Armand-Claude Mollet. Floor plan and elevation of the Hôtel d’Évreaux (1718), Paris. Etching and engraving. From Jacques- François Blondel, Architecture françoise (1752 –1756). Typ 715.52.219 v.3, Houghton Library, Harvard University. Photo: Harvard University.

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JASON NGUYEN

In June 1733, the Count of Évreaux ordered an appraisal of his Parisian mansion located along the fashionable Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré . The document tallied the current market cost of his house and possessions in order to assess the value of his estate (he owned the building until his death in 1753). 1 Designed by the architect Armand-Claude Mollet, the Hôtel d’Évreux had been built between 1718 and 1722, and was already deemed to be one of the most striking hôtels particuliers of its day. The architect located the main block of the house between an entry court - yard (for the loading and unloading of carriages) and a rear garden that backed onto the leafy terrains of the Champs-Elysées. 2 The front elevation included a central pediment with symbols of war, trophies in relief, and columns and Corinthian pilasters befitting a high nobleman. The appraisal included a description of all of these components, but also more detailed information: dimensions and descriptions for each room, the woodwork, mirrors, and textiles lining the walls. In the Grand Salon, the appraisers mentioned the oak paneling and the inset decorative trophies by the ornamental sculptor Michel Lange, who added the bundled instruments of war to assert the count’s regal status. After tallying measurements with the going rate for building supplies, the reviewers estimated the contemporary cost of the house and its furnishings at 821,887 livres. The amount was impressive in its own right, given that the average savings for a Parisian laborer was roughly 800 livres, or 1/1,000 of the assessment. 3 This sum was apparently vindicated when Louis XV later purchased it as a gift for his mistress, the Marquise de Pompadour. 4 And the history of its architectural appreciation followed the mansion long past the ancien régime . After the French Revolution, the property entered into the hands of Napoléon I, and it has served as the official residence of the French president (today, the Élysée Palace) since 1848. The home’s exuberance was justified by early modern theories of architectural

Grey Room 71, Spring 2018, pp. 40–67. © 2018 Grey Room, Inc. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology 41

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/grey_a_00241 by guest on 02 October 2021 decorum, called co nvenance , which delineated the appropriate degree of embellish - ment based on the social status of the patron. 5 Louis Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne, the Count of Évreux, was born into one of France’s most esteemed noble families and served as a lieutenant in Louis XIV’s army. In his analysis of the home, the archi - tectural theorist Jacques-François Blondel explained, “These ornaments, joined with their grandeur, make known in a noble and imposing manner the residence of a person of the highest rank.” 6 Yet, if a classical theory of architectural decorum could explain that the nobility of a client demanded a richness of architectural materials, the tie between cost and value was much harder to maintain. In the original appraisal, the reviewers attached a four-page addendum that qualified the home’s market value and summarized the recent economic volatility to which such homes—and the décor-rich interior architecture—were being subjected: In 1717, 1718, and 1719, the majority of accommodations in Paris sold for less than they do now, as it was easy to find homes to purchase on the fly . . . and why most of them were then sold to take stock in the banknotes that were preferred to all other equities. . . . [T]he banknotes began in 1716, and by 1720, com - modity prices had increased dramatically because of the stock market crash. 7 The variations described in this note were all the products of an economic experi - ment that has become known as the Mississippi Bubble (1716–1720). In 1716, the controller-general of finances, John Law, introduced a banknote credit system based on expected tobacco revenue from Louisiana, allowing innumerable expenses on the private market that previously would have been unthinkable. 8 The Hôtel d’Évreux was one of many residences built in Paris by Law’s banknote scheme. In light of this, the 1733 cost estimate of this building constitutes a crucial document for tying classical theories of early modern architecture, such as co nvenance , with other aspects of the late French monarchy that historians have seen as prescient of global modernity, including speculative capitalism. This article looks at what these buildings cost and examines how their fluctuating market prices illustrate the volatility of a speculative credit economy premised on colonial resource extraction and the actions of the stock market. 9 Among the Parisian elite, this system fueled desires and anxieties regarding money and social rank that found their greatest manifestation in the construction of grand private residences. In this context, architecture and decoration were both an effect and a cause of the period’s economic instability. As the costliest of the arts, they were best suited to grant symbolic form to financial prosperity. 10 Yet, at the same time, the

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/grey_a_00241 by guest on 02 October 2021 depletion of stone, wood, and glass drained resources at home and helped generate inflation in the building market. Despite the Hôtel d’Évreux ’s impressive estimate in 1733, the reviewers surmised that the home would have cost double that amount at the height of the Mississippi Bubble, from 1719 to 1720, given the increased price of construction materials during those years. 11 The architectural history of the Mississippi Bubble is inseparable from the extraordinary circumstances of the reign of Louis XIV and the regency of Louis XV (1715–1723). When the Sun King died in September 1715, he left the kingdom in political and economic turmoil: an astounding 2.3 billion livres in debts, 77 million livres in annual deficits, and an insecure line of royal succession. 12 The king’s nephew, Philippe II, the Duke of Orléans, served as regent during the minority of Louis XV (the sole legitimate direct heir, born only in 1710), relocated the court from Versailles to Paris, and employed the Scottish economist Law to salvage the kingdom’s finances. Architects flocked to the opportunities presented by the credit market, buying land and building homes for sale or rent independent of known patrons, which generated a housing bubble of unprecedented scale. The economic experiment was a gamble, but it was wildly successful in terms of pure monetary gain from 1716 to 1720. The moment birthed the term millionaire to describe the prosperous investors who amassed fortunes seemingly overnight. 13 It was not uncommon, as the reviewers wrote, for families to sell their estates in exchange for shares in Law’s bank, placing their bets on the economic promises of France’s New World territories. Historians have long pointed to the Mississippi Bubble as one of the more significant political and economic crises to befall the kingdom before the French Revolution. 14 Less attention, however, has been paid to the specific buildings erected with Law’s banknote scheme. During this period of instability, royally and academically affiliated architects such as Mollet, Germain Boffrand, and Jacques V. Gabriel doubled as building developers and gambled as artist and client on the private residential market (catering to a noble and nonnoble clientele alike). Their exploits fostered the commercial dissemination of the rococo decorative style, called the style rocaille or the goût moderne by contemporary critics. 15 Katie Scott notes that the bubble encouraged a counterfeit culture, whereby nonnoble elites assumed the wealth and influence to purchase the luxuries of the aristocracy. 16 The following analysis diverges from the work of Scott and others by centering attention on the fluctuating value of architecture—in terms of materials (including their manufacturing and cost), representation (the integrity of architectural decorum), and money (the legal currency tendered).

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/grey_a_00241 by guest on 02 October 2021 Architecture, because of its very materiality, actualized the wealth acquired by Law’s banknote scheme by giving form to money while, at the same time, exacer - bating inflation. The speculative construction of grand residences threw early mod - ern theories of architectural decorum into conflict with a financial system driven by conjecture. On a theoretical level, the sequencing of speculative building con - struction contravened the traditional notion of co nvenance , under whose regime patronage necessarily preceded artistic creation. On an economic level, the initial success of Law’s system, as well as the profitability of the early residences built by its banknotes, implied a dramatic reorientation of financial thought, pinned to speculation on land values and the promise of natural resources abroad. Value thus became unstable, no longer based on trade in precious metals such as gold and sil - ver. 17 What made architecture so vulnerable to inflation and the eventual crash was also that which made it attractive to courtiers and financiers eager to memorialize their status and wealth—that is, the cost of materials that constituted its making. The rich use of marble, wood, metal, and glass connoted dignity and rank, but these resources were nevertheless commodities whose values, when annexed to a specu - lative economy, rose and fell much more dramatically than theretofore. The irony of this situation was everywhere to be discerned in period visual and material culture, including in satirical imagery, decorative prints, and even the ornamental motifs installed at the headquarters of Law’s bank.

