Archeology, Modernity, and the Renouveau Catholique

by Michael Kiene, appearing in Volume 48

Jacques-Ignace Hittorff (1782-1867), a German-born leading French architect of the nineteenth century who contributed to the masterplan of Paris before Haussmann, exhibited a drawing at the 1833 Paris Salon. It depicted “une église moderne, composée d’après la disposition des basiliques primitives, adaptée aux besoins du culte et aux usages de notre époque” (“a modern church, inspired by the layout of the early basilicas but reinterpreted to suit contemporary worship and the practices of our time”). This was his initial project for Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, the mother church of the Vincentians, imposingly sited on a slope overlooking and dominating the old heart of Paris.

Just as the Vincentian family transformed the face of France, Saint-Vincent-de-Paul redefined the parameters of sacred design through its beautiful urban integration, the novelty of its polychrome decoration, and its layout, which adapted early Christian planning to modern usage with archaeological precision.

Engaged on his Grand Tour of Italy—which he termed his “pilgrimage to the authentic sources of art”—Hittorff was unable to submit designs for two of the most important church competitions in Paris. Thus, in 1823, the commission for Notre-Dame-de-Lorette was awarded to Louis-Hippolyte Lebas, though Hittorff was later involved in its interior decoration, creating enameled lava frontals inspired by early Christian models.

The second major commission, Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, was initially given to Hittorff’s future father-in-law, Jean-Baptiste Lepère. Lepère’s project is commemorated in the 1824 building medal. The two architects worked together harmoniously on the scaffolding of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul until Lepère’s death, with Hittorff penning a touching necrology for him. From the 1833 design exhibited at the Salon onward, Hittorff became the project’s leading designer. While still in Italy, when the commission was “in the air,” he filled his notebooks with drawings of models, particularly studies of basilicas and their decorations—everything he would one day propose for Saint-Vincent-de-Paul.

The Commission

This new church of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul was built upon the grounds of the first Vincentian motherhouse, called “Old” Saint-Lazare (meanwhile, the priests had moved to “New” Saint-Lazare on rue de Sèvres). Saint-Vincent-de-Paul is perhaps one of the best-documented churches in Paris, with an incredible corpus of approximately 800 preserved drawings and two volumes of the Journal de construction—a copybook of letters sent by the architect to his commissioners and collaborators. Together, these drawings and letters span half a century, from 1824 to 1867. This fabulous documentation constitutes Hittorff’s private archive, which survived the 1871 fire during the Paris Commune that destroyed the city hall and its municipal building archives. It is important to note that Hittorff was the “architect of the city of Paris” for this project, not the architect of the Vincentian order, though he was also commissioned by the Empress Eugénie in 1853 to design the orphanage and school of the Sisters of Charity in Paris.

Despite this rich documentation and important contributions in the two monographs on Hittorff authored by Karl Hammer (1968) and Donald David Schneider (1970), as well as the important exhibition on Saint-Vincent-de-Paul held at DePaul University (2010), the full depth of this overwhelming archive—difficult to explore in a single lifetime—remains to be fully studied. This article aims to provide a foundation for future investigations, though it cannot present the wealth of details that allow one to trace the genesis of each feature from its first conception to its finished form.

Saint-Vincent-de-Paul: Showpiece in the Center of Urban and Religious Renewal

Programmatically, Saint-Vincent-de-Paul was conceived as the religious center of a new urban quarter, sometimes labelled Nouvelle Athènes (New Athens). Its Ionic portico, praised for its archaeological rigor by Nicolas Auguste Thumeloup in 1842, embodied the transfer of Athenian models to Paris. He remarked in his Leçons élémentaires d’architecture: “The Ionic portico of Greek architecture of the church of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul is one of the first buildings in Paris where the style of the monuments of Athens was conscientiously studied.”

The toponym for the quarter of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul was coined in 1823 by scholar Dureau de la Malle who would later present a paper by Hittorff at the Academy on the—surprisingly—Gothic pointed arch (1830). He applied the name New Athens to a new residential development on the slopes of the Saint-Georges district. This area, which succeeded a quarter known for its rural cabarets, soon turned into a congregation of the Republic of Letters forming the core of the Parisian Romantic movement.

