Donatella Jacopozzi: a life spent keeping her father's memory
Born in 1921, Donatella Jacopozzi was ten when her father died. All her life she kept his memory alive, told his story, and waited for the world to recognise what he had accomplished.
Donatella Jacopozzi was born on 22 October 1921 in Paris. She is Fernand Jacopozzi’s only child. She is ten when her father receives the Légion d’honneur, and loses him two weeks later.
An intangible inheritance
Fernand Jacopozzi leaves no fortune. He leaves the memory of a lifetime spent illuminating Paris — a body of work he had never taken the time to recount for posterity.
Donatella, for her part, remembers. In Paris and then Rome, she carries within her the stories, the images, the evenings of light she knew as a child.
Telling the story, again and again
For decades, no one asks. The rare journalists interested in the Eiffel Tower or the Christmas illuminations do not know the name of their inventor.
When someone finally asks the question, Donatella answers. She tells of the bateau-mouche on 4 July 1925. She tells of the Christmases at the Magasins du Louvre. She tells of the Faux Paris, about which her father told her almost nothing.
The passing on
After her, it is her daughter Véronique — Fernand Jacopozzi’s granddaughter — who takes up the torch. For years, Véronique has been collecting documents about her grandfather’s work, to bring him back into the light he left too soon. It is she who decided, with her son Brice, to create this site.
“My father illuminated the world so that others might see it more beautifully.” — Donatella Jacopozzi