Materials and Money under Louis XIV The economic crisis of the early eighteenth century was a direct consequence of Louis XIV’s unsustainable military and architectural spending, as well as the pro - tectionist trade policies that were intended to support homegrown manufacturing. These mercantile efforts relied on the old-fashioned belief that a state’s wealth was tied to the amount of precious metals in reserve. To raise capital, the kingdom sup - ported domestic resource harvesting, colonial expansion, and the waging of war to acquire land and financial reparations. The story begins with France’s imperial over - stretch at the end of the seventeenth century, because it sets the stage for the specu - lative capitalist system that would later emerge. 18 The ambitious (and ultimately reckless) economic model promoted by Louis XIV presumed a direct relationship between war, money, and the manufacturing of materials to make architecture. The pursuit of glory justified the king’s military battles abroad. Newly acquired territo - ries provided natural resources for the kingdom’s manufacturing programs. Military and industrial successes during the 1670s and 1680s prompted the building of

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/grey_a_00241 by guest on 02 October 2021 palaces and monuments whose construction provided a constant stream of work for architects, decorators, and craftsmen at the Bâtiments du Roi , the bureau that managed royal construction projects across the kingdom. Above all else, this system affirmed the belief that architecture and décor—being the arts literally made by the king - dom’s materials and manufacturing initiatives—were the media best suited to grant form to glory and grandeur. Louis XIV’s military ambitions and the successive expansions at Versailles exceeded the kingdom’s financial reserves in precious metals, however. During the fifty-four years of his personal reign (1661–1715), Louis XIV engaged no less than four major battles: the War of Devolution (1667–1668), the Franco-Dutch War (1672– 1678), the War of the League of Augsburg (1688–1697), and the War of Spanish Succession (1701–1714). 19 Initially, these endeavors expanded France’s borders and raised its political profile, but they required that the kingdom seek interest- accruing loans from noblemen, officers, and privileged financiers. Whereas the first two conflicts helped fuel domestic economic growth, the latter two sunk the crown into exorbitant debt (exacerbated by an agricultural recession linked to harvest fail - ures in the 1690s). Once the crown’s mercantile programs showed signs of unravel - ing, architecture was the first expense to be slashed, dragging the domestic economy down with it. The roots of eighteenth-century speculative capitalism were to be found at the heart of European mercantile trading and colonialism. To manage commercial trans - actions abroad, France sponsored the creation of the French East and West India Companies in 1664. The joint-stock corporations managed commercial activity in the Indian and Pacific Oceans (French East India Company) and along the Atlantic Coast and France’s New World colonies (French West India Company). The latter was replaced in 1684 by the Mississippi Company, which ultimately fell under the supervision of Antoine Crozat, a wealthy financier and the father-in-law to the Count of Évreux. Crozat came from a family of Toulouse merchants and became one of the wealthiest men in France (with an estimated fortune of 20 million livres) due in part to his early investment in overseas trading companies, including those tied to the Atlantic slave trade. 20 The British, Dutch, and French colonial empires lacked the gold and silver reserves held by the Spanish. The founding of the modern stock exchange in the seventeenth century, notably in Amsterdam and London, thus provided a venue for the market valuation of commercial goods. They established the prices for com - modities like spices, sugar, tobacco, and furs and brought different colonial powers

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/grey_a_00241 by guest on 02 October 2021 and trading enterprises into competition. 21 They also allowed the investment and trading of stocks and bonds by private individuals, which generated a secondary market in Europe that was physically detached from the act of resource exploitation. To manage the risks associated with maritime travel, marine insurance companies such as Lloyd’s in London and the Rotterdam Company in the Dutch Republic placed a premium on the chance that commercial goods (including slaves destined for the New World) might be lost at sea. 22 This, according to the historian Jonathan Levy, marked the beginning of a global risk economy, whereby the likelihood of peril itself became a commodity. 23 What was intended as a check on the market’s uncertainties quickly became a profitable industry in which investors could buy and sell shares independent of the commodities insured. Speculative capitalism traded in the sheer hopes of financial gain, detached from the material foundations that fueled its initial operations. The War of the League of Augsburg marked a turning point in Louis XIV’s mili - tary ambitions for glory and greatness. In the nine-year conflict, which lasted from 1688 to 1697, a united coalition of the English, Dutch, German, Scottish, and Spanish joined forces to halt French territorial expansion across Europe and the New World. Military expenditure strained French finances and weakened the domestic econ - omy, which was further destabilized by harvest failures and the Great Famine of 1693–1694. 24 Architecture took the greatest budgetary hit for two important reasons: first, it was the most expensive of the king’s artistic endeavors (and also employed the most people); second, its construction depleted the kingdom of valuable ma - terials that it could no longer afford to manufacture. Construction came to a halt at the Royal Chapel at Versailles (1688–1710) and the Place des Conquêtes (1685– 1690), the royal square in Paris that was intended to commemorate the king’s military conquests. 25 The kingdom no longer possessed either the material wealth or the political glory to support such costly symbols of grandeur and abundance. The degree to which architecture was understood as a literal drain on the kingdom’s finances is illustrated by one astounding royal decree effectuated on November 14, 1689. Endorsed by Louis XIV, the declaration ordered that all silver and gold furnishings over a certain weight in the kingdom be sent to the mint and repurposed as coins to fund the war effort, including the entire collection of silver furnishings at Versailles. 26 Craftsmen were forbidden from making or selling objects containing silver or gold in excess of one ounce (with a fine of 6,000 livres for the first offense and corporal punishment afterward), for fear that the excessive orna - mental consumption of precious metals might waste the state’s reserves. 27 In such

Claude Guy Halle. Reparations Made by the Doge of Genoa Francesco Maria Imperiali to Louis XIV of France on May 1, 1685 , ca. 1710. Oil on canvas, 20.5 × 37.5 in. (52 x 95.5 cm). Silver furnishings are shown on display at Versailles. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Marseille. Photo: RMN-Grand Palais/ Art Resource, NY.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/grey_a_00241 by guest on 02 October 2021 instances, a material’s economic value superseded its political and artistic associa - tions. The edict implied that metallic embellishments were nothing but the gratu - itous consumption of money’s very materiality. From 1685 to 1691, the crown slashed the budget at the Bâtiments du Roi by 87 percent, from 15 million livres to a paltry 1.9 million livres—a level at which it remained through the early eighteenth century. 28 This left royally affiliated architects, decorators, and craftsmen with little work, generated a slowdown across the building trades, and precipitated, among other things, the 1702 bankruptcy of the Royal Plate Glass Company (which had experienced unsustainable growth during the expansion of Versailles). The govern - ment intervened by manipulating the value of the currency, which served only to destabilize an already volatile credit market. From 1688 to 1727, the livre dropped in value by nearly half its silver exchange. 29 The king’s efforts in constructing a new Rome came to an abrupt and embarrassing standstill.

Speculation and Convenance With the king’s health in decline by mid-1715 and a regency government ensured, many noble families began moving back to Paris, given the Duke of Orléans’s known preference for the city over Versailles. 30 After their thirty-year hiatus from the city (Versailles had served as the seat of government since 1682), the returning courtiers required new or refurbished homes with the most modern amenities, which pro - vided architects, decorators, and craftsmen with much-needed work. The city’s recent annexation of the suburb of Saint-Germain, along with a rise in private lending intended to assuage the wartime recession of the early eighteenth century, prompted many architects to buy empty lots and build homes for sale or rent, trying their hand at new approaches to residential design. 31 Their speculative ventures offered them the chance of financial reward but potentially smacked the face of classical architec - tural theory, which demanded a correlation between style, building materials, and the patron’s social status. Despite these transgressions (or because of them), architects assumed greater artistic freedom in the layout and decoration of their projects. What resulted was a richly sensorial approach to space planning and décor, whereby contortions in the floor plan and the strategic placement of mirrors engendered an illusionistic interior particularly suited to speculative residential construction. At the turn of the eighteenth century, most French architects and theorists under - stood co nvenance as a reinforcement of the established social hierarchy. An influ -

