as at creating a "perfect building" of medieval style. Modern conservation practice finds Viollet-le-Duc's restorations too free, too personal, too interpretive, but many of the monuments he restored would have otherwise been lost. The famous Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí was strongly influenced by the Gothic architecture revival of Viollet-le-Duc. PUBLICATIONS Throughout his career Viollet-le-Duc made notes and drawings, not only for the buildings he was working on, but also on Romanesque , Gothic and Renaissance buildings that were to be soon demolished. His notes were helpful in his published works. His study of medieval and Renaissance periods was not limited to architecture, but extended to furniture, clothing, musical instruments, armament and so forth. All this work was published, first in serial, and then as full-scale books, as:
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