Gilles-Marie Oppenord (Paris 1672-1742)

In 1692, at the age of twenty, Oppenord was given the opportunity to move to Rome, where he remained for eight years as a royal pensioner. During this time he studied, not the ruins and antiquities of the classical world, but the works of Roman Baroque architects and sculptors, particularly those of Bernini and Borromini. Their elegant forms inspired his own architectural designs, which were some of the earliest expressions of what was to become the Rococo style in France.