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/grey_a_00241 by guest on 02 October 2021 ential definition of the concept appears in the dictionary of architectural terms first published in 1691 by Augustin-Charles d’Aviler. 32 “It is the accord that one must observe in all parts of edifices,” he writes, in their grandeur, their shape, their richness, their simplicity, etc. Thus, co nve - nance extends through the allegories and suitable attributes found in each genre of decoration. It includes the expenses or financing [of the project], which deter - mines the choice of materials, their employment and quality of treatment. In a word, in a building where co nvenance in observed, the form and decoration is suitable to the rank, dignity, and opulence of its patron. 33 To compose properly with the correct materials required more than technical mastery, d’Aviler suggests. As with the behavior expected of the differing social positions, this representational operation carried a specifically moral function: it served to ensure the stability of the social order. 34 Speculative land development reversed the traditional approach to construction. Architects now self-funded projects before securing clients. This approach was not entirely new, but the scale and speed at which speculative projects unfolded during the early eighteenth century, when many architects were without work at the royal house, was remarkable. Furthermore, figures such as Mollet, Boffrand, and Gabriel were members of the Royal Academy of Architecture, the learned institution that codified the tenets of classical architectural theory, where the architect’s supposed distance from pecuniary matters was what qualified his status as a liberal artist. They were thus keenly aware of how their commercial machinations breached theoretical doctrine. Whereas architects traditionally worked in the service of the financially prosperous (hence the importance of social rank in architectural representation), entrepre - neurs—often master masons born into families of developers—put themselves in a position of risk with the hope of profiting from rents and property resale. 35 This kind of businessman played a pivotal role in the growth of early modern European cities. 36 London’s rapid expansion following the Great Fire of 1666, for instance, relied on the astonishing commercial exploits of the mathematician and financial speculator Nicholas Barbon, who helped develop the royal properties of Wellclose, the Old Artillery Ground, and Tower Hill. 37 The fact that he disputed economic theory with the likes of John Locke—arguing that the value of money was symbolic and should thus be used primarily to stimulate trade—reveals how construction and finance were frequently intertwined endeavors at the turn of the eighteenth cen -

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/grey_a_00241 by guest on 02 October 2021 tury. 38 In Paris, the selling of properties at the Place des Vosges (1605–1612) and the development of the Île Saint-Louis similarly involved the speculative undertakings of commercially invested entrepreneurs. 39 When royally and academically affiliated architects assumed the role of building developer, they effectively traded their social and moral obligations for the chance of quick financial gains. 40 Doing so also placed them in a position of economic uncertainty, given that their profits or losses were wholly reliant on the volatilities of the private market. The proper representation of social station had become a sensitive matter by the turn of the eighteenth century, given the growing tensions between the aristocracy (whose titles were inherited and connoted seigniorial authority over feudal lands) and a wealthy but nonnoble financier class. 41 During Louis XIV’s reign, bourgeois elites such as Antoine Crozat gained political influence by loaning immense sums of money to the crown to sustain the government’s military endeavors. In certain instances, the king extended and even sold noble titles to his wealthy bourgeois allies (with the expectation that they would qualify the titles by purchasing provin - cial lands). A speculative economic order thus risked undermining the traditional rights, influences, and privileges of the aristocracy. Similarly, for architecture, the widespread practice of building, selling, and reselling grand private homes meant that the meaning of architectural co nvenance was anything but fixed. The construction of the Place Vendôme (1699–1720) attested to the crown’s direct engagement with free-market enterprise at the turn of the eighteenth century. The project was a joint royal and private venture and located on the abandoned site of the Place des Conquêtes , whose incompletion owed to the crown’s recent financial strains and military embarrassments. In 1699, the king ceded ownership of the property to the city of Paris, which entrusted its redevelopment to a group of six investors, including four financiers, the lawyer Mathurin Besnier (the father-in- law of the architect Jacques V. Gabriel), and the architect Pierre Bullet. 42 The city sponsored the inauguration of François Girardon’s bronze equestrian statue of Louis XIV and tasked the redesign of the square to Jules Hardouin-Mansart, the first architect of the king and superintendent of the Bâtiments du Roi .43 Unlike at the Place des Conquêtes , the new Place Vendôme included no royal or public amenities, such as libraries, offices, or academies. 44 Instead, the investors sold the plots lining the square as residential lots to wealthy financiers (including Crozat, whose home was designed by Bullet) eager to buy favor with a crown short on money and ma - terial reserves. Speculative construction demanded that architects trade classical architectural

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/grey_a_00241 by guest on 02 October 2021 theory for the commercial demands of the market. The increased attention paid to co nvenance by the likes of d’Aviler and architectural theorist Michel de Frémin sug - gests that a once self-evident category was at risk of obsolescence. 45 In his Mémoires critiques d’architecture (1702), Frémin shares the telltale signs that a home has breached architectural decorum, the most notable being the awkward contortions of rooms in plan and the unnecessary inclusion of stair landings to convey dignity. Both of these tactics created the illusion of grandeur and transgressed co nvenance on social and functional grounds. 46 One example of this approach is Germain Boffrand’s Hôtel Amelot (1712–1717), located in the suburb of Saint-Germain and self-financed by the architect independent of a patron. 47 On the interior, the architect used deco - rative elements to choreograph a sequence of spaces that fan around an oval-shape court, including a trapezoidal entryway, whose walls ripple into niches and announce the pentagonal stair to the left and antechamber to the right. 48 The rear oval salon crowns the succession of rooms that, while terminating in alignment with the entryway, reject a transverse view. Instead, a mirror-topped chimneypiece reflects the garden behind. The Hôtel Amelot is speculative residential architecture par excellence, given that it manipulates space and décor to create the illusion of magnificence. The home’s distribution, which forces the visitor to turn and traverse contorted rooms deceptively threaded in enfilade, extends one’s temporal experi - ence through the house and creates the impression of a much larger interior. 49 “Extraordinary and uncertain dispositions [dispositions extr aordinaires & hasardées ],” is how the writer Germain Brice describes the building in the sixth edition of his popular guidebook to the city, thereby pronouncing the architect’s audacity on formal and functional grounds. 50 According to Antoine Furetière’s dictionary from the period, the word hasardé connotes chance, imprudence, and risk—all three of which carried negative associations (“chance,” because it meant something had occurred outside of reason; “imprudence,” because it suggested a lack of judgment; and “risk,” because of the hazards associated with bankruptcy). 51 Despite such uncertainty, Boffrand’s approach to interior planning favored flexibility over the specificity of elite representation—a fact that ensured prof - its upon resale. In 1713, he sold the uncompleted project to Michel Amelot de Gourney, the former ambassador to Spain and member of the Grand Conseil

Left: Germain Boffrand. Floor plan of the Hôtel Amelot (1712 –1717), Paris. E tching and engraving. From Jacques- François Blondel, Architecture françoise (1752–1756). Typ 715.52.219 v.1, Houghton Library, Harvard University. Photo: Harvard University. Opposite: Interior elevation from Jean Mariette, Architecture à la mode (1738). Etching and engrav - ing. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/grey_a_00241 by guest on 02 October 2021 (an advisory council to the king), for 60,000 livres with a 90,000 livres addendum for the building’s decoration and completion. 52 Boffrand’s decoration allowance, which exceeded the cost of the building by one- half, illustrates the importance of modern amenities such as fireplaces, mirrors, textiles, wood paneling, and furniture. 53 Brice assures his readers of the Hôtel Amelot ’s reasonableness not because of its order, solidity, or even co nvenance — hallmarks of the architect’s expertise—but because of “the many comforts [ com - modities ] that it offered.” 54 During the period, it was not uncommon for a new home - owner to refurbish an interior altogether—a fact that encumbers accurate reconstructions of eighteenth-century interiors. Interest in the newest embellish - ments explains the popularity of books like Jean Mariette’s Architecture à la mode (1738), which features only five floor plans but includes 170 sheets of contemporary ornamental motifs. 55 Denise Amy Baxter and Meredith Martin show how eighteenth- century patrons across Europe actively employed decoration as a tool of social and even bodily performance (e.g., the proper use of furniture), which marked the inte - rior as the site where the tensions of rank, kinship, and gender were played out and often manipulated. 56 These efforts did not come without their controversies, how - ever. In September 1708, the Minister of Finance, Louis Phélypeaux, the Count of Pontchartrain, wrote the Police Lieutenancy to denounce the luxurious use of pre - cious metals by certain proprietors in Paris, citing the gilt interiors belonging to one Sieur Crozat in particular. 57 Magnificence in decoration was permitted, but only for those of the proper rank and only with materials that did not constitute a literal drain on the economy. So dramatic were the novelties produced that in 1710 the architect and theorist Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond fully amended d’Aviler’s treatise, revising the sections on interior distribution and decoration, including stairways, windows, woodwork, and fireplaces. 58 On the expanded use of mirrors, Le Blond writes, “they serve to make a space appear larger than it is.” Apart from this, “one has the plea - sure in glimpsing one’s reflection in them, those of ones who pass behind, & those who enter into an Apartment or leave from it.” 59 He recommends that mirror-topped chimneypieces be balanced on the opposed wall by a mirrored inset panel, which initiated an architectural mise en abyme whereby one’s place in a room determined the degree of illusion experienced. 60 These games are hallmarks of early eighteenth-

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/grey_a_00241 by guest on 02 October 2021 century aesthetics, for which optical deception, surface ornamentation, and one’s experience in space triumph over architecture’s “noble” pursuits of firmitas , utilitas , and venustas .61 When incorporated in homes built on speculation, these illusionis - tic comforts manipulated one’s spatial and temporal impressions, thus privileging the body over the symbolism of social rank. These manipulations of interior space and decoration carried remarkable conse - quences for manufacturing and the luxury trades. For example, the desire for mirrors helped support the Royal Plate Glass Company after its bankruptcy and restructur - ing in 1702. During the regency, sales in the state-sponsored company were nearly three times greater than in previous years. 62 The early years of the eighteenth century marked the beginning of a gradual detachment of architectural theory from central - ized royal authority. Little work at the Bâtiments du Roi , joined with the ever-changing desires of the Parisian elite (whether the returning nobles or the growing financier class), forced architects onto the real estate market, which gave rise to novel approaches to interior design but placed architecture at the mercy of market volatilities.

