BÉLANGER, François-Joseph

French architect and landscape designer. He had a distinguished career as a royal architect at the courts of Louis XV and Louis XVI. Although his fame rests on his accomplishments as a landscape architect, his mercurial talents are perhaps best characterized in his drawings for interior decoration and court festivals.

After studying physics under the Abbé Nollet at the Collège de Navarre, Bélanger attended the Académie Royale d'Architecture in Paris between 1764 and 1766 where he worked under Julien-David Le Roy and Pierre Contant d'Ivry. He was not a successful student and left without achieving the illustrious Prix de RomeGLOSSARYA scholarship, founded concurrently with the French Academy in Rome (1666), that enabled prize-winning students at the Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris to spend a period (usually 4 years) in Rome at the state's expense. Prizes for architecture began to be awarded regularly in 1723, and prizes for engravers and musicians were added in the 19th century. The prizes were meant to perpetuate the academic tradition and during the 18th and 19th centuries winning the award was the traditional stepping stone to the highest honours for painters and sculptors. Many distinguished artists (as well as many nonentities) were Prix de Rome winners, notably David, Fragonard, and Ingres among painters and Clodion, Girardon, and Houdon among sculptors. The prizes are still awarded and the system has been adopted by other countries.. Nevertheless, under Le Roy's influence he was involved with the circle of Neo-classicalGLOSSARYRelating to the culture of ancient Greece and Rome (classical Antiquity). The classical world played a profoundly important role in the Renaissance, with Italian scholars, writers, and artists seeing their own period as the rebirth (the "renaissance") of classical values after the Middle Ages. The classical world was considered the golden age for the arts, literature, philosophy, and politics. Concepts of the classical, however, changed greatly from one period to the next. Roman literature provided the starting point in the 14th century, scholars patiently finding, editing and translating a wide range of texts. In the 15th century Greek literature, philosophy and art - together with the close study of the remains of Roman buildings and sculptures-expanded the concept of the classical and ensured it remained a vital source of ideas and inspiration. artists, including Charles-Louis Clérisseau, who had recently returned from Italy. In 1767 Bélanger became a Dessinateur du Roi at the Hôtel des Menus Plaisirs under Charles Michel-Ange Challe. Since the Menus Plaisirs were responsible for the temporary decorations and stage scenery for court festivities, Bélanger was involved with preparations for the marriage celebrations in 1770 of the Dauphin, the future Louis XVI. One of his first commissions (1769) was for a jewel cabinetGLOSSARYA small, private room where works of art, valuables and curiosities were kept and contemplated at leisure; over time the term was used for the collections themselves. Renaissance cabinets played an important role in the development of museums and art galleries. (destroyed) for the Dauphine Marie-Antoinette, and Pierre Gouthière was among those who helped make it. Later, in 1775, Bélanger became Inspecteur, responsible for establishing a studio at the Hôtel des Menus Plaisirs in which the collection of hardstones and marbles purchased by Louis Marie Augustin, Duc d'Aumont in c. 1770 was mounted.

From 1777 he worked for the comte d'Artois, the king's brother, in the château de Bagatelle in Bois de Boulogne, and in château de Maisons-Laffitte.

During the Revolution he was imprisoned in Saint-Lazare. In 1811, he reconstructed the domeGLOSSARYin architecture, hemispherical structure evolved from the arch, usually forming a ceiling or roof. of the Halle au Blé, the present Bourse.