The Family

12 September 1877 — 5 February 1932

Fernand Jacopozzi

Engineer-illuminator · "The Magician of Light"

Born in Florence on 12 September 1877, Fernand Jacopozzi arrived in Paris in 1900, aged twenty-two, with nothing but his talent as an electrician and a vision: to make artificial light an art form in its own right. He would remain there until his death.

In thirty years of Parisian career, he signed the illuminations of the Eiffel Tower for Citroën (250,000 bulbs, 1925), orchestrated the Fake Paris to fool German bombers (1917–1918, classified defence), illuminated Notre-Dame (1930) and invented the animated Christmas windows of the grands magasins.

Appointed Commandeur de la Légion d'honneur on 22 January 1932, he died two weeks later, on 5 February. He is buried at Père-Lachaise, division 86.

born 22 October 1921

Donatella Jacopozzi

Keeper of memory · Paris → Rome

Donatella Jacopozzi, wife of Bernard de Mascureau, was born on 22 October 1921, in Paris. She was ten when her father received the Légion d'honneur, and barely eleven when he died. She inherited the archives, the photographs, the sketch books and the contracts: an entire childhood in shoeboxes.

All her life, Donatella was the keeper of her father's memory. She spoke of Fernand to her children, answered the rare journalists who still took an interest in him, and preserved documents that no one was asking for. Her conviction that her father deserved recognition never left her.

It is to her that we owe the survival of most of the documents this site presents.

Véronique de Mascureau

Curator of the archives · Paris

Véronique de Mascureau, wife of Emmanuel Tessier Huort, is Donatella's daughter. After her mother's death, she decided to sort the archives, digitise them, and make Fernand accessible to those who do not yet know who he was.

This site is her project — imagined and built with the help of her son Brice, Fernand's great-grandson. The work of memory is ongoing: unseen documents continue to surface, testimonies to emerge. The story of Fernand Jacopozzi is still being written.

"I am the granddaughter of Fernand Jacopozzi. It was he who was behind the Citroën name on the Eiffel Tower in 1925, and he who had the idea of lighting the monuments of Paris: my grandfather wanted to make Paris the 'City of Light' it has become. I created this site to make him known and restore him to honour."

— Véronique de Mascureau