Paper Money and Gambling on Land The crown’s insurmountable debt at the beginning of the eighteenth century illus - trates the failings of an economic model premised on war, protectionism, and the hoarding of precious metals. At the end of the War of Spanish Succession in 1714, the kingdom emerged politically victorious, with Louis XIV’s grandson permanently installed on the Spanish throne. Economically, however, it lost dearly, with territo - rial losses in the New World, the affirmed dominance of British and Dutch trade, and a debt burden that left the kingdom unable to compete globally. Most figures place French debts at the time of Louis XIV’s death in 1715 somewhere between 66 percent and 85 percent of national output (a statistic made worse by the slow rate of growth at the time). 63 Construction helped support domestic manufacturing, but the kingdom required a more radical intervention. With few other options, the regent turned to the controversial Law to salvage the state’s finances. A mastermind in mathematics and economic theory, Law had left Britain at the end of the seventeenth century and moved between Genoa, Venice, Florence, and Amsterdam, amassing a fortune of 100,000 livres on the stock exchanges

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/grey_a_00241 by guest on 02 October 2021 and gambling tables, all while writing treatises on economics and land banking. He settled in Paris in 1714 and tried, at first unsuccessfully, to convince France to adopt his plan for a credit-lending institution. His arguments hit the kingdom where it hurt. He noted how Britain had surpassed its larger and once-powerful neighbor in wealth and military might because of the credit received from the Bank of England, established in 1694. 64 Only with the existence of such a bank, Law reasoned, could France have access to the funds necessary to wage war and complete in global trade. The regent acquiesced to Law’s proposals in May 1716, thus setting in motion the actions that produced the Mississippi Bubble. That year, Law established the Banque Générale (later to become the Banque Royale , for which he was named controller-general), which began printing and trading paper money dividends based on expected tobacco revenue from Louisiana. 65 The bank’s financial operation relied on the idea that credit based on land and resource harvesting—and not on the gold or silver standard—would increase in value, thereby permitting France to spend itself out of debt. Law felt that land was a more profitable asset than bullion because of its physical stability and capacity to provide raw mate - rials for goods and commodities. As such, investors might be persuaded to risk more as a result of Louisiana’s as-yet unknown potential. Investors deposited precious metals in Law’s bank in exchange for banknote credits to be used on the domestic market. This funded expeditions, resource harvesting, and trade in the New World, whose predicted successes bolstered the banknote’s value. From Crozat, Law pur - chased the Mississippi Company (later rebranded the Company of the West), which held a monopoly on business in France’s North American territories, and folded it into the operations of the land bank. Architecture and decoration played a crucial role in memorializing the wealth acquired by the early successes of Law’s system. That Brice was able to reissue his guidebook to Paris in 1713, 1717, and 1725 is an indication of the degree and speed at which the elite turned to architecture to celebrate their credit gains. In the midst of Law’s experiment, Boffrand sold his ovular-court mansion to Michel Amelot de Gournay. Judging by the move-in date, construction was completed in 1716 or 1717, a decisive period in which Amelot de Gournay was tasked by the regent to review the land bank proposal and charged with its implementation as president of the Bureau de Commerce. With his splendors, Law took residency among the financial elite at the Place Vendôme , purchasing half the lots and employing Jacques V. Gabriel and his team of decorators to complete the remaining work on the square. 66 Law’s land bank fits within a broader phenomenon in global finance, whereby

Pierre Lepautre. Chimneypieces for an hôtel particulier. From the 1720 edition of Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond, Cours d’architecture qui comprend les Ordres de Vignole (1710). Etching and engraving. Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg. Photo: Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/grey_a_00241 by guest on 02 October 2021 colonial empires and trading made it possible to imagine a future untethered to material limitations at home. 67 Institutions such as the Company of the West and Britain’s South Sea Company, established in 1711, gambled on colonial prospects and offered incentives to both the state and private investors. From the state’s side, these companies purchased government debts in exchange for a monopoly on over - seas trading (an attractive deal following the costly War of Spanish Succession). 68 From the investors’ side, the stocks from a successful company promised extraor - dinary financial rewards through dividends. Similar events unfolded in the Dutch Republic, where investors bought stock in the Rotterdam Company, which made trade loans and ran operations related to marine insurance and manufacturing. 69 During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, stock gambling and insurance— actions that today seem like conceptual opposites—were understood as commercial pairs and supported the emergence of a speculative economy premised on risk and the geographic displacement of wealth production. 70 The initial profits gained by Law’s system fed the anxieties of an increasingly cash-strapped aristocracy, especially when it was confronted by the continual rise of an influential financier class. From the nobility’s point of view, the profits gained by Law’s bank blurred the lines between land and money —that is, the wealth, priv - ileges, and responsibilities tied to seigniorial property (the true mark of noble authority) and banknote credits and shares that connoted little else aside from finan - cial prosperity. 71 Aristocrats countered the buying power of the newly elite with a near obsession with property, as it proved the truest arbiter of station. That is, both the aristocracy and the financier class engaged the housing market in efforts to assert social status (with results that, in many instances, looked remarkably similar). The court historiographer Jean-Aymar Piganiol de La Force confirmed as much: “Never had so much building gone on in Paris and its suburbs than during the minority of Louis XV. As paper money took the place of gold and silver, everyone strove to give solidity to his fortune and buildings sprang up everywhere.” 72 Depletion of resources precipitated inflation, however, as scarcity led to rising material prices. 73 The housing bubble thus incited a crisis in architecture’s representational apparatus ( convenance ) as well as its literal materiality. The construction of the Hôtel d’Évreux illustrates the social and economic volatility of the regency, as well as the entrepreneurial exploits of architects and decorators during the Mississippi Bubble. The property, located in the rapidly developing suburb of Saint-Honoré, belonged to the architect Armand-Claude Mollet, controller-general of the Bâtiments du Roi and member of the Royal Academy

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/grey_a_00241 by guest on 02 October 2021 of Architecture. 74 He inherited half of the plot from his great uncle, the celebrated gardener André Le Nôtre, and, in 1714, spent 6,000 livres to purchase the adjacent lot from François Desgots, captain of the king’s vessels. 75 On June 26, 1718, Mollet flipped the combined parcels to Law, for whom he was employed in the construc - tion of the Banque Royale .76 Days later, Law ceded the property to the Count of Évreux in exchange for the Earldom of Tancarville, located near the Normandy coast, thus certifying the banker’s backdoor entry into the nobility. The development of land, architecture, and money promised endless financial rewards to those willing to gamble on the real estate market. From 1714 to 1718, property values increased by more than sevenfold. When it was sold to Law, Desgots’s former plot was worth roughly 45,000 livres. 77 With the generously sized parcel, Évreux enlisted Mollet’s architectural services, aided no doubt by the finan - cial support of his father-in-law. That Mollet secured a contract for the mansion’s stonework on July 10, 1718—a mere thirteen days after selling the property to Law— suggests he already had drawings in hand and craftsmen in waiting. 78 The architect provided designs for the ironwork and other decoration, which were realized by the master metalworker Guillaume Cressart and master carpenters Jacques Gaultier and François Delahaye (their contracts were tendered in November 1718 and February 1719, respectively). 79 During the construction, Mollet sought the partnership of craftsmen working in his and Law’s services at the Banque Royale , meaning that the stone, iron, and woodwork for both buildings came from the same sources and were treated by the same hands. This practice minimized potential conflicts for the archi - tect and facilitated the speed of construction, given the common understanding of materials, labor protocol, and design intention. The exponential rise in value of Law’s banknote credits from 1718 to 1720 generated a spike in material costs that ultimately proved a financial burden for the Count of Évreux. By July 1719, at the height of the Mississippi Bubble, Mollet had yet to receive payment for the work completed. 80 The following year, when stock shares were at their highest value, Law brokered a deal with the cash-strapped nobleman, trading him the Earldom of Tancarville for seigniorial land in Effiat (also owned by Évreux). Law paid an additional

Armand-Claude Mollet. Site plan of the Hôtel d’Évreux (1718), Paris. From Jacques-François Blondel, Architecture françoise (1752 –1756). Etching and engrav - ing. Typ 715.52.219 v.3, Houghton Library, Harvard University. Photo: Harvard University.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/grey_a_00241 by guest on 02 October 2021 2.3 million livres for the new property, tendered entirely in banknote credits—an amount that likely went toward settling Mollet’s architectural fees. 81 These maneu - verings illustrate the dramatic ups and down of Law’s land bank scheme, as well as the precarious role architecture played in the attempt to give permanence to wealth and social station. Although buildings were the things best suited to materialize economic affluence, the cost of their construction, especially when annexed to a speculative economy, risked draining the very wealth architecture was intended to represent.