The appellation, alongside structures like the portico of the Saint-Vincent-de-Paul church, reflected a contemporary Græcomania. This philhellenism, fueled by the Greek War of Independence from 1821, directly informed the suburb’s aesthetic and nominative identity.

This portico, néo-grec in style, rooted in Hittorff’s studies of classical Greek temple design, is likewise a masterpiece of engineering. Erecting such bold, towering columns on a steep hill presented a significant challenge, as dozens of drawings attached to complicated foundations and other construction problems make clear. What appears most ancient, looking backward, is simultaneously most modern—a manifesto of the modernité of Parisian architecture.

The Basilican Plan

In architecture, the term basilica has been applied to buildings for thousands of years and has undergone substantial variations. In antiquity, a basilica was a large public building with multiple functions, its name derived from certain early royal buildings (βασιλεύς, basileus meaning king in Greek). These buildings were traditionally rectangular, with a focus at one end, often featuring a semicircular apse for the ruler’s chair.

The early Church often adopted these royal buildings, sometimes disused, for liturgical meetings, hence the transfer of the name. This basilican pattern is distinct from the cruciform plan, which is more characteristic of Romanesque or Gothic churches.

The architecture of Paris had focused on basilicas since the mid-eighteenth century. A shortlist includes Saint-Pierre du Gros Caillou by Hippolyte Godde (1826), Notre-Dame de la Nativité de Bercy by André Châtillon (1826), Notre-Dame de Bonne Nouvelle (1830), Saint-Denys du Saint-Sacrement (1835), and Notre-Dame de Lorette by Hippolyte Lebas (1836). Unlike these churches, which have three naves (a high central nave flanked by two lower side aisles), Saint-Vincent-de-Paul presents itself as a five-aisled basilica with two lower side aisles on each side, akin to the most prestigious churches of the West, such as Saint Peter’s in Rome, Notre-Dame in Paris, or, significant for the Cologne-born Hittorff, Cologne Cathedral. At Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, side chapels are integrated in such a way that the church gains a broad and imposing spatial impact.

Hittorff was nearly a witness to the 1823 fire that destroyed Saint Paul Outside the Walls in Rome. He visited the smoldering ruins the next morning before continuing his Grand Tour to Sicily. On his return journey to Paris, which included a second visit to Rome, he became acquainted with the first projects for rebuilding this important early Christian basilica. He returned to Paris as one of the best-informed experts on early Christian architecture, perfectly positioned to contribute to the debates of the Renouveau catholique. At the heart of this movement was a simple but powerful formula: to reuse the basilica form, mirroring the strategy of the early Christians who also emerged and built within a dominant pagan society.

Adaptations of the Original Design

In the final version of the design for Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, for which Hittorff took over leadership in coordination with his father-in-law, he incorporated elements conceived by Lepère. These included, for the façade, the hexastyle Ionic portico of a Greek temple and, in the nave, the change to a five-aisle layout. Both architects agreed on this transformation. Indeed, their families shared the same house on Rue Lamartine, so there is no reason to suppose a controversy between them.

However, Hittorff made a decisive modification to Lepère’s façade, equipping it with two towers instead of the single bell tower originally planned at the choir. This twin-tower motif had been a favored feature in Parisian architecture since Notre-Dame. The church of Saint-Sulpice, with two towers in the project presented in 1732 by Jean Nicolas Servandoni, is one of the most famous examples. Hittorff preserved the basilican plan of the building as defined by Lepère in his 1824 project, a trend observable in Paris since the mid-eighteenth century in churches like Saint-Philippe-du-Roule (1784) by Jean-François Chalgrin or the aforementioned Notre-Dame-de-Lorette.

In the church’s interior layout, the treatment of the side chapels (four on each side)—which Hittorff enclosed with beautifully designed railings—created a different spatial interpretation than Lepère’s. This plan type, observable at Saint Peter’s in Rome, Notre-Dame in Paris, and Cologne Cathedral was highly valued in the mid-nineteenth century, notably during the contemporary reconstruction of Saint-Paul-Outside-the-Walls (1823–1854) in Rome.

