Desprez, who was born in
Auxerre in
Bourgogne, France. He studied architecture and was awarded the Great Prize of the
Académie royale d'architecture in 1776. He lived in
Italy from 1777 to 1784 and was associated with
Piranesi in
Rome. He came to the attention of King
Gustav III of Sweden, who offered him a two-year contract as director of scenic decorations at the new
Stockholm Opera founded by the King two years earlier. His first task there was the decorations for the new opera
Gustaf Wasa (with a
libretto authored by the King in collaboration with
Johan Henric Kellgren and music by
Johann Gottlieb Naumann). As an architect, Desprez designed in a monumental,
neoclassical style influenced by his study of Greek and Roman ruins in the south of Italy and in Sicily. A good example of this is
Hämeenlinna Church in Finland - Finland at that time still being part of the Swedish kingdom - completed in 1799. His greatest project was one never realized: the magnificent new palace planned by the King for the
Haga Park outside Stockholm, the
Haga Great Palace. Because of lack of money, only the foundations were ever built and the project was abandoned after the assassination of the King. The smaller "royal pavilion" which stands at Haga was built by architect,
Olof Tempelman. {{cite web|url= https://runeberg.org/nfch/0434.html|title =Tempelman, Olof Samuel |website= Nordisk familjebok His most significant completed project was the conservatory building in the
new botanical garden in
Uppsala, inaugurated after his death on May 13, 1807, the 100th anniversary of
Linnaeus's birth. He also built the Villa Frescati in 1791-92 for
Gustaf Mauritz Armfelt, after which the whole
Frescati area in Stockholm later was named. {{cite web|url= https://runeberg.org/sbh/desprjea.html |title= Jean-Louis Desprez|author= Herman Hofberg |publisher= Svenskt biografiskt handlexikon|date= 1906 ==Selected works==