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As a result of its creators' innovative temperament, Versailles was and still is considered as a marvel. Louis XIV's successors each in turn decorated the palace with details characteristic of their period. But in general, except for the chapel completed by Ange Gabriel under Louis XV, the architecture of Versailles was not to be modified after Louis XIV's reign. After the Revolution, the palace became the symbol of the monarchy's errors, and was destined failing demolition, to become a museum. After the signature of the Treaty of Versailles, in 1919, the palace regained its prestige in the eyes of the world and Louis XIV finally won the wager he had set himself of France becoming an artistic model. Versailles has often been copied.
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Louis
XIV was five years old when his father, Louis XIII died.
The Regency council was composed of Anne d'Autriche and
Mazarin. At the age of 23, Louis decided to take on the
running of the country by himself. At the bottom oh his
heart he still felt the humiliation caused by the Fronde
(the rebellion by the nobility and the people against his
father). He wanted to consolidate the royal authority on
which Louis XIII had worked and decided to make his reign
a "great reign". Therefore, right from his accession to
power, in 1654, Louis XVI's ambition was to show his neighbours
that France was a strong nation. Louis XIII had left a kingdom
with an unbalance budget because of the Thirty Years' War,
but Louis XIV protected agriculture, trade and industry,
and reorganized the army giving France notable victories.
He decided to centralize artistic production around his
person and to make the art of the seventeenth century a
royal art. With this in mind, he developed the different
corporations and centres of artistic production. His meeting
with Colbert was to be decisive. Indeed, Colbert thought
along exactly the same lines as his sovereign. Colbert reorganized
the Académie de Peinture, of which Charles Le Brun
received the presidency, the Académie des Sciences (in
1666) and the Académie d'Architecture (in 1671).
Louis XIV's and Colbert's model was Rome, which was why
Rome was chosen as a centre for study. Colbert created the
Académie de France there. The royal cultural policy
consisted in sending French artists to Italy in the hope
that they would become better than the Italian masters.
Colbert encouraged foreign artisans to establish themselves
in Paris: cloth manufacturers from Flanders , glass-makers
from Venice and tinsmiths from Germany. He left out no discipline
likely to serve royal propaganda. Acquiring this know-how
was indispensable to the Versailles site. In 1662, Colbert
created the Manufacture Royale des Gobelins, which
resulted in the merging of Parisian workshops under a single
supervision. Charles Le Brun directed the tapestry cartoon
workshops there. Versailles was initially only devoted to
the organization of sumptuous parties. In 1664, the court
was able to attend the opening night of what were called
the "Plaisirs de l'Ile Enchantée" (Pleasures of the Enchanted
Island), organized both to avenge the affront committed
by Fouquet during the King's visit to Vaux-le-Vicomte and
also to present the current favourite, Melle de La Vallière.
For three days, in May, the court amused itself in the new
gardens created by Le Nôtre. In 1674, Louis XIV celebrated
the recapture of Franche-Comté at a party at Versailles
which lasted this time for six days: Theatre, music, water
games and fireworks enlivened these parties. Molière, Lully
and Racine outdid one another to please the King and the
court. In 1682, Louis XIV decided to install his court at
Versailles because the palace was now ready to house the
royal family and its courtiers without fear of discomfort.
Le
Nôtre was the first great architect of the formal garden
(or "jardin à la française" in French). The idea
of regular gardens, practiced since the 1630s, reached
its height with Le Nôtre who designed the park at Vaux-le-Vicomte:
an open system of axial paths intended to render space
infinite, divided geometrically by beds of flowers and
low hedges, large basins of water, canals and fountains.
The formal garden as created at Versailles by Le Nôtre
reflected the King's ambitions. The enhancing of space
and the play of perspective created an atmosphere of grandeur
and majesty favourable to showing off the palace and contributing
to the assertion of France's power over the neighbouring
nations. In order to show off Versailles' majesty and
identity, Le Nôtre first of all opened up the space around
the building, and then created a central perspective (Parterre
d'eau, Grand Canal), a perpendicular axis (Orangerie,
parterre du midi, parterre nord, bassin
de Neptune) and the parallel or diagonal paths reunited
at their meeting points by cross roads. Another main element
in the design of the formal garden were the copses which
competed with the appartements of the palace from which
they borrowed their attributions, (Salle de bal,
Salle des antiques) their great allegorical cycles
(Char d'Apollon, Bains d'Apollon, bassin
de Laton). These were undoubtedly architectural gardens,
but above all gardens with baroque enchantments. Amongst
Le Nôtre's numerous projects for palaces and great houses
in France, England and Italy the following should be mentioned:
the palace of Vaux-le-Vicomte (1655-1661), the palace
of Chantilly (1661-1683), the transformation of the Tuileries
(where he was gardener with his father from 1637); the
English royal parks of Whitehall ...