The Bubble Bursts Law’s banknote scheme was as ambitious as it was catastrophic. Shares purchased for 500 livres in 1717 were worth an all-time high of 10,100 livres by January 1720. 82 During his tenure as controller-general of finances, the banker employed the services of Mollet at the Banque Royale , Gabriel at the Place Vendôme , and Boffrand at the Hôtel de Soissons , the former home of Catherine de’ Medici, which, during the Mississippi Bubble, hosted a makeshift stock exchange in its gardens. 83 Inflation on the domestic market (and the building boom that joined it) was matched with only mediocre commodities income from overseas, however. Law’s fate was sealed once the regent lost faith in the system’s long-term viability. On May 21, 1720, the state issued a decree to deflate the value of Law’s banknotes and shares. From May to December, the government planned to reduce the value of each banknote by 500 livres per month, resulting in an exchange rate of 5,000 livres by the end of the year (this was the minimum value Law had promised his investors, but it was also a decrease of 50 percent from the notes’ peak worth). The action was met with anger and fear from anxious Parisian investors, who mobbed Law’s office to protest the proposed changes (the state placed the banker under house arrest for his own safety). Seeing the fury in the streets, the regent issued a declaration on May 27 that revoked the previous decree and reestablished the banknotes’ value. These mixed messages did little to reassure private foreign interests, however. That week, London’s largest investors pulled their shares from Law’s bank (this coincided with a temporary boom for the South Sea Company). 84 The value of one share in the Banque Royale dropped by half in a matter of eight days. 85 In many ways, the Mississippi Bubble was a result of France’s clumsy attempt to transition from a mercantile economy to one premised on the “risks” and “returns” of speculative capitalism. 86 The crisis echoed across Western Europe, given the sizable investment in Law’s bank by British and Dutch traders. In September 1720,

Bernard Picart. “A Monument Dedicated to Posterity in Commemoration of the Incredible Folly Transacted in the Year 1720,” 1720. Etching and engraving, 9.7 × 13.7 in. (24.6 × 34.7 cm). British Library, London. Photo: British Library.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/grey_a_00241 by guest on 02 October 2021 the South Sea Company similarly collapsed, prompting Parliament to forbid the creation of joint-stock corporations altogether. 87 Above all else, these events illus - trate the interdependency of speculative capitalist economics at the dawn of the modern age, as well as the global reverberations ensuring the financial crash of an important political actor. No lack of satirical imagery flooded the commercial print market following the bursting of the financial bubble. One by the engraver Bernard Picart, titled “A Monument Dedicated to Posterity in Commemoration of the Incredible Folly Transacted in the Year 1720,” mythologizes the madness then befalling Paris, London, and Amsterdam. Led by France’s peg-legged Mississippi Company, specu - lative ventures, including the British South Sea and Dutch East India Company, pull a wagon carrying Fortune and Folly, who scatter “irrationality” in the form of paper bills, credit shares, and fool’s caps. Ethnic coding and racial derogations symboli - cally other Law’s gamble, premised as it was on unfulfilled profits from the New World. The event ruined Boffrand, who had invested in the purchase of the Hôtel de Soissons , for which he was decorating rental properties and a bourse near Law’s offices on the Rue Quincampoix , referenced on the right side of the print. 88 Blowing bubbles in the wind, the devil in the storm clouds above brings the morality of the scene into focus: financial speculation and gambling unleash disorder, irra - tionality, and chaos. Despite Law’s best efforts at producing something from nothing, the existence of a modern-day philosopher’s stone proved no more valuable than paper itself. Picard’s caricature capitalizes on what Law’s land bank and credit system attempted to stamp out—that is, the notion of chance as fortuna , or a divine sign from God. 89 The paradox of the debacle was that, in pure theory, Law’s experiment worked only too well. During its four years in operation, the banknote’s value increased twenty - fold, generating unprecedented profits that appeared to offer France a way out of debt. In 1720, the state’s late-game attempt to regulate inflation undermined the system, leaving investors in doubt of the system’s viability. More important for this study, when the elite attempted to grant material permanence to their illusionary

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/grey_a_00241 by guest on 02 October 2021 profits by the hard stuff of building, the market in construction also collapsed. The doubling, tripling, and quadrupling of the cost of stone, wood, and metal firmly positioned architecture along the market system’s economic fault line. That engravers commemorated the event in satirical “monuments,” of which Picard’s was but one among many, reveals how the stability and permanence long associated with architecture both absorbed capital expenditure and cautioned against the economies of uncertainty that were intrinsic to speculative investment. In 1721, the Baron of Montesquieu joined the chorus of Law’s critics, giving literary form to the defunct lottery scheme. 90 At the close of his Persian Letters (1721), he caricatures the gambler as a young and avaricious prince. Setting sail for a mythological land, he exclaims to his compatriots, “Citizens . . . , you think your - selves rich, because you have silver and gold. . . . Be ruled by me: leave the land of the base metals; come into the empire of imagination, and I promise you riches which will astonish even you.” 91 His words throw reality and conjecture into relief. It is unlikely to be coincidental, then, that the Académie Française defined “specu - lation” as both “theory” and “stargazing,” claiming in its dictionary that, “One has discovered nothing with all his speculations, . . . and in this sense it is opposite to practice.” 92 For architecture, then, the practicalities of building—the act of quanti - fying and organizing building materials into a contract, bill, or expert review—were what grounded uncertain fantasies in the real estate market. Central concerns in classical architectural theory, like co nvenance , frequently understood as the beginnings of a functionalist sensibility in modern design, emerged at a moment when the relationship between form and decorum was thrown into crisis because of the emergence of a new speculative economic order. A series of salon studies by Gilles-Marie Oppenord, the first architect of the regent, illuminates the tension between architecture’s commercial and imaginative forces. In the print, the sequence of mirrors, sculpture, inset paintings, and gilt frames blurs the dis - tinction between reality and illusion. The garden to the left implies that the interior could be a world where wonder triumphs over material limitations. The split fire - place at the center shows how the architect collapsed facing elevations—a graphic trick for which publishers, retailers, and boutique owners desired multiple options for page efficiency and visual effect. 93 The smooth rendering of the mirror implies the unbound reflection produced by the placement of the glazed surfaces within the room. These tactics buttressed the emergent speculative economy by relying on illu -

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/grey_a_00241 by guest on 02 October 2021 sion and deception, both architecturally and socially, and marked the rise of a dec - orative style founded on sensation and the body’s experience in space. The economic system that produced the Mississippi Bubble came to an abrupt end in the spring of 1720, with Law fleeing for Brussels following the stock market crash. However, the approaches to interior design that were fostered during these turbulent years remained in vogue until the middle of the eighteenth century. The nascent style rocaille relied on tactics of spatial and decorative manipulation that often worked against the classical duty to signify glory and grandeur and, in the process, marked architecture’s engagement with the private market. The architectural story of the Mississippi Bubble ends with the image of an altogether astonishing detail in cast iron, for it offers one provocative conclusion to the issues explored in this article. Designed by Mollet, the richly gilt banister was installed on the main stairway of Law’s Banque Royale . The central cartouche displays two interlaced Ls in honor of Louis XV, only ten years old at the time of its installation. At the bottom left, a horn of plenty—the traditional symbol of abundance—displays the bounties of the harvest and is balanced on the right by a cornucopia of spilling coins and banknote credits. 94 Like Law’s economic experiment, the banister, too, met an untimely end, having been dismantled by Henri Labrouste to make way for the con - struction of the Bibliothèque Impériale in the 1860s. 95 If its cast-iron curves betrayed a frivolity commonly associated with the rococo, its symbolic motifs hinted (as they so often do) at the volatile systems of production that intersected in their formation.

