Jean Laurent Legeay

Jean Laurent Legeay, also Le Geay and other notations ( * after 1710 in Paris; † after 1786 in Rome or France) was a French architect, painter and engraver.

Life and work

Jean Laurent Legeay studied at the Paris Académie royale d'architecture and received in 1732 for the design of a church portal, the Prix de Rome. With the award a scholarship to study in Italy at the Académie de France à Rome was connected, which was housed from 1725 to 1803 in the Palazzo Mancini on the Corso. With several years of delay but he held until 1739 in Rome and returned again in 1742 to Paris, where he was probably active until 1748, designed theater sets for the Jesuits and gave architecture courses. Among his pupils were, among others, Étienne -Louis Boullée, Charles de Wailly (1730-1798), Pierre- Louis Moreau- Desproux (1727-1793) and Marie -Joseph Peyre ( 1730-1785 ). In other sources is believed that he already came to Berlin in 1745. Busy is the collaboration with Georg Wenceslaus von Knobelsdorff on the design of the built in 1747-1773 according to the model of the Roman Pantheon St. Hedwig's Church, today's St. Hedwig's Cathedral, which he in 1747 in a comprehensive seven-sheet publication of engravings published under the title L' église catholique à qui se bastit Berlin sur les dessins du roi [A 1]. Whether he himself was also involved in the planning, never could be determined with certainty, and is completely ruled out in recent studies. Designed by him for festive decorations foundation stone on July 13, 1747 published Legeay, who described himself as Architecte et Peintre [A 2], as an etching and published the Journal on September 9 of the same year in the " Berlinischen news ". A previously published two days after the ceremony special edition of the newspaper went to Italian translation with a laudatory note to the Vatican in Rome: The excellence of the music, the crowd of spectators, the beautiful decoration of this building, invented and executed by Mr. lyre, a famous architects, [ ... ] all this together was a nobler, a more precious, a frömmeres drama than you ever seen before. In 1751 he was appointed an honorary member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Arts and mechanical sciences.

On October 16, 1748 Legeay entered as a builder in the service of the Duke Christian Ludwig II of Mecklenburg- Schwerin, who in 1752 appointed him to the court building. As is apparent from an old draft, he led the old hunting lodge Kleinow, 1754 Ludwig desire to build a arbor and was in the early 1750s to the design of the garden according to plans of the Schwerin castle gardener Gallas, among others, the line for the installation of fountains commissioned. In addition to painting and stucco work, he made further decisive designs for the performed in the years 1748 to 1756 restructuring of the Schwerin castle gardens with the baroque water parterre in the form of a two- channel cross and flanking lawns, tree roosts as well as the implementation in 1752, sculptures by Balthasar Permoser. After his designs in 1750 also created a comedy house, called the Baroque hall in Rostock, built adjacent to the ducal palace in 1714 at today's University Square. The hall building dominate a small room in the basement and a ballroom with rococo decoration, which almost occupies the entire upper floor.

After long disputes with the state architect AW Horst Legeay asked for his resignation, following 1756 the reputation of Frederick II at the Prussian court. With the involvement of the court gardener Joachim Ludwig Heydert according to his plans 1764-1766 was named after her figurative decoration putti wall below the picture gallery in Potsdam's Park Sanssouci. A year earlier he was called to plan the 1763-1769 built the New Palace and the associated farm buildings, the so-called communs. The involvement of the architect Johann Gottfried Büring, Heinrich Ludwig Manger and was added later Carl von Gontard, the proportion Legeays at guest palace is not exactly definable. However, records Legeay responsible for the overall plant, which was built 1766-1769 communs with the associated semi-circular colonnade in the style of classical baroque. At the request of Frederick II Gontard revised the draft to start construction again and made ​​changes to the façade design and the Colonnade. In the context Legeay quarreled with Frederick II, so he left Prussia in 1765 and moved to England.

In London he made a design for the palace and park in Ludwigslust and sent him to the son and successor of the late 1756 Mecklenburg Duke Christian Ludwig II, Friedrich, who had converted the plant by the architect Johann Joachim Busch to his residence. In his plan Legeay proposed a Baroque park, he abwandelte in some areas within the meaning English Romantic landscape gardening. After that he only worked as an engraver. In addition to the above-mentioned series of engravings with the Berlin St. Hedwig's Cathedral, he published in 1767 six leaves Fontane by Laqua del inventione di Giovani Lorenzo Legeay, [A 3] 1768 six leaves Rovine inventione, [A 4] six leaves Tombeaux [A 5] and six leaves vasi, [A 6] which he published in 1770 under the title Collection de Divers subjects de Vases, Tombeaux, Ruines et Fontaines, Utiles Artistes, Inventée et Gravée par JL Le Geay, Architecte à Paris chez Mondhare [A 7] in Paris wherever he went back to 1770. In addition, he published six sheets entitled Fontaines Paris chez Huquier [A 8] and a leaf cartouche [A 9]. Towards the end of his life, Legeay was mainly interested in the invention of nautical equipment. From the south of France, St. Chignan at Narbonne, he requested the Duke of Mecklenburg Friedrich Franz I in September 1786 board, in order to live in Rome. Whether this was approved is unknown, as if he died in France or Italy.

By Jean Laurent Legeay there are few running buildings and garden design. His talent lay rather in designing and drawing. During his stay in Rome he studied the architecture of antiquity, which he presented imaginatively on engravings, like Piranesi's image compositions in the nature of the Caprices. The drawings and print series in suggestive architecture representations had an influence on the scholars of the Académie de France à Rome, the new perspective brought since the 1740s to ancient times when they return to the profane architecture of France, from which eventually developed the style of classicism.