Louis
Le Vau worked at the court of Louis XIV. In 1655, he was
named First Architect to the King, as well as adviser and
secretary. After designing Vaux-le-Vicomte, he was called
to Versailles to draw up the first plans for the conversion
of Louis XIII's hunting lodge. He was the only person not
to propose the destruction of the lodge to which Louis XIV
was opposed for reasons of filial piety. Le Vau surrounded
the old building by a large palace in the form of a U. On
the garden side, the façade is flanked by two large lodges
whose first floor windows jut out framed by columns. The
building has three floors, a balustrade cleverly hides the
roof and a terrace covers up the ground floor. The overall
effect is Italian and closely resembles the projects submitted
by Bernini (the Italian architect and sculptor) for the
conversion of the Louvre a few years earlier. Le Vau combines
his taste for polychromy (the wings of the outbuildings),
curves (the semi-circular entrance ramps) and luxurious
decoration (the marble courtyard) to develop an architecture
of pomp and decor which breaks with the sober style of his
earlier output. Louis Le Vau is also conspicuous for the
skill with which he developed plans that were rational,
practical and designed with comfort in mind. For the arrangement
of the new palace he used a system of interior courtyards
and devoted particular attention to the layout of the King's
appartments. Although the palace was principally designed
for grandiose celebrations, the organization of the interior
rooms already suggests the idea of a prolonged stay. Besides
the masterpieces of Versailles and Vaux-le-Vicomte, his
principal Parisian achievement should be mentioned: Le
Collège des Quatre Nations, today the Institut de
France in which he developed curved areas, and a sense
of movement and volumes.
The
First painter to the King Charles le Brun trained under Simon
Vouet, in France and Rome, and was influenced by Poussin and the
Italian tradition. Protected by Richelieu (in 1641, he collaborated
on the pictorial decoration of the Cardinal's palace) and then
by Colbert, he in a few years became the principal interpreter
of the fast and political and artistic prestige of Louis XIV's
France. He divided his time between his activities of First painter
to the King, theoretician of French classical art, President of
the Académie de Peinture and of the Manufacture des
Gobelins. Between 1650 and 1660, he reached his stylistic
maturity with a classically inspired style of painting that achieved
its height with a series of decorative cycles amongst which are
those of Vaux-le-Vicomte, Versailles and the Hôtel Lambert
in Paris. His style is identified with the grand style of Louis
XIV. The mastery and scale of the composition, with its feeling
for allegory and taste for opulence and robust forms made him
a brilliant interpreter of the King's wishes. At Versailles, all
the ornaments and attributes combine in a homogeneous iconographical
programme which governs the arrangement of the seven salons dedicated
to the planets and the worship of the royal Apollo. The sculpture
commission of 1674 once more uses the mythological and cosmic
subjects familiar to the Italian courts, the advantages of which
had been taught by Cesare Ripa in his work Iconologia: the four
elements, the four seasons, the four hours of the day, the four
parts of the world, the four temperaments of man had already figured
in the celebrations of the "Plaisirs de l'Ile Enchantée".
The sculpted figures at Versailles have noble attitudes, graceful
movements, calm and serene expressions, as many elements which
in fact distance the French output from Italian art. Numerous
teams worked under Le Brun's orders, harnessed to painting, ornamental
sculpture, statuary, carving and gilding. Versailles owes him
its grandiose harmony which he arranged, in his drawings, down
to the slightest detail of the ceilings and furniture, candelabra
and tapestries. 
Jules
Hardouin-Mansart was Louis XIV's favourite architect whom he
named royal architect in 1675. He turned out to be the best
interpreter of the cultural policy aimed at the autocratic king's
glorification. From 1679 onwards, he gave Versailles its final
appearance, and the one which we still know today. Jules Hardouin-Mansart
choose to retain the new palace, which had been built by Le
Vau, considering it to be the main central motif of the whole.
He enlarged the terraces towards the north and south, and built
long wings which were to give the palace its size and horizontality.
He created the magnificent staircase known as the Escalier
de Cent Marches (Staircase of the Hundred Steps) which leads
down to the Orangerie. The two lodges of the façade were
connected by the Galerie des Glaces which replaced Le
Vau's terrace overlooking the garden. On its vaults Le Brun
painted large compositions in honour of the royal victories.
The mastery of volume and space triumph with the building of
the Grand Commun (Large Outbuilding) of 1682, the Orangerie
(1683-1686), the Ecuries (Stables) of 1679 to 1686 and
the palace of Marly (1696-1699). With the Grand Trianon
(begun in 1687) the architect gave a refined appearance to the
building with just has a ground floor, and for which the transparent
structure (the peristyle) and lightness announce eighteenth
century taste. Beside the complete transformation of Versailles,
we also owe Jules Hardouin-Mansart, the Dôme des Invalides,
which constitutes the most convincing example of French monumental
and commemorative classicism. In general, the rejection of the
old projections went along with the adoption of strong lines
and uniform rhythms. This style of architecture gave birth to
the large royal squares of Paris: the place des Victoires
(1685-1686) or the place Vendôme (1686-1700) destined
to receive a statue of the King on their median axis. These
squares were the prototypes of a series of large urban spaces
which spread throughout Europe. Copyright © 1999 Editions Montparnasse - tous droits réservés