Château de Versailles Magazine

This is the first issue of a magazine dedicated to the chateau de Versailles and its history. It is possible to order it from the publisher's site.

Visit Versailles with Google Art Project

Palace of Versailles

Sciences & Curiosities at the Court of Versailles

Sciences & Curiosities at the Court of Versailles is the title of the current exhibition in the chateau de Versailles. It started in October and will close on February 27.

The illustration above is the cover of the catalogue (only available in French, as usual*). If you can't read French, and haven't planned any travel to Versailles, all is not lost. There is a lot to see and to learn from the Chateau de Versailles site which, fortunately, provides an english version.

If you're interested in the history and science, pay a virtual visit to it, you won't be disappointed...

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(*) The reason is that the RMN (Réunion des Musées Nationaux - which rules the national museums and publishes most of the exhibition catalogues in France) have chosen to focus on the creation of catalogues rather than on the translation of them. So, except on rare occurences, the translation is left to foreign publishers willing to buy the translation rights.

If you're a publisher, here is the contact page.

Splendour of Table and Décor at Versailles

The restoration of the magnificent room called the 'Antichambre du Grand Couvert', in the Palace of Versailles, has just been completed. It was the place where king Louis XIV and his family used to have diner, at night (10 pm), in public - a ceremonial repast which was called 'au Grand Couvert'.

This book, a French English bilingual edition, put the focus on the "Grand Couvert", describing its organization and decrypting its rituals and codes.

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Nicolas Milovanovic
L'Antichambre du Grand Couvert : Fastes de la table et du décor à Versailles,
Gourcuff Gradenigo - Livres d'art LG, 2010, 120 p.

Sculptures Versailles

Petit Trianon

Cornice

Sculptures Versailles is a wonderful ressource dedicated to the outdoor decoration of the Chateau de Versailles. It provides technical descriptions of the sculptures (author, size, kind of stone, theme, date...) and pictures about every detail of each building.

The author is Béatrix Saule, curator at Versailles.

It's in French, but there are a lot of pictures and inedited views to enjoy.

Temple de l'Amour
close-up on the delicate band of roses at the center of the rotunda

'Versailles' by Albert Samain

VERSAILLES

I

O Versailles, par cette après-midi fanée,
Pourquoi ton souvenir m'obsède-t-il ainsi ?
Les ardeurs de l'été s'éloignent, et voici
Que s'incline vers nous la saison surannée.

Je veux revoir au long d'une calme journée
Tes eaux glauques que jonche un feuillage roussi,
Et respirer encore, un soir d'or adouci,
Ta beauté touchante au déclin de l'année.

Voici tes ifs en cônes et tes tritons joufflus,
Tes jardins composés où Louis ne vient plus,
Et ta pompe arborant les plumes et les casques.

Comme un grand lys tu meurs, noble et triste, sans bruit ;
Et ton onde épuisée au bord moisi des vasques
S'écoule, douce ainsi qu'un sanglot dans la nuit.

II

Grand air. Urbanité des façons anciennes.
Haut cérémonial. Révérences sans fin.
Créqui, Fronsac, beaux noms chatoyants de satin.
Mains ducales dans les vieilles valenciennes,

Mains royales sur les épinettes. Antiennes
Des évêques devant Monseigneur le Dauphin.
Gestes de menuets et coeurs de biscuit fin ;
Et ces grâces que l'ont disait Autrichiennes...

Princesses de sang bleu, dont l'âme d'apparat,
Des siècles, au plus pur des castes macéra.
Grands seigneurs pailletés d'esprit. Marquis de sèvres.

Tout un monde galant, vif, brave, exquis et fou,
Avec sa fine épée en verrouil et surtout
Ce mépris de la mort, comme une fleur, aux lèvres !

III

Mes pas ont suscité les prestiges enfuis.
O psyché de vieux saxe où le Passé se mire...
C'est ici que la reine, en écoutant Zémire,
Rêveuse, s'éventait dans la tiédeur des nuits.

Ô visions ; paniers, poudres et mouches ; et puis,
Léger comme un parfum, joli comme un sourire,
Cet air vieille France ici que tout respire.
Et toujours cette odeur pénétrante des buis...

Mais ce qui prend mon coeur d'une étreinte infinie,
Aus rayons d'un long soir dorant son agonie,
C'est ce grand Trianon solitaire et royal,

Et son perron désert où l'automne, si douce
Laisse prendre, en rêvant, sa chevelure rousse
Sur l'eau divinement triste du grand canal.

IV

Le Bosquet de Vertumne est délaissé des Grâces.
Cette ombre, qui, de marbre en marbre gémissant,
Se traîne et se retient d'un beau bras languissant,
Hélas ! C'est le Génie en deuil des vieilles races.

O Palais, horizon suprême des terrasses,
Un peu de vos beautés coule dans notre sang ;
Et c'est ce qui vous donne un indicible accent,
Quand un couchant sublime illumine vos glaces !

Gloires dont tant de jours vous fûtes le décor,
Ames étincelant sous les lustres. Soirs d'or.
Versailles... Mais déjà s'amasse la nuit sombre.

Et mon coeur tout à coup se serre, car j'entends,
Comme un bélier sinistre aux murailles du temps,
Toujours le grand bruit sourd de ces flots noirs dans l'ombre.

Octobre 1894

(Albert Samain, Le Chariot d'or, 1947)

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picture of the Château de Versailles by Eugène Atget.