Opposite: Gilles-Marie Oppenord. Project for a salon. Etching and engraving. From Œuvres de Gilles Marie Oppenord (1748). Bibliothèque numérique de l’INHA—NUM PL EST 102. Photo: Bibliothèque de l’Institut national d’histoire de l’art. Top: Armand-Claude Mollet. Cast iron and gilt balustrade from the Banque Royale de France, Paris, 1719. Spilling coins and banknotes on the bottom right of the banister are balanced by a cornucopia on the bottom left. The Wallace Collection, London. Photograph: The Wallace Collection. Bottom: Armand-Claude Mollet. Cast iron and gilt balustrade from the Banque Royale de France, Paris, 1719. Detail of spilling coins and banknotes. The Wallace Collection, London. Photograph: The Wallace Collection.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/grey_a_00241 by guest on 02 October 2021 Notes This article began as a paper delivered as part of Claire Zimmerman’s panel, “The Cost of Architecture,” at the Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians in 2016. I thank Susanna Berger, Aaron Wile, Claire Zimmerman, and three anonymous readers who offered helpful critique. All trans - lations are mine unless otherwise noted.

1. The appraisal possibly related to the death of his elder brother, Frédéric-Jules de la Tour, the prince of Auvergne, on June 28, 1733 (the appraisal was conducted on June 30). Following his death, his estate was distributed among his inheritors. See Supp lement au grand dictionnaire: Généalogie, géographique, &c. de M. Louis Moreri (Paris: Chez la Veuve Lemercier, 1735), 2:395. 2. On the French urban mansion as a building type, see Alexandre Gady, Les hôtels particuliers de Paris: Du Moyen-Âge à la Belle Époque (Paris: Parigramme, 2008); and Michael Dennis, Court and Garden: From the French Hôtel to the City of Modern Architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986). 3. Daniel Roche, Le peuple de Paris: Essai sur la culture populaire au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1998), 103. Conversion of ancien régime currency into contemporary denominations is nearly impos - sible given the composition of the labor market and the different economic privileges and responsi - bilities of the social classes, called estates. According to Roche, wealth is best ascertained by comparing one’s savings upon death with the average cost of bread. In 1700, a bushel of bread cost approximately eighteen livres, six sous. 4. For an eighteenth-century account of the Hôtel d’Évreux , see Jacques-François Blondel, Architecture françoise (Paris: Charles-Antoine Jombert, 1752–1756), 3:156–160. See also Jean Coural, Le Palais de l’Élysée: Histoire et décor (Paris: Délégation à l’action artistique de la ville de Paris , 1994); Louis Hautecœur, Histoire de l’architecture classique en France (Paris: A. et J. Picard et Cie , 1943–1963), 3:150–154; and Charles Leroux-Cesbron, Le Palais de l’Élysée: Chronique d’un palais national (Paris: Perrin et Cie , 1925). 5. On convenance , see Werner Szambien, Symétrie, goût, caractère: Théorie et terminologie de l’architecture à l’âge classique, 1550–1800 (Paris: Picard , 1986), 167–173. 6. Blondel, 3: 159. 7. Arch. nat., Z 1J 639 (30 juin 1733). 8. An early and formative study of Law’s experiment remains Edgar Faure, La banqueroute de Law, 17 juillet 1720 (Paris: Gallimard, 1977). 9. Sven Beckert terms the preindustrial exploitation of natural resources “war capitalism.” Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York: Vintage Books, 2015), 29–55. 10. On property and symbolic capital, see Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Critical Practice , trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 171–183. 11. Arch. nat., Z 1J 639 (30 juin 1733). When the count’s inheritors sold the home in 1753, it was worth 451,000 livres (415,511 livres for the building and 34,489 livres for the ground floor mirrors). See Arch. nat., Z 1J 607 (22 août 1753). For the count’s inventory, which outlines his possessions and the condition of his estate at the time of his death, see Arch. nat., MC LXVIII 466 ( 29 janvier 1753 ). 12. On France’s financial debt upon the death of Louis XIV, see Guy Rowlands, The Financial

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/grey_a_00241 by guest on 02 October 2021 Decline of a Great Power: War, Influence, and Money in Louis XIV’s France (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2012), esp. 1–15. For a period account of the late reign of Louis XIV and the regency of Louis XV, see Duc de Saint-Simon, Mémoires of Duc de Saint-Simon , trans. Lucy Norton, 3 vols. (Warwick, NY: 1500 Books, 2007). 13. On the etymology of the word, see “ millionnaire ” in Émile Littré, Dictionnaire de la langue française (Paris: L. Hachette, 1873–1874), 3:562. 14. Nina Dubin writes of how the threat of financial ruin during the eighteenth century initiated a concept of time based on fear and uncertainty, evocatively expressed by Hubert Robert’s paintings of destruction. Nina Dubin, Futures and Ruins: Eighteenth-Century Paris and the Art of Hubert Robert (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2010). On the Law crisis and period visual culture, see Darius A. Spieth, “The French Context of Het groote tafereel der dwaasheid : John Law, Rococo Culture, and the Riches of the New World,” in The Great Mirror of Folly: Finance, Culture, and the Crash of 1720 , ed. William N. Goetzman et al. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 219–233. On the specter of Law during the French Revolution, see Rebecca Sprang, “The Ghost of Law: Speculating on Money, Memory and Mississippi in the French Constituent Assembly,” Historical Reflections/ Réflexions historiques 31, no. 1 (Spring 2005): 3–25. On the semiotic reorientation of art and literature in early eighteenth-century France, see Jay Caplan, In the King’s Wake: Post-absolutist Culture in France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). 15. On the circulation of motifs among painting, sculpture, architecture, and decoration, see Sarah D. Coffin, “The Dissemination of the Style through Migrating Designers, Craftsmen, and Objects in the Eighteenth Century,” in Rococo: The Continuing Curve, 1730–2008 , ed. Sarah D. Coffin et al. (New York: Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, 2008), 102–135. 16. Katie Scott, The Rococo Interior: Decoration and Social Spaces in Early Eighteenth-Century Paris (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 213–239. 17. On the relationship between value, money, and literature, see James Thompson, Models of Value: Eighteenth-Century Political Economy and the Novel (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), 40–86. On the shifting concepts of value and subjectivity in French art and literature, see Caplan, esp. 155–162. 18. The state reaches imperial overstretch when its military or economic ambitions exceeds the available resources that support it at home. This idea was first introduced in Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1987). On the political and economic fall of the ancien régime societies, see C.A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914 (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), 27–120. 19. On Louis XIV’s wars, see John Lynn, The Wars of Louis XIV, 1667–1714 (London: Longman, 1999). 20. Louis XIV granted Crozat a private charter to the Mississippi Company in 1712. On Crozat’s ear - lier activities in the South Sea and Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti), see Pierre Ménard, Le français qui possédait l’Amérique: La vie extr aordinaire d’Antoine Crozat, milliardaire sous Louis XIV (Paris: Le cherche midi , 2017), 77–82. 21. Determining the appropriate value for exotic goods demanded extensive knowledge of natural history. Harold J. Cook correlates Dutch commercial prowess with the republic’s intellectual openness

