Jacques-Germain Soufflot and the Relationship Between Rules and Taste

The resounding quarrel between Jacques-Germain Soufflot (1713–1780)Soufflot, Jacques-Germain and Pierre Patte (1723–1814)Patte, Pierre, which lasted from 1770 to 1780, concerns the stability of the dome of the Sainte-Geneviève church, the current Parisian Pantheon. Patte opened hostilities by publishing a pamphlet intended to “mathematically prove” that the columns already erected to support this dome were insufficient to support a dome whatever its shape and size. We could say, to schematize in geometrical terms, that this quarrel set the “old” PattePatte, Pierre against to the “modern” SoufflotSoufflot, Jacques-Germain: it opposes a supporter of a pyramidal or triangular conception of stability to a defender of a more subtle and liberating stability based on the law of the parallelogram of forces.