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 lost him two weeks later. She grew up in the memory of a father gone too soon, whose name Paris would forget for decades.

All her life, Donatella kept her father's memory alive. She spoke of Fernand Jacopozzi to her children and answered the rare journalists who still took an interest in him. Her conviction that her father deserved recognition never left her.

She was the first to make sure her father's memory would not fade.

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 has for years been collecting documents about her grandfather's work, to bring him back into the light he left too soon.

This site is her project — imagined and built with the help of her son Brice, Fernand Jacopozzi'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