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/grey_a_00241 by guest on 02 October 2021 during the seventeenth century. Harold J. Cook, Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 42–81. 22. Early modern theories of probability, which sought to understand chance events (e.g., the like - lihood that one might be able to predict the roll of dice), would not enter into the logic of insurance until the nineteenth century. See Lorraine Daston, Classical Probability in the Enlightenment (Princeton , NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 112–187. 23. Jonathan Levy, Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 21–59. 24. Rowlands, 53–56. 25. On the Place des Conquêtes , see Thierry Sarmant, “ Place des Conquêtes, ” in Jules Hardouin- Mansart, 1646–1708 , ed. Alexandre Gady (Paris: Maison des sciences de l’homme , 2010), 495–499; Thierry Sarmant, “ La première place Vendôme, ” in La place Vendôme: Art, pouvoir et fortune , ed. Thierry Sarmant and Luce Gaume (Paris: Action artistique de la ville de Paris , 2002), 55–62; and Rochelle Ziskin, “The Place de Nos Conquêtes and the Unraveling of the Myth of Louis XIV,” Art Bulletin 76, no. 1 (March 1994): 147–162. 26. The edict applied to a wide range of decorative objects (furniture, mirror frames, dinnerware, and utensils), including those held by the king, his court, and even private households. On the silver furnishings at Versailles, see Béatrix Saule, “ Le mobilier d’argent de Louis XIV dans le Grand Appartement du roi, ” Dossier de l’art 147 (December 2007): 12–21; Gérard Mabille, “ Les grandes com - mandes royales de 1661 à 1689,” Dossier de l’art 147 (December 2007): 22–29; and Frances Buckland, “Gobelins Tapestries and Paintings as a Source of Information about the Silver Furniture of Louis XIV,” Burlington Magazine 125, no. 962 (May 1983): 271–279, 283. On one magnificent silver-framed mir - ror that was melted down, see Michèle Bimbenet-Privat, “ Grand Miroir d’argent ” in Décors, mobiliers et objets d’art du musée du Louvre: de Louis XIV à Marie Antoinette , ed. Jannic Durand et al. (Paris: Somogy, 2014), 216–217. 27. Madame de Sévigné discusses the edict in a letter to her daughter, dated December 18, 1689. An extended footnote explains the legal extents of the decree. See Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sévigné, Lettres de Madame de Sévigné: de sa famille et de ses amis , ed. M. Monmerqué (Paris: Librarie de L. Hachette , 1862), 9:359–360. 28. Jules Guiffrey, Comptes des Bâtiments du Roi sous le règne de Louis XIV (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale , 1881–1901), 2:575–599, 3:512–516, 5:575–579. 29. Philip T. Hoffman et al., Priceless Markets: The Political Economy of Credit in Paris, 1660–1870 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 22–23. 30. A notorious philanderer, the Duke of Orléans resided at the Palais-Royal and, in 1713, appointed the architect Gilles-Marie Oppenord to oversee a remodeling campaign, which included the redeco - ration of the Aeneid Gallery by Hardouin-Mansart and the painter Antoine Coypel. On this project, see Jean-François Bédard, “Political Renewal and Architectural Revival during the French Regency: Oppenord’s Palais Royal,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 68, no. 1 (March 2009): 30–51. 31. To increase its taxable area, the city annexed, in 1701–1702, the southwestern suburb of Saint-

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/grey_a_00241 by guest on 02 October 2021 Germain, which temporarily depressed property values and made possible the building of more gen - erously sized houses. See Marcel Poëte, Formation et evolution de Paris (Paris: Librairie Félix Juven, 1910), 145–148. On the rise of private lending, see Hoffman et al., 46, fig. 2.3, 50–68. 32. On d’Aviler’s treatise, Cours d’architecture qui comprend les ordres de Vignole (Paris: Nicolas Langlois, 1691), and its accompanying dictionary of architectural terms, see Thierry Verdier, Augustin- Charles d’Aviler: Architecte du roi en Langudoc, 1653–1701 (Montpellier : Presses du Languedoc , 2003), esp. 171–186, 221–228. 33. Augustin-Charles d’Aviler, Dictionnaire d’architecture civile et hydraulique et des arts qui en dépendent (Paris: Charles-Antoine Jombert, 1755), 126. 34. As Norbert Elias observes, patriarchal societies such as early modern France demanded an alle - giance to the king that corresponded in scale to that between child and father. These roles operated along representational lines in which the proper demonstration of rank at court thus implied one’s loyalty to the “family” at large (hence, the term royal household , or Maison du Roi in French). See Norbert Elias, The Court Society (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983), 41–42. 35. Robert Carvais, “ La force du droit: Contribution à la définition de l’entrepreneur parisien du bâtiment au XVIIIe siècle,” Histoire, économie, société 14 (1995): 163–189. 36. See, for instance, Joerg Garms, “Projects for the Pont Neuf and Place Dauphine in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century,” Journal of the Society of Arc hitectural Historians 26, no. 2 (May 1967): 102–113. 37. Elizabeth McKellar, The Birth of Modern London: The Development and Design of the City 1660–1720 (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1999), 38–55. 38. See, especially, Nicholas Barbon, A Discourse on Trade (London: Nicholas Barbon, 1690); and Nicholas Barbon, A Discourse Concerning Coining the New Money Lighter: In Answer to Mr. Lock’s Considerations about Raising the Value of Money (London: Richard Chiswell, 1696). 39. On the Place des Vosges , see Alexandre Gady and Béatrice de Andia, eds., De la Place Royale à la Place des Vosges (Paris: Action artistique de la ville de Paris , 1996); and Hilary Ballon, The Paris of Henri IV: Architecture and Urbanism (New York: Architectural History Foundation, 1991), 57–113. On Louis Le Vau’s entrepreneurial activity on the Î le Saint-Louis , see Alexandre Cojannot, Louis Le Vau et les nouvelles ambitions de l’architecture française: 1612–1654 (Paris: Picard , 2012), 167–183; and Hilary Ballon, Louis Le Vau, M azarin’s Collège, Colbert’s Revenge (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 108–126. 40. That these commercial matters infiltrated the discourse at the Royal Academy of Architecture is made evident by the amount of time its members spent discussing the discipline’s practical and legal dimensions. From December 1715 to April 1718, the academic professor Antoine Desgodets directed a two-and-a-half-year study of the property rights defined by the Paris building code. Then, from May 1718 to March 1721, he continued a similarly lengthy analysis of measuring techniques and cost esti - mates (a practice called the toisé ). Thus, for nearly six years, the academy concerned itself almost exclusively with the legal and economic conditions of building construction. See Henry Lemonnier, ed., Procès-verbaux de l’Académie royale d’architecture (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin , 1911–1929), 4:83–147, 4:147–219.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/grey_a_00241 by guest on 02 October 2021 41. The relationship between social distinctions and interior decoration is most thoroughly treated in Scott, 81–99. She aligns the display of architectural magnificence to the sumptuary laws that dictated luxury and dress. 42. The financiers included Alexandre Lhuillier, Moïse-Augustin Fontainieu, Jean de Sauvion, and Nicolas-Hiérosme Herlaut. On the financing of the Place Vendôme , see Emmanuel Pénicaut, “ La seconde place: Une spéculation ” in La place Vendôme , ed. Sarmant and Gaume, 69–73; and Rochelle Ziskin, The Place Vendôme : Architecture and Social Mobility in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 5–33. 43. Hardouin-Mansart gained handsomely from the construction of the royal square. From 1683 to 1703, he developed ten nearby properties with a combined value of 350,000 livres. On his fortune, see Joëlle Barreau and Yoann Brault, “‘ Un homme de rien gâté par la faveur’? Essai sur la fortune de Jules Hardouin-Mansart, ” in Jules Hardouin-Mans art , ed. Gady, 32–43. 44. As part of the agreement, Louis XIV retained a voice in the square’s architectural development. Arch. nat., H 1837, fol. 287–289. 45. On the transformation of convenance into caractère during the eighteenth century, see Marc Grignon and Juliana Maxim, “ Convenance, Caractère , and the Public Sphere,” Journal of Architectural Education 49, no. 1 (September 1995): 29–37. This also relates to the luxury debates of the eighteenth century and what the historian John Shovlin calls the “political economy of virtue.” See John Shovlin, The Political Economy of Virtue: Luxury, Patriotism, and the Origins of the French Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006). 46. Michel de Frémin, Mémoires critiques d’architecture (Paris: Chez Charles Saugrain, 1702), 44–56. 47. On its ingenious interior distribution, see Blondel, 1:242–244. 48. Boffrand elaborates on the relationship between architecture and theater in his treatise Livre d’architecture (Paris: Chez Guillaume Cavelier père, 1745). On its significance, see Caroline van Eck, introduction to Germain Boffrand, Book of Architecture , trans. David Britt (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2002), xi–xxxiii. 49. Blondel remarks on this fact. Blondel, 1:243. Katie Scott terms this the sequential as opposed to spatial logic of the early eighteenth-century Parisian mansion. See Scott, 107. 50. Germain Brice, Description de la ville de Paris et de tout ce qu’elle contient de plus remarquable , 6th ed. (Paris: François Fournier, 1713), 3:152–153. Brice was a well-known tour guide, catering espe - cially to German princes (whose sponsorship permitted his comfortable lifestyle). See Pierre Codet, “Vie de Germain Brice,” in Germain Brice, Description , 9th ed. (Geneva: Librairie Droz; Paris: Librairie Minard , 1971), xi–xv. 51. See “ hasard, ” “ hasarder, ” and “ hasardeux ” in Antoine Furetière, Dictionnaire universel (The Hague: Chez Arnout & Reinier Leers, 1690), vol. 2, n.p. 52. Boffrand borrowed 27,000 livres in 1712 to purchase the lot on the Rue Saint-Dominique. 53. On the importance of comfort for eighteenth-century architecture and interior design, see Joan DeJean, The Age of Comfort: When Paris Discovered Casual—and the Modern House Began (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009).

