The Fountain of the Dragon: water, allegory, and burlesque in the gardens of Versailles

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Michel Conan for our enriching conversations on the gardens of Versailles during my fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks in 2006–2007.

To Robert Berger, for his criticism of an early draft, my many thanks.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The term has multiple applications. For some, it signals the period before Louis XIV took an active interest in Versailles; for others, it points to the years from 1661 to 1674, the year in which the Enveloppe was completed. My more narrow range includes the works of art and architecture that were in progress or on the planning boards in 1668.

2. Madeleine de Scudéry, La promenade de Versailles [1669], ed. Marie-Gabrielle Lallemand (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2002), p. 95. Her words were inspired by the endless view of the western axis from the top of the Fer-à-Cheval (see figure 1, middle).

3. Musée de Versailles, inv. no. 765.

4. Later, and for mysterious reasons, they were erected elsewhere, possibly at the entry gates; their fate is unknown. The first payment to Lerambert was issued on 16 February1664 (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Departément des Manuscrits, Mélanges Colbert 311, fol. 142r), but some of his terms had been completed by then, thus my estimate that they originated in 1663 (hereafter: BnF, Mss.). Le Pautre’s nine prints are illustrated in François Souchal, in collaboration with Françoise de La Moureyre and Henriette Dumuis, French Sculptors of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: The Reign of Louis XIV (Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, 1981), Vol. II, p. 392, no. 9. Concurrent with the suite by Lerambert and Anguier was a suite of bicephalic terms by Jacques Houzeau that served as supports for a grill running between the château and the Jardin-à-Fleurs (see figure 1, left). The flower garden was doubled in size in the 1680s, creating what is today the Parterre du Midi.

5. The statues were moved to the outskirts of the Apollo fountain in 1678, and to the gardens of the Palais-Royal in Paris in 1693. They were destroyed shortly before the Revolution. Their likenesses are preserved in engravings by Pierre Le Pautre and François Chauveau (1672–1675).

6. Thomas Hedin, ‘The Petite Commande of 1664: Burlesque in the Gardens of Versailles’, Art Bulletin, LXXXIII, 2001, pp. 651–685. A slightly abridged version appeared as ‘La petite commande de 1664: apparition du burlesque dans les jardins de Versailles’, trans. Olivier de Rohan, Versalia, 7, 2004, pp. 74–111. Hereafter I will cite the English version only.

7. Charles Perrault, Parallèle des anciens et des modernes en ce qui regarde les arts et les sciences [1692] (Paris: Jean-Baptiste Coignard; reprint, Munich: Eidos Verlag, 1964), Vol. III, p. 296.

8. Guillet de Saint-Georges, ‘Mémoire historique des principaux ouvrages de Louis Lerambert’, in Conférences de l’Académie royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, ed. Jacqueline Lichtenstein and Christian Michel (Paris: Ecole nationale supérieure des beaux-arts, 2008), Vol. II (2), p. 504.

9. Perrault, Parallèle, Vol. III, p. 292.

10. Charles Perrault, Mémoires de ma vie [c. 1700], ed. Antoine Picon (Paris: Macula, 1993), p. 114. Henceforth, with some variations, I will borrow the translations of Jeanne Morgan Zarucchi, Charles Perrault: Memoirs of My Life (Columbia, University of Missouri Press, 1989).

11. Charles Perrault, in partnership with his brothers Claude and Nicolas and their friend Beaurain, Les Murs de Troye, ou L’origine du burlesque (Paris: Louis Chamhoudry, 1653), p. 13. The book has been republished by Yvette Saupé, Les Murs de Troye, ou L’origine du burlesque: Livre I (Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 2001) (with annotations).

12. André Félibien, Description sommaire du chasteau de Versailles [1674], in Recueïl de descriptions de peintures et d’autres ouvrages faits pour le Roy (Paris: Sébastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1689; reprint, Geneva: Minkoff Reprint, 1973), p. 279.

13. See Thomas Hedin, ‘Les premiers jardins de Louis XIV à Versailles: Autour de l’Amour de Louis Lerambert’, trans. Françoise de La Moureyre, Versalia, 15, 2012, pp. 179–183. The parcels were named the Jardin-à-Fleurs, the Orangerie, and the Jardin Fruitier; the Pépinière; and the Jardin Potager (respectively).

14. Foremost, Jean de La Fontaine, Les amours de Psyché et de Cupidon [1669; privilège du roi: 2 May 1668], in Œuvres de J. de La Fontaine, ed. Henri Regnier (Paris: Hachette, 1892), Vol. VIII, p. 36; Charles Perrault, ‘La Peinture’ [1668], in Recueil de divers ouvrages en prose et en vers (Paris: Jean-Baptiste Coignard, 1675), pp. 199–200; and André Félibien, Description de la Grotte de Versailles [1672], in Recueïl de descriptions de peintures et d’autres ouvrages faits pour le Roy (Paris: Sébastien Mabre-Cramoisy,1689; reprint, Geneva: Minkoff Reprint, 1973), pp. 386–387.

