Henri REVOIL
Aix en Provence, 1822 - Mouriès, 1900
An alumnus of the Paris Fine Arts School, and architect working for the French Commission for Historic Monuments, he was in charge of the conservation of ancient monuments in the South of France, taking over that position from Charles Questel in 1854. In that capacity, he oversaw the restoration of the Nîmes amphitheater until 1870. He continued the work started by his predecessor, respecting the same principles: not to rebuild, but only to support. He continued this difficult restoration work for 16 years. His official register of tasks completed and sketches is a very precious source of documentation. To help him make his plans, Révoil invented the "teleiconographer," an instrument with which he could draw architectural elements from a distance extremely precisely. It would be patented in 1869 and experimented with by Viollet-le-Duc at the Pierrefonds Château. He enlisted several photographers to help him, including the famous Nîmes photographer Antoine Crespon.
In 1897, he was appointed to preserve the listed monuments in the Gard, the Drôme, the Vaucluse, the Bouches du Rhône, Var and Alpes Maritimes Departments. An archeologist and art historian, between 1867 and 1874 he published L’architecture romane du Midi de la France (Romanesque Architecture in the South of France), a remarkable work containing over 200 plates of lithography prints of drawings.
image © City of Nîmes
