François-Joseph Bélanger

François-Joseph Bélanger (French pronunciation: ​[fʁɑ̃swa ʒɔzɛf belɑ̃ʒe]) (12 April 1744 – 1 May 1818) was a French architect and decorator working in the Neoclassic style.

Born in Paris, he studied at the Académie Royale d'Architecture (1764–1766) where he worked under Julien-David Le Roy and Pierre Contant d'Ivry, but did not win the coveted Prix de Rome that would have sent him to study at Rome; however, through Le Roy's circle he was introduced to some advanced neoclassical designers, such as Charles-Louis Clérisseau, Robert Adam's drawing-master, recently arrived from Rome, and was admitted to the Académie at the age of twenty. He began his career in 1767 working at the Menus Plaisirs du Roi designing ephemeral decorations for court fêtes, and by 1777 he was its director. In this position, he was in charge of the funeral preparations for Louis XV and the coronation coach of Louis XVI. The jewel cabinet he designed for the wedding of the Dauphin to Marie-Antoinette has not survived. However, a maquette of another design that had been also entered into the competition, made of wax and painted paper on a wooden frame, (now at the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore), shows the style of the cabinets that were made at the time. It is Neoclassical taste, with caryatid demi-figures and framed medallions in blue and white

Ten years later he purchased the position of chief architect to Monsieur, the comte d'Artois, brother of Louis XVI. For him Bélanger designed and constructed the party pavilion Château de Bagatelle in the Bois de Boulogne, 1777, winning his patron's bet with the Queen by completing the house in sixty-three days (and nights) and introducing décors in the style Étrusque. Bélanger constructed the Folie Saint James, a French landscape garden, in Neuilly from 1777 to 1780, and worked for the comte d'Artois at the Château of Maisons-Lafitte. During the Revolution he spent some time in the prison of Saint-Lazare.

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