Abstract
In 1929, Charles de Beistegui commissioned Le Corbusier to design an apartment in the Champs-Elysees. This essay minutely illustrates the high society milieu of the eccentric Beistegui and traces the artistic ambitions and highly personal agenda that directed his commissions. This essay describes the difficult process that resulted from the clash between an idiosyncratic and interfering patron and an egocentric architect as a form of autobiographical patronage. Van den Berg shows that Beistegui was always his own client, inclined towards the amateurism of the rich eighteenth-century gentleman-architects, trying to realize his very personal ideas that served to stage his public persona in a self-created décor de fête.