Jacques Ignace Hittorff

Jacques Ignace Hittorff studied at Beaux-Arts de Paris. Training under Charles Percier Bassant and Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine is recorded. Philippe Cannissié is recorded as having studied under Jacques Ignace Hittorff. The recorded working language is German and French. The field of work recorded is architecture and civil engineering. Places of work recorded in the authority are Paris. Works named in the authority record are town hall of Paris 1st arrondissement, town hall of Paris 5th arrondissement, fontaine de la Grille du Coq and fontaines de la Concorde. Distinctions recorded are Royal Gold Medal and Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts order.

After serving an apprenticeship to a mason in his native city, he went in 1810 to Paris, and studied for some years at the Académie des Beaux-Arts while working concurrently as a draughtsman for Charles Percier. At the Académie, he was a favourite pupil of the government architect François-Joseph Bélanger, who employed him in the construction of one of the first cast-iron constructions in France, the cast-iron and glass dome of the grain market, Halle au Blé (1808–13). In 1814, Bélanger appointed Hittorff his principal inspector on construction sites. Succeeding Bélanger as government architect in 1818, Hittorff designed many important public and private buildings in Paris and also in the south of France. From 1819 to 1830, in collaboration with Jean-François-Joseph Lecointe he directed the royal fêtes and ceremonials, for which elaborate temporary structures were required, a post with a long history, which the two architects inherited from Bélanger. Hittorff also designed a new building for the Théâtre de l'Ambigu-Comique with Lecointe. After making architectural tours in Germany, England, Italy and Sicily, Hittorff published the result of his Sicilian observations in Architecture antique de la Sicile (3 volumes, 1826–1830; revised, 1866–1867), and also in Architecture moderne de la Sicile (1826–1835). • Illustration — Detail of Fontaines de la Concorde One of his important discoveries was that colour had been employed in ancient Greek architecture, a subject which he especially discussed in Architecture polychrome chez les Grecs (1830) and in Restitution du temple d'Empédocle à Sélinonte (1851). In accordance with the doctrines enunciated in these works, he was in the habit of making colour an important feature in most of his architectural designs. In 1833, Hittorff was entrusted with redesigning the Place de la Concorde, carried out in stages between 1833 and 1846. In 1836 the obelisk of Luxor was erected and the two Fontaines de la Concorde, one commemorating river navigation and commerce and the other ocean navigation and commerce, were placed on either side. At each angle of the square's extended octagon a statue was erected representing a French city: Bordeaux, Brest, Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Nantes, Rouen and Strasbourg. In 1833 he was also elected a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. With Thomas Leverton Donaldson and Charles Robert Cockerell, Hittorff was also a member of the committee formed in 1836 to determine whether the Elgin Marbles and other Greek statuary in the British Museum had originally been coloured; their conclusions were published in Transactions of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 1842. • Illustration — Cirque d'hiver in Paris