Mique, Richard

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Mique, Richard (1728–94). One of the creators of the Louis Seize style in C18 France, he was trained under J. -F. Blondel, and worked for a while at Nancy for Stanisław Leszczyński (1677–1766), exiled King of Poland (1704–9 and 1733–4). In 1766 he was called to Versailles by Leszczyński's daughter, Marie, Queen of King Louis XV (reigned 1715–74), where he designed the Ursuline Convent with its Church (completed 1772) derived from Palladio's Villa Capra near Vicenza. He also designed the Church of the Carmelites, St-Denis (1775), and the Chapel of the Hospice of St-Cloud (1788). In 1775 he succeeded Gabriel as premier architecte du Roi and, collaborating with Hubert Robert, designed the master-plan (1777) for the development of the Trianon at Versailles in the ‘English Taste’. He built the Temple de l'Amour, the Theatre, the Grotto with Cascade, the Belvedere, and the Picturesque Hameau du Trianon with its exposed timbers and rustic roofs (1778–82) that was a precedent for Nash's Blaise Hamlet, near Bristol (1811). The interiors of the petits appartements at Versailles (1779) were designed for Marie Antoinette (1755–93), Queen of France from 1774 (Méridienne, two Libraries, and the Cabinet Intérieur or Petit Salon), all in the Neo-Classical style, of which he was an under-sung master. He fell victim to the Guillotine during the Terror.

Bibliography

Builder (1980);
Kalnein & and Levey (1972);
Morey (1868);
Jane Turner (1996)