Academic literature on the topic 'Petit Hôtel de Villar'

Critics have long attested to the various irregularities of Dom Juan ou le Festin de pierre, one of Molière's most unusual plays. In its time, according to W. D. Howarth, it was regarded as “a curious freak.” Numerous mysteries surround the creation and production of Dom Juan. Molière wrote it to fill in a gap created by the recent interdiction of Le Tartuffe ou l'Imposteur at a time when he needed a successful play to dress up a somewhat limited and worn-out repertory. In searching for a success, it was natural that Molière should choose the highly popular Don Juan theme. Following the lead of Tirso de Molina in Spain and of Cicognini and Giliberto in Italy, the French were taking their turn: Dorimon's Le Festin de pierre ou le Fils criminel premiered in Lyon in 1658; the same year the Italian actors mounted their own commedia dell'arte version called Il convitato di pietra in Paris in the theatre of the Petit Bourbon which they shared with Molière; and the actor Villiers's version, which had the same title as Dorimon's, premiered at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1659. It is quite possible that all three played concurrently in Paris in the early 1660s, and Molière and his actors may well have gone to see their competitors' renditions.

Abstract Members of the Parisian financial elite, Meyer Joseph Cahen d’Anvers (1804–1881) and his descendants belonged to an Ashkenazi community rooted in Germany and Belgium. In the late nineteenth century, as targets of the anti-Semitic press, the Cahen d’Anvers family experienced the consequences of the Dreyfus Affair and the horrors of the racial laws. In an earlier generation, the family adopted what could be defined as a ‘top-down’ model of integration. This essay focuses on its mechanisms and development, in relation to the construction of the family’s national and cultural identity. After tracing the patriarch’s origins, the text analyses the properties and collections of Cahen d’Anvers and explores their influence upon the subsequent development of the family’s place in society. As a showcase for their public identity, the Château de Nainville (Essonne) and the Petit Hôtel de Villars (Paris) distilled, in their architecture, furnishings and collections, Meyer Joseph’s civil rights and ambitions.

Founding member of a banking network related to the actual BNP Paribas Group, Meyer Joseph Cahen (1804-1881), adopted the “d’Anvers” when he settled in Paris in 1849. Born in Bonn, of an Ashkenazi family, he made his fortune in the Belgian city to which he associated his name, and he continued his career in France. Owner of Nainville’s castle (Essonne) and of the Petit Hôtel de Villars (Paris), he became a naturalized French citizen in 1865. The next year, he obtained the title of Count, bestowed upon him by the King of Italy Victor-Emmanuel II, thanks to the economic support he offered to the Italian Unification. Nineteen years later, King Humbert I surpassed his predecessor and raised Meyer Joseph’s eldest son, Édouard (1832-1894), to the status of Marquis of Torre Alfina. If his siblings – Emma (1833-1901), Louis (1837-1922), Raphaël (1841-1900) and Albert (1846-1903) – enrooted their pathways in the French capital, the eldest lived between Florence, Naples and Rome: he was one of the great investors involved in the urban renovation of the Italian capital, after the fall of the papacy. In France, as well as in Italy, art, and especially architecture, served to legitimize the recent nobility of a family that wished to express the fullness of its civil rights. As targets of the anti-Semitic press, the Cahen d’Anvers family experienced the consequences of the Dreyfus Affair and the horrors of the racial laws. Before the latter, they adopted what could be defined as a “top-down model of integration”. This thesis focuses on its mechanisms and development. After tracing the patriarch’s origins, it analyses the family’s matrimonial policies and it continues with an exploration of Cahen d’Anvers’ “choices” in the vast field of culture. In their salons, the readers will meet Guy de Maupassant, Paul Bourget, Marcel Proust and Gabriele D’Annunzio, as well as Auguste Renoir and Léon Bonnat. Twelve mansions offered a perfect stage for these intellectual gatherings. As a public manifestation of the family’s economic and social power, the historicist eclecticism of these properties aimed to represent the owners as a new phalanx of the old nobility. While Forge-Philippe’s manor (Wallonia), Gérardmer’s chalet (Vosges) and Villa della Selva (Umbria) expressed a certain openness to the twentieth century novelties, the three residences rented by the family (Hôtel du Plessis-Bellière, Paris; Palazzo Núñez-Torlonia, Rome; Château de la Jonchère, Yvelines) and the two properties of Meyer Joseph, as well as Rue de Bassano’s mansion (Paris) or the castles of Champs (Seine-et-Marne), Bergeries (Essonne) and Torre Alfina (Latium) dressed up their nineteenth century spaces with Ancien Régime motifs. Thanks to their historical knowledge and taste, the architects Destailleur, Giuseppe Partini and Eugène Ricard, as well as the landscapers Henri and Achille Duchêne, were able to bend the Middle Age, the Renaissance and the 18th century’s “grammars” to their patrons’ taste and ambitions.