Patrimony. Major works, renovations … What Toulouse owes to the architect Nicolas Bachelier
Through Toulouse editorial office
Published on
A “sovereign architect, man of great craft and literature”. On his death in 1556, the chronicler Antoine Noguier, author the same year of a “Tholosan History”, is full of praise for Nicolas Bachelier. It must be said that in two decades, man has established himself as the designer of the major works of the capitouls, merchants and other notables of the Languedoc capital.
Guessing about its origin
Previously, we hardly know anything about his background, except that he came from a family of stonemasons. The speculations on its origin are rife. Some sources mention his birth in Toulouse and others in Arras.
Like any artist-engineer of his time, we can easily imagine that he spent his first years of training on the other side of the Alps, in Rome and Florence, in the workshops of the great masters, including Michelangelo, the most illustrate. His great mastery of sculpture earned him to be spotted by the municipality which prepared with great pomp the room of François Iuh.
The keys to the city
But in this 1uh August 1533, it is not he but a fellow student the young painter-engineer Bernard Nalot, who will later stand out, among others, for his decorations of the choir of the basilica of Saint-Sernin and the altarpiece of the church of the Dalbade, who symbolically offers the sovereign the keys to the city.
Nicolas Bachelier does not get over it. His career is launched. The city councilors entrusted him, in part, with the rehabilitation of the city walls and the gates of the enclosure before recalling him to the restoration of the large fireplace in the Town Hall.
Serving Bagis, Bernuy, Assézat
From then on, it becomes essential. The more fortunate hasten to secure his services.
In 1537, Jean de Bagis, one of the most famous lawyers in parliament, contacts him so that he can draw up plans for the mansion he wants to build in Dalbade. A few years later, in 1551, he directed, a few hundred meters away, the erection of the steeple of the neighborhood church. As he advances the facade on the courtyard and the staircase with a straight banister, Bachelier is entrusted by another powerful, the merchant pastelier. Jean de Bernuy, the elevation of its palace, as well as the ornaments of its windows and doors.
What Toulouse owes him
A true goldsmith in this area, we also owe him the door of the Esquile college (which today serves as the entrance to the Cinémathèque) rue du Taur or that of the Commutation of the Town Hall (moved and raised in 1886 at the Jardin des Plantes).
In the 1550s, although experiencing great signs of fatigue, he responded to Pierre d’Assezat, another great glory of the pastoral trade, by drawing up the plans for his palace, one of the most beautiful and ambitious in the kingdom, which his son Dominique would complete in the years 1560-1562.
A first idea of the future Canal du Midi
The now emblematic architect of the city and beyond (we still owe him the castle of Saint-Jory, the church of Montgiscard, the castle of Caumont, to the south-west of Isle-Jourdain, in the Gers …) continues to multiply experiences, to the chagrin of his colleagues who reproach him for leaving the conduct of certain missions to his subordinates.
A century before Pierre-Paul Riquet, he highlights his visionary talents by evoking the idea of a canal which would link the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, one of the strategic points of which would be the threshold of Naurouze. The plan, probably too ambitious and too expensive for its time, remains a dead letter.
Mathieu Arnal
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