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Petit-Radel, Louise-François
(b Paris, 22 July 1739; d Paris, 7 Nov 1808). French architect. He was a student of Charles de Wailly and won 3rd prize at the Académie Royale dArchitecture, Paris, in 1763 and he then went to Italy. On his return, he became architect of the Royal Treasury and the Palais Bourbon, and later an Architecte du Roi. His works included the remodelling of the 16th-century church of St Médard (1784), where he changed the columns of the choir to a Doric order based on the temples at Paestum, and he built an apsidal chapel in cyclopean style. He also designed the Talaru tenements (1785) in the Faubourg Poissonnière, Paris. He exhibited regularly at the Salon from 1793 to 1806, mostly drawings of imaginary architecture in a Piranesian manner. During the First Empire he became a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts (see PARIS, §VI, 3(iv)) and, in 1803, one of the three inspectors appointed to the department of Bâtiments Civils. He also built several abattoirs in Paris. In 1803 Petit-Radel presented his writings on Greek and Roman architecture to the Académie des Beaux-Arts and published his memoirs describing the Revolutionary projects of the Assemblée Nationale and the restoration of the Panthéon in Paris (see PARIS, §V, 9). Several of his drawings survive (London, RIBA; Paris, Mus. A. Déc.).
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