The buildings of the French architect Ange Jacques Gabriel (1698-1782) demonstrate elegant proportional relationships and superlative Gallic taste in the control of the dynamic expressiveness inherited from ancient Rome.

Ange Jacques Gabriel was the most eminent 18th-century member of a family dynasty of architects descending from Jules Hardouin Mansart, first architect to King Louis XIV, with whom Ange Jacques's grandfather, Jacques IV Gabriel, and father, Jacques V Gabriel, had worked. Though Ange Jacques's early training is thought to have taken place under the architect Antoine Desgodetz, it was largely the execution of his father's designs for Paris town houses that formed his education.

At the age of 30 Ange Jacques Gabriel was launched professionally, having married Catherine de la Motte, daughter of the secretary of the Duc d'Antin, who had succeeded Mansart as superintendent of the royal buildings, and having received as a wedding gift from his father the...