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Splendour Versailles continue… June 6, 2008

Posted by dodo in : Austria, France, Museum, Paris, USA , trackback

Louis’s vanity, however, was not inexhaustible. Once a year he felt the need to retire to Marly where a much easier regime was in force, and spirited young duchesses were even allowed to bombard him with bread pellets during supper. At Versailles too, he felt the need for greater intimacy. For this purpose he selected a small pavilion on the site of the former village of Trianon, which was enlarged to make the Grand Trianon in 1687. During the summer the king organised little dances and suppers there, to which he invited a few select guests.

As far as religion was concerned, Louis possessed the sincere if somewhat illiberal piety of his time, which expressed itself in his persecution of the Huguenots and the Jansenists. At Versailles he spared no expense on his Royal Chapel, which was designed by Hardouin Mansart and decorated by a team of artists following designs drawn up by Louis’s theologians. The chapel is planned according to a two-tiered scheme that is at least as old as Charlemagne’s Court Chapel at Aachen built in 805; the upper storey was mainly reserved for members of the royal family and the mass of courtiers were accommodated on the more spacious ground level. Though Voltaire stigmatised the chapel as a gigantic piece of costume jewellery, its elegance has earned greater appreciation since its careful restoration was completed during the 1950s.

Louis’s passion for building was curbed only by an empty exchequer, drained by his many wars, which were intended to affirm his supremacy in the concert of European powers. Fortunately, Versailles was almost complete when the long war of the Spanish Succession began in 1701. The financial burden imposed by this war weighed particularly heavily on the French people, and something of the gloom of Louis’s last years seemed to penetrate the palace itself. So it is not surprising that after Louis’s death in 1715, the new government, headed by his nephew Philip, Duke of Orleans, preferred to operate from Paris. But in 1723, when the new king, Louis’s great- grandson Louis XV, had reached his twelfth year, the court was glad to return to Versailles once again.

Travel GuidebookLouis XIV had spent fifty years building Versailles and now his heir was to be granted fifty years to enjoy it. Handsome and affable, Louis XV was a man who had trouble making up his mind. After much indecision, he finally allowed himself to be guided by his clever mistresses, Madame de Pompadour and Madame du Barry. Schemes undertaken at Versailles during his reign were somewhat contradictory: for example, efforts to preserve the Sun King’s heritage competed with new projects that often disturbed the earlier harmony. In one field, however, the new king could not be faulted. His craftsmen created the Louis XV style of furniture that is still a byword for comfort and elegance. The stiff and ceremonious work of Louis XIV was replaced by an entirely new style, characterised by inviting curves and a subtle handling of materials.

Louis XV’s gifted architect Jacques-Ange Gabriel persuaded the king to accept a costly scheme for rebuilding the whole east facade of the palace to match the splendour of the Le Vau—Mansart garden front. But the king’s vacillations ensured that only one part of this project was undertaken. Gabriel was luckier in the sumptuous opera house he erected at the end of the north wing. The opening of this building coincided with the marriage of the dauphin (the future Louis XVI) to Marie Antoinette of Austria, an event that was feted there every night for two months during the summer of 1770. Serious works such as Lully’s opera Persée and Racine’s religious drama Athalie alternated with delicious ballets and comedies. By the light of thousands of candles, the interior glowed in a subtle harmony of blue, pink and gold.

The most restrained and intimate of Gabriel’s works is the Petit Trianon, which he completed for Louis XV in 1768. Its name is, however, more closely linked with that of the ill-fated Marie Antoinette, to whom it was given by the uxorious Louis XVI in 1774. Around the Petit Trianon grew up a whole domain where the queen was supreme; even her husband entered only with her permission. Here Marie Antoinette had her own theatre, a Temple of Love and a picturesque dairy farm, where she could play at being a simple country girl.

Louis XVI was industrious and well-meaning in his efforts to reestablish the monarchy after half a century of neglect under his predecessor. But the pressure of new ideas formulated by the thinkers of the Enlightenment combined with the massive economic and political mismanagement of the ancien regime were too much for him. On October 6, 1789, a Parisian mob drove the king and Marie Antoinette out of Versailles for ever.

During the early stages of the Revolution, Versailles was well looked after, but eventually it became the hunting ground of looters and speculators. The furniture was sold, the garden fell into ruin and the grand canal became a stinking bog. It was left to Napoleon to stop the rot. Not himself fond of Versailles, he nevertheless grasped its importance as a setting for national pageantry. But neither Napoleon nor the rulers who followed him realised the need to restore Versailles in an authentic way. During the 1830s Louis-Philippe converted it into a museum of the history of France, and its empty rooms were filled with thousands of academic narrative paintings, many of doubtful merit.

In the 20th century, however, a succession of enlightened curators began to cherish the hope of recapturing the palace’s former glory. Care and patience were the main qualities needed to renew the park, which is now in a flourishing state. But the restoration of the interior posed more serious problems. Should the original furniture, much of which had found its way into museums outside France, be copied and if so, how could one decide which period to choose when a room had been furnished differently under several reigns ? Not surprisingly, a compromise policy was adopted. With the sympathetic support of the state, it has proved possible to reacquire some original pieces of furniture at auctions and others have been reclaimed from the French museums and institutions to which, for one reason or another, they had previously been consigned.

Several notable examples of the more energetic interior restoration undertaken since the Second World War deserve mention. Veronese’s great painting Supper in the House of Simon, which was given to Louis XIV by the Venetian Republic in 1664, has been returned to the Salon d’Hercule, the room specially designed for it by Robert de Cotte. The small Cabinet du Roi has acquired an unexpected lustre through the reinstallation of its original furniture, above all the bureau of Oeben and Riesener. The collection of historical paintings initiated under Louis-Philippe has been thinned out and banished to the less important parts of the palace. In 1966 the French Government completed the most ambitious task of all, the top-to-bottom renovation of the Grand Trianon at a cost of over £3,000,000. The building is intended to serve as an official residence for heads of state visiting France, with one fifteen-room wing set aside as a secondary residence for the French president.

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