Despite Charles Percier’s staunch support of the Republican cause—as a preeminent designer during the French Revolution, Percier served on the committee mandated to replace the royal insignia in 1793—his approach remained remarkably similar to that of royal architects. His teacher Antoine-François Peyre and his mentor Pierre-Adrien Pâris, both of whom were trained and employed by the monarchy, provided a model and shaped the young Percier’s outlook.
Spanning a wide range of scales from diminutive ornamental designs to large urban planning schemes, his work combined Pâris’s dexterity as an ornament designer with Peyre’s skills in architectural composition. Percier’s production, like theirs, fulfilled the multifarious demands placed on architects by a court culture that the Revolution failed to obliterate.
