Jean-Antoine Alavoine (4 January 1778 – 15 November 1834) was a French architect best known for his column in the

Place de la Bastille The Place de la Bastille is a square in Paris where the Bastille prison once stood, until the storming of the Bastille and its subsequent physical destruction between 14 July 1789 and 14 July 1790 during the French Revolution. No vestige of the ...

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

(1831–1840), the

July Column The July Column (french: Colonne de Juillet) is a monumental column in Paris commemorating the Revolution of 1830. It stands in the center of the Place de la Bastille and celebrates the — the 'three glorious' days of 27–29 July 1830 tha ...

to memorialize those fallen in the Revolution of 1830. The column, consciously larger-scaled than the column in the

Place Vendôme The Place Vendôme (), earlier known as Place Louis-le-Grand, and also as Place Internationale, is a square in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, France, located to the north of the Tuileries Gardens and east of the Église de la Madeleine. It i ...

, has a capital freely based on the Corinthian order, with exaggerated corner volutes flanking putti holding swags, a complicated and somewhat incoherent design that found no imitators. However, in 1813 working with another architect, Bridan, Alavoine had designed to Napoleon's orders, under the direction of

Ambroise Tardieu Ambroise Tardieu (2 March 1788, in Paris – 17 January 1841, in Paris) was an eminent French cartographer and engraver, and is celebrated for his version of John Arrowsmith's 1806 map of the United States. About Tardieu's son, Auguste A ...

, a colossal elephant fountain, the

Elephant of the Bastille The Elephant of the Bastille was a monument in Paris which existed between 1813 and 1846. Originally conceived in 1808 by Napoléon I, the colossal statue was intended to be created out of bronze and placed in the Place de la Bastille, but only ...

. This monument was intended for the same Place, to be constructed with a cast-bronze skin over a framework. The statue, in a circular pool, complete with a bronze ''mahout'' on its shoulders, would contain a staircase by means of which visitors could admire the view from its

howdah A howdah, or houdah (Hindi: हौदा ''haudā''), derived from the Arabic (hawdaj), which means "bed carried by a camel", also known as ''hathi howdah'' (''hāthī haudā'', हाथी हौदा), is a carriage which is positioned on ...

. The monument was actually erected, but in staff, a moderately weather-resistant plaster, which lasted until 1846 before it was torn down, to great local relief. Alavoine's hothouse for the botanical garden of M. Boursault, at Yerres, near Brunoy, was illustrated in Jean-Charles Krafft, ''Recueil d'architecture civile : contenant les plans, coupes et élévations des châteaux, maisons de campagne, et habitations rurales, jardins anglais, temples, chaumières, kiosques, ponts, etc., situés, aux environs de Paris...'' (Paris 1812) Plate XLVII, as well as a bridge for M. Hypolitte, in the park at Cassan (Plate XLII). In the early stages of the Gothic Revival in France, he produced a design for the spire of Rouen Cathedral in 1823, based upon the spire of Salisbury Cathedral (Glaser).

External links

Alavoine's 1813 watercolor design for the elephant monument, Place de la Bastille.
Watercolor of the elephant project
Louvre, inv. no. 23521

by

David d'Angers Pierre-Jean David (12 March 1788 – 4 January 1856) was a French sculptor, medalist and active freemason.Initiated in ""Le Père de famille"" Lodge in Angers He adopted the name David d'Angers, following his entry into the studio of the painter ...

, 1833. Inscribed "Alavoine architecte". {{DEFAULTSORT:Alavoine, Jean-Antoine 1778 births 1834 deaths 19th-century French architects

Further reading

External links