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/grey_a_00241 by guest on 02 October 2021 54. Brice, Description , 3:153. 55. Jean Mariette, Architecture à la mode (Paris: Chez l’auteur , 1738). 56. Denise Amy Baxter and Meredith Martin, eds., Architectural Space in Eighteenth-Century Europe: Constructing Identities and Interiors (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2010). 57. G.B. Depping, Correspondance administrative sous le règne de Louis XIV (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale , 1847–1861), 2:810. 58. On Le Blond, see Olga Medvedkova, Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond, architecte, 1679–1719, de Paris à Saint-Pétersbourg (Paris: Alain Baudry et Cie , 2007). 59. Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond in Augustin-Charles d’Aviler, Cours d’ architecture qui comprend les ordres de Vignole (Paris: Chez Jean Mariette, 1710), 1:171*2. 60. D’Aviler, Cours d’ architecture , 1:340*3. Peter Collins compares this delirium to a sense of parallax. Peter Collins, Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture (London: Faber and Farber, 1965), 27. 61. On this willful deception of the spectator in eighteenth-century art, see Marion Hobson, The Object of Art: The Theory of Illusion in Eighteenth-Century France (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 47–61. 62. Warren Scoville, “Large-Scale Production in the French Plate-Glass Industry, 1665–1789,” Journal of Political Economy 50, no. 5 (October 1942): n. 29 and table 1. 63. Rowlands, 2. 64. John Law in Paul Harsin, ed., Œuvres co mplètes (Paris: Librairie du Recueil Sirey , 1934), 2:263–264. On the early years of the Bank of England, including its paper money schemes, see Daniel M. Abramson, Building the Bank of England: Money, Architecture, Society, 1694–1942 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 5–32. 65. While defaulting on the loans was possible, it would have happened at the expense of certain nobles, officers, the Parlement de Paris (who defended creditors), and privileged bourgeois who held government debt. Doing so would have also destabilized a monarchy already weakened by the king’s passing. Historically, the crown increased taxes only when wartime expenses demanded it. See Hoffman et al., esp. 88–93. 66. Germain Brice, Nouvelle description de la ville de Paris et de tout ce qu’elle contient de plus remarquable , 8th ed. (Paris: Julien-Michel Gadouin et François Fournier, 1725), 3:152–153. On Law’s investment at the Place Vendôme, see Bruno Pons, De Versailles à Paris, 1699–1736: Les sculpteurs ornemanistes parisiens et l’art décoratif des Bâtiments du roi (Strasbourg: Association des publica - tions près les Universités de Strasbourg , 1986), 112–129; and Ziskin, The Place Vendôme , 94–113. 67. For an introduction to the South Sea and Mississippi Bubbles, see William N. Goetzmann et al., “Introduction,” in The Great Mirror of Folly , ed. Goetzmann et al., 3–17. 68. The South Sea Company, for instance, controlled the Asiento, which provided slaves to the Spanish Americas. 69. Rik Frehens et al., “Finance in the Great Mirror of Folly,” in The Great Mirror of Folly , ed. Goetzmann et al., 63–87. 70. Lorraine Daston, “The Domestication of Risk: Mathematical Probability and Insurance, 1650–1830 ,” in The Probabilistic Revolution , ed. Lorenz Krüger (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), 1:237–260.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/grey_a_00241 by guest on 02 October 2021 71. On the relationship between land and money, see Thomas Kavanagh, Enlightenment and the Shadows of Chance: The Novel and the Culture of Gambling in Eighteenth-Century France (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 67–104. 72. Jean-Aymar Piganiol de La Force, Description historique de la ville de Paris (Paris: Les libraires associés , 1765), 1:25. 73. Piganiol de La Force, 1:25–26. 74. On the development of the property, see Coural, 7–23. 75. Desgots also inherited the plot from Le Nôtre. Arch. nat., MC XLV 337. 76. During this period, Mollet was building grand homes in the capital, including the Hôtel d’Humières (1716), located on the banks of the Seine alongside Robert de Cotte’s mansion for the Duke of Maine and two properties speculatively developed by Boffrand (both were sold to descendants of Jean-Baptiste Colbert). See La rue de Lille (Paris: Délégation à l’action artistique de la ville de Paris , 1983), 44–58. On Boffrand’s speculative ventures, see Michel Gallet and Jörg Garms, eds., Germain Boffrand, 1667–1754: L’aventure d’un architecte indépendant (Paris: Délégation à l’action culturelle de la ville de Paris , 1986), 47–57. 77. The exact price was 45,142 livres , 10 sols . Arch. nat., MC XLVIII (26 juin 1718). 78. The master-mason and entrepreneur Pierre Grandhomme furnished the contract. Arch. nat., MC CXVII 294 (10 juillet 1718). 79. On the metalwork completed, see Arch. nat., MC CXVII 296 (4 novembre 1718). For the woodwork, see Arch. nat., MC CXVII 299 (8 fevrier 1719). 80. Arch. nat., MC CXVII 303 (7 juillet 1719). 81. Arch. nat., MC XLVIII 38 (20 avril 1720). 82. Antoin E. Murphy, John Law: Economic Theorist and Policy-Maker (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1997), 166, 214. 83. On the history of the Hôtel de Soissons, see Françoise Boudon, “ Urbanisme et spéculation à Paris au XVIIIe siècle: Le terrain de l’Hôtel de Soissons ,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 32, no. 4 (December 1973): 267–307. 84. Murphy, 254–257. 85. Murphy, 252. 86. This fact was not missed by Daniel Defoe, who in January 1720 sarcastically wrote how the French were making remarkable 40 percent dividends on “a piece of Refined Air.” See William Lee, ed., Daniel Defoe: His Life and Recently Discovered Writings (London: John Camden Hotten, 1869), 2:180–181. 87. Among other things, the failure of the South Sea Company affirmed the dominance of the Bank of England, which played a significant role in Britain’s economic and colonial ascent during the eigh - teenth century. On the British context, see Carl Wennerlind, Casualties of Credit: The English Financial Revolution, 1620–1720 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). 88. In early 1719, Boffrand sold his speculatively built Hôtel de Duras for funds that likely went toward the purchase of the Hôtel de Soissons—a venture that the Journal de la Régence listed as an acquisition of 750,000 livres by Law under the name of “ une société des architectes ” (and for which

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/grey_a_00241 by guest on 02 October 2021 Boffrand contributed at least 150,000 livres). See Jean Buvat, Journal de la Régence (1715–1723) (Paris: Henri Plon, 1865), 1:368. 89. On the relationship between credit, risk, and fortuna , see Gerda Reith, The Age of Chance (New York: Routledge, 1999), 13. On Picart and his significance for religious thought in eighteenth-century Europe, see Lynn Hunt et al., The Book That Changed Europe: Picart and Bernard’s Religious Ceremonies of the World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010). 90. On Montesquieu, the monarchy, and questions of public credit, see Michael Sonenscher, Before the Deluge: Public Debt, Inequality, and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 95–172. 91. Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, Persian Letters , trans. John Davidson (London: J. Routledge and Sons, 1929), 319. 92. See “speculation” in the Dictionnaire de l’Académie française (Paris: Chez la Veuve de Jean- Baptiste Coignard, 1694 ), 2:502. 93. This is explained in Gabriel Huquier, Nouveau livre de principes d’ornements particulièrement pour trouver un nombre infini de formes qui en dépendent, d’après les desseins de C. Gillot, peintre du Roy, gravé par Huquier (Paris: Chez Huquier , 1759), 2. 94. On the rail in decorative ironwork, see Jean-François Leiba Dontenweill and Roselyne Bussière, Escaliers parisiens sous l’ancien régime: L’apogée de la serrurerie (Paris: Somogy Éditions , 2011), 122–123. 95. Peter Hughes, “French Balustrade,” in The Wallace Collection Catalogue of Furniture (London: Trustees of the Wallace Collection, 1996), 3:1179–1192.

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