Évrard Titon du Tillet

Évrard Titon du Tillet (January 1677 – 26 December 1762) is best known for his important biographical chronicle, Le Parnasse françois, composed of brief anecdotal vite of famous French poets and musicians of his time, under the reign of Louis XIV and the Régence.

Of Scottish origin, Évrard Titon du Tillet was the son of Maximilien Titon de Villegenon, seigneur d'Ognon, a secretary of the King and general manager of the armories under Louis XIV. He studied law before his father obliged him to embrace a military career. He was already a "captain of dragoons" at the age of twenty, when unfortunately for him, the long-awaited peace prevented him from advancing his career. He then purchased the sinecure of maître d'hôtel to the thirteen-year-old duchess of Burgundy, the future mother of Louis XV. Alas, in 1712, the Dauphine died of measles, and Titon du Tillet was unemployed for the second time. He was, however, soon named a provincial commissioner of war.

Titon du Tillet had the privilege of receiving the celebrities of his time, and from 1708 he was at work on an imposing project: to create a garden surrounding a monument, "the French Parnassus" (Le Parnasse françois), celebrating the glory of French poets and musicians under the reign of Louis XIV. He worked with the sculptor Louis Garnier, a pupil of François Girardon, to produce a model of the monument. A maquette in bronze for the project was completed in 1718. He also ordered a drawing by the painter Nicolas de Poilly, which was presented to Louis XV in 1723. The monument was to represent Mount Parnassus, ornamented with laurels and myrtle, with Louis XIV in the figure of Apollo at the summit, playing the lyre. On a slightly lower level the three Graces were represented with the features of Mmes des Houlières, de La Suze and de Scudéry. Lower down, surrounding the mountain, Pierre Corneille occupied the principal place, surrounded by Molière, Racine, Racan and Lully carrying medallions of Quinault, Segrais, La Fontaine, Boileau and Chapelle, the nine male Muses of the grand siècle. Unluckily, Titon du Tillet could not stop there: scattered among the bronze trees were to be seen further medallions of distinctly secondary figures, now slightly passé as musical taste had shifted towards the galante, choices that elicited from Voltaire the epigram

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