Despite his explicit reference to the Sicilian cathedral of Monreale—of which Hittorff brought back sets of drawings in 1824—Saint-Vincent-de-Paul has no Gothic arcades. Instead, it features a two-tiered colonnade of Ionic and Corinthian orders. Galleries cover the side aisles, while a flat, open, trussed roof, supported by concealed iron frameworks, crowns the building in the manner of an early Christian basilica. It is worth noting that, at the same time, Hittorff was constructing the Panorama building on the Champs-Élysées using iron elements. Indeed, the use of metal had been a constant feature of his work since his early involvement with the Halle au blé, the civic granary.

The modernité of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul lies in its “unity of creation,” a concept dear to Hittorff. This unified conception of architecture and decoration led Félix Pigeory to describe the church as “one of the finest works of modern times in this genre.” In the decorative program that Hittorff sent to Claude-Philibert Barthelot de Rambuteau, the prefect of the Seine, in January 1838 (a program later published and co-signed by Lepère in the review L’Artiste in 1842), he emphasized the necessity of an overall conception as a guarantee of the building’s final harmony.

The program submitted to Rambuteau urged the administration not to engage, as was customary, a multitude of artists whose diverse styles would harm architectural unity. This had been the case at Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, where some twenty artists were employed for the painted decorations.

Naturally, the 1838 decorative program also allowed Hittorff to put into practice his revival of polychrome architecture through various techniques. The polychromy of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul resulted from multiple skills, from encaustic “antique-style” painting to stained glass, and even the use of the modern technique of lava painting for the decoration of the porch.

Hittorff and Lepère were convinced they were creating an exceptional building. This conviction emerges clearly from the published version (1842) of the 1838 program, where they counter Rambuteau’s reservations with unflinching confidence: “Set this inevitable disappointment against the prospect of linking your name to works that may, for posterity, achieve the renown of Pericles’ Athens, the halls of the Vatican, or the cloister of the Carthusians, and you will not hesitate, Monsieur le Préfet, on the course to take.”

Engravings depicting Saint-Vincent-de-Paul in the years following its completion show the building—still free of the encroaching urban fabric—in a dominant and impressive position. Hittorff paid particular attention to the church’s staircase, conceiving it as an amphitheater adapted from the staircase of the Trinità dei Monti (1726) in Rome by Francesco De Sanctis. It featured a central ramp with an intermediate landing, flanked by horseshoe-shaped side accesses and bordered by marble balustrades, cast-iron lamps, and plantings, all leading up to the church from the lower Rue La Fayette.

Conclusion

Saint-Vincent-de-Paul stands as a monument of profound significance in nineteenth-century architectural history. As one of the most thoroughly documented ecclesiastical projects of the era, its extensive archive provides an unparalleled window into the complex processes of design, negotiation, and construction that defined modern architectural practice. The church represents a paradigmatic intersection of multiple powerful forces: the archaeological rigor derived from Hittorff’s firsthand study of classical and early Christian sites; a commitment to liturgical reform that sought to adapt ancient basilican plans to contemporary Catholic worship; a conscious engagement with urban modernity as the symbolic centerpiece of the Nouvelle Athènes quarter; and the pioneering polychromy that challenged the monochromatic neoclassical tradition.

The legacy of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul extends far beyond its physical presence in Paris. Its true innovation, however, lies in Hittorff’s application of a “unity of creation,” a holistic philosophy that integrated structure, decoration, and urban context into a single, coherent work of art. This principle allowed him to navigate the tension between historical precedent and contemporary need.

Ultimately, Saint-Vincent-de-Paul is a building of sophisticated duality. It is rooted in tradition with archaeological precision, yet it synthesized these historical models through a modern lens of engineering, urban planning, and integrated design to create something new. It was not a mere revival but a transformative reinterpretation. By seamlessly uniting these elements within a single, cohesive vision, Hittorff did not just design a church; he created a powerful embodiment of the concept of modernité itself, demonstrating how the past could be harnessed to forge a distinct and progressive architectural identity for a new age.