Château de Versailles, Three Centuries of Music

The new issue of Classica puts the focus on the musical history of the chateau de Versailles. The main article, "A l'écoute de Versailles" (Listening to Versailles), by Philippe Venturini, takes the readers on a musical tour in chateau de Versailles, describing the habits and tastes of the royal residents, and where, in the chateau, the various concerts and musical events took place along the years.
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"Visite guidée.Versailles.Trois siècles de Musique", Classica, n°123, June 2010.

(The older issues of many French magazines are now available for download from a website called Relay.com. Here is the Classica page. It's a payed service. As I never tried it, I can't tell whether it's OK, safe, etc. I'm just passing on the information. )

Fan Paintings - Château de Versailles (ca. 1675)

Versailles - View of the Chateau as seen from the Place d'Armes

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Versailles - View of the Chateau seen from the garden

Those amazing gouaches will be put up for auction in Paris, Drouot, on April 16, 2010.
The auctioneer is Ferri & Associés.

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Fan Painting - Lot n°39
Gouache and gold
22,4 cmx 42,8 cm
Estimate € 10 000 - 12 000

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UPDATE - Those priceless paintings reached an unexpected high price : € 240 000 !

Gardens of Versailles - The Maze

Map of the Maze

The maze was imagined by Le Nôtre, Le Brun, Perrault and La Fontaine, in the years 1660-1661, for the Superintendent of Finance Fouquet. After Fouquet was arrested, Le Nôtre, Le Brun and Perrault were hired by Louis XIV and revived in Versailles some works they had originally planned for Vaux. La Fontaine, who had remained faithful to Fouquet, fell into disgrace.The maze was among the first bosquets designed in Versailles. The works began in 1664, and the fountains, on the theme of Aesop's fables, were installed in the years 1672-1681.

A Fountain : 'The fox and the Crane'
from Jacques Bailly's Le Labyrinthe de Versailles, (ca. 1675)

The sculptures of animals were very realistic. They were made of painted lead, and arranged in graceful compositions. The idea of fountains illustrating the fables is generally attributed to Bossuet, tutor to the dauphin, but, it seems that Le Brun had already proposed them in the time of Fouquet. The fountains were made after models designed by Le Brun, though he was not involved in the new project, which can be seen as an evidence he had designed them for Vaux. As La Fontaine was still persona non grata in Versailles, Benserade composed verses to introduce each fountain.
The verses, in the form of enigmas, were contributing to turn the labyrinth into an allegory for life, and to make of it a moral and initiatic journey where only the "honnête homme" (gentleman) could find the right way - a bit the same as the 'Map of Tenderness', designed by Mademoiselle de Scudéry and published in 1654 in her novel Clélie, was depicting love as the happy end of a hard journey into the land of feelings.

The Entrance to the Labyrinth
by Jean Cotelle dit Le Jeune (1642-1708)

On the left Cupid/Love and on the right Aesop
In the middle, the fountain of 'The Owl and the Birds"

Cupid/Love : "Yes, now I can close my eyes and laugh
With that bowl of string I'll know how to find my way"
Aesop : "Love, this weak string could mislead you
The slightest shock could snap it".

The maze didn't survive and was replaced by the Bosquet de la Reine.

Court Pomp and Royal Ceremony

Court Pomp and Royal Ceremony
Court Dress in Europe, 1650-1800

(Fastes de Cour - Le Costume de Cour en Europe, 1650-1800)

31 March to 28 June 2009,

Palace of Versailles

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The exhibition Court Pomp and Royal Ceremony — Court Dress in Europe, 1650-1800 follows the history of court dress in Europe, revealing France’s major influence from the mid-17th to early 19th centuries.

Over 200 exhibits (dress, jewels, pictures) associated with the great European monarchies are assembled for the first time in an exhibition that will be held only at Versailles.

The Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Pitti Palace in Florence, the Louvre, Musée Galliera, Les Arts décoratifs and Archives Nationales in Paris, and private collectors have agreed to loan some of their pieces. The royal collections of London, Dresden, Denmark (Rosenborg Castle), Sweden (Royal Armoury), and Portugal (Ajuda Palace), and the imperial collections of Vienna (Kunsthistorisches Museum), the Tsars of Russia (State Hermitage), and Cologne cathedral will for the first time be exhibited outside their countries of origin.

This event is part of the cycle of exhibitions evoking court life in the 17th and 18th centuries, such as Versailles and the Royal Tables of Europe, 17th-19th centuries in 1993-1994.

Court dress developed as a political symbolic language, whose prime function was to display in visual form the hierarchy of power. The costumes exhibited here evoke not only the exceptional circumstances accompanying the beginnings of national monarchy and the lives of European monarchs and courtiers (coronations and ceremonies of orders of chivalry) but also the prestigious events held at all courts, such as weddings. The dress worn on these occasions was strictly bound by the formality of court etiquette. Each special occasion was an opportunity to adapt court dress with the use of luxurious materials, cloth, embroidery, lace, trimmings and a wealth of real and costume jewellery. These costumes became a showcase for the luxury trade, displaying its technical and aesthetic innovations. As fashion became more important and styles changed more rapidly, so court dress also developed. Orders from European courts placed in Paris demonstrated France’s central influence in court dress and fashion and the excellent quality achieved by Paris craft workers.