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Founded: 1768-1772Category: Religious sites in Germany
Historical period: Emerging States (Germany)
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The mendicant order of Augustinian hermits had a monastery in the Augustinerstrasse from 1260 until 1802. The one-aisled church was newly constructed, together with the monastery, from 1768 to 1772. The Diocesan Priests’ Seminary has been located here since 1805. The ornamentation of the church is so rich because patrons generously supported the work: The Elector did not want a “peasants’ church” in his residence city. The façade shows the vivid forms of Main-Franconian baroque and a Coronation of the Virgin by the Mainz sculptor Nikolaus Binterim. In the interior, the painter Johann Baptist Enderle from Donauwörth glorified the life of the Father of the Church, Augustine, in large, bright ceiling frescos. Johann Heinrich Stumm built the divided organ with the centre window in1773; it is one of the few surviving instruments of this dynasty of organ builders.
A lime wood sculpture from 1420 smiles out of a niche between the south side altars: Mary with the Child Jesus playing – an unusual work of Gothic art in its brightness which is assigned to the “soft style”. The highly venerated miraculous image was rescued from the burning Church of Our Lady in 1793. In the high altar is an iconographic rarity: At the death of Christ, God the Father lets “Mankind’s certificate of debt” be torn up by a putto.
References:The famous Italian Medici family have given two queens to France: Catherine, the spouse of Henry II, and Marie, widow of Henry IV, who built the current Luxembourg palace. Maria di Medici had never been happy at the Louvre, still semi-medieval, where the fickle king, did not hesitate to receive his mistresses. The death of Henry IV, assassinated in 1610, left the way open for Marie's project. When she became regent, she was able to give special attention to the construction of an imposing modern residence that would be reminiscent of the Palazzo Pitti and the Boboli Gardens in Florence, where she grew up. The development of the 25-hectare park, which was to serve as a jewel-case for the palace, began immediately.
The architect, Salomon de Brosse, began the work in 1615. Only 16 years later was the palace was completed. Palace of Luxembourg affords a transition between the Renaissance and the Classical period.
In 1750, the Director of the King's Buildings installed in the wing the first public art-gallery in France, in which French and foreign canvases of the royal collections are shown. The Count of Provence and future Louis XVIII, who was living in Petit Luxembourg, had this gallery closed in 1780: leaving to emigrate, he fled from the palace in June 1791.
During the French Revolution the palace was first abandoned and then moved as a national prison. After that it was the seat of the French Directory, and in 1799, the home of the Sénat conservateur and the first residence of Napoleon Bonaparte, as First Consul of the French Republic. The old apartments of Maria di Medici were altered. The floor, which the 80 senators only occupied in 1804, was built in the middle of the present Conference Hall.
Beginning in 1835 the architect Alphonse de Gisors added a new garden wing parallel to the old corps de logis, replicating the look of the original 17th-century facade so precisely that it is difficult to distinguish at first glance the old from the new. The new senate chamber was located in what would have been the courtyard area in-between.
The new wing included a library (bibliothèque) with a cycle of paintings (1845–1847) by Eugène Delacroix. In the 1850s, at the request of Emperor Napoleon III, Gisors created the highly decorated Salle des Conférences, which influenced the nature of subsequent official interiors of the Second Empire, including those of the Palais Garnier.
During the German occupation of Paris (1940–1944), Hermann Göring took over the palace as the headquarters of the Luftwaffe in France, taking for himself a sumptuous suite of rooms to accommodate his visits to the French capital. Since 1958 the Luxembourg palace has been the seat of the French Senate of the Fifth Republic.