Le Panthéon

Le Panthéon is a neo-classical monument, the function of which has changed with the times. It is located on the Left Bank of the River Seine in the Latin Quarter (5th arrondissement) of Paris. King Louis XV of France, wanted a church built in honour of Sainte Geneviève, patron saint of Paris. The architect Jacques-Germain Soufflot was hired, and he designed it in the classical style. It has many similarities with the Pantheon in Rome: the circulation of light within the building bears comparison with that from the oculus of the Roman Pantheon.

Artists

Jules Eugène Lenepveu

Jeanne d'Arc in Rheims at the time of king Charles VII's coronation - La vie de Jeanne d'Arc (1886-1890) is patriotic in tone with the red, blue and white of the tricolour. The floral motif of the fleur-de-lis is also in evidence. The centre panel depicts the coronation of Charles VII in the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Reims in 1429 through the efforts of Joan of Arc.
Jeanne d'Arc, shepherdess
Jeanne d'Arc in armor before Orléans
Jeanne at the stake

Henry-Léopold Lévy (1840-1904)

Charlemagne couronné "The Coronation of Charlemagne" (1881). Charlemagne became King of the Franks in 771. He immediately set about strengthening the boundaries of the Frankish lands along the Pyrenees against the incursions of the Arabs in Spain and defeated the Lombards in Northern Italy, who were threatening the existence of the Papacy in Rome. He was crowned in Rome by Pope Leo on Christmas Day, 800 making him the first Western Roman emperor in more than 300 years.

Raoul Dufy (1877-1953)

Le Panthéon et Saint-Etienne-du-Mont (c. 1903-1906) is a painting by the French Fauvist painter.

Timeline

1791 - Le Panthéon completed. The Constituent Assembly of the Revolution decided by decree to transform the church into a temple, and it was adapted by architect Quatremère de Quincy (1755-1849) to its new function.
1811 - Emperor Napoléon I commissioned the fresco representing the Glorification of Sainte Geneviève.
1836 - François Pascal Simon Gérard (1770-1837) completed the decoration of the cupola.
1851 - Panthéon Clock established by the physicist Jean Bernard Léon Foucault to illustrate the rotation of the earth. It uses a Foucault pendulum that is bolted to the Pantheon Dome.
March 1874 - Philippe de Chennevières the government’s Director of Fine Arts, established a decorative programme of historical subjects with tableaux of the Catholic Church and French monarchy.

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