15. Not before 1669–1671 were four recumbent marine figures inserted in each basin. The Parterre du Nord was earlier called the Parterre de Gazon.

16. Musée de Versailles, inv. no. 8075.

17. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Cabinet des Estampes, Va 78f, Vol. I (wrongly inscribed ‘1664’) (hereafter: BnF, Est.). François de La Pointe, the draftsman of this plan and two others from 1668, was caught in the middle of these rapid developments. If Patel (see figure 1) indicates in 1668 that the Pyramid is underway on the landing, that same spot on La Pointe’s three plans is empty. Nor is there any indication on the plans that the Bain de Diane and the Fontaines des Enfants on the Allée d’Eau are in production. For La Pointe’s plans, see Gerold Weber, Brunnen und Wasserkünste in Frankreich im Zeitalter von Louis XIV (Worms: Werner’sche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1985), p. 270, nos. 4a, 4b, 4c. The axial features are faithfully recorded in a plan from 1669–1670 (Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, THC 2).

18. My italics. For the pipes to the centerpiece, see Paris, Archives Nationales, O¹ 1762A, cahier 3, nos. 21–37; for the first set of four satellites, see cahier 3, nos. 15, 17; for the second set of four, cahier 7, no. 38 (hereafter: AN). For an introduction to Jolly’s inventories, see Hedin, ‘Les premiers jardins’, esp. p. 194, annexe 1.

19. ‘A Gaspard et Balthazard Marsy a compte des ouvrages de sculpture de plomb quils font [for Versailles]… 600 livres’ (BnF, Mss., Mélanges Colbert 313, fol. 59r). The payment is dated 24 September 1666.

20. André Félibien, Relation de la feste de Versailles du 18 juillet 1668 [1668], in Recueïl de descriptions de peintures et d’autres ouvrages faits pour le Roy (Paris: Sébastien Mabre-Cramoisy,1689; reprint, Geneva: Minkoff Reprint, 1973), pp. 200–201. The material, usually a mixture of lead and tin, was gilded to resemble gilt bronze.

21. The Rondeau was designed in the abstract by Le Nôtre, before he or anyone else at the Bâtiments du Roi gave thought to putting a figurative fountain in it. The design of the Dragon Fountain was profoundly influenced by the Rondeau’s size and shape. See Thomas Hedin, ‘From Basin to Fountain: Le Nôtre before Le Brun in the Gardens of Versailles’, in André Le Nôtre in Perspective, ed. Patricia Bouchenot-Déchin and Georges Farhat (Paris: Hazan, 2013), pp. 220–223; the article also appears in French, ‘Du bassin à la fontaine: Le Nôtre avant Le Brun dans les jardins de Versailles’, in André Le Nôtre en perspectives, pp. 220–223. I will hereafter refer to the English version only.

22. BnF, Est., Fb 26, 1962, no. 60. The figure’s height, according to an inscription, was ‘2 pieds 3 pouces’; the scribe also wrote ‘a restaurer’ on the sheet. Four dolphins were inventoried at the same time (1965, no. 63); their lengths were put at ‘2 pieds 10 pouces’, their heights at ‘14 pouces’; all four were said to be ‘en bon état’. Souchal et al., French Sculptors, 1987, Vol. III, p. 42, no. 16, accept these figures as original members of the cast. Weber, Brunnen und Wasserkünste, p. 105 n. 152, speculates that our figure 21 is a record of the ‘amour sur un cigne’ for which the sculptor Pierre de La Haye was paid on 24 April 1666. For a contrary view of La Haye’s group, see Hedin, ‘Les premiers jardins’, p. 182.

23. BnF, Est., Va 78f, Vol. I, for the graphic images. Pérelle’s view seems to predate the lengthening of the northern axis in 1678–1681, at which time the Bassin de Neptune was excavated and five new fountains of children were added to each side. For a fictitious view of the jeux d’eau by one of the Pérelle family of print makers, see Hedin, ‘From Basin to Fountain’, p. 219.

24. A view from the north by Aveline is probably a copy in reverse of Pérelle’s (see figure 18); it postdates the construction of the second Parterre d’Eau (1683–1684), which appears in the background. His view from the south postdates the installation of Bernini’s equestrian statue of Louis XIV at the end of the Bassin de Neptune in 1687. Views by the Dutch engravers Peter Schenk and Carel Allard are fanciful in the extreme.

25. See Devises pour les Tapisseries du Roi … (BnF, Mss., ms. fr. 7819), publ. Marianne Grivel and Marc Fumaroli (Paris: Herscher, 1988), p. 49. For the identification of the figure, which appears on the devise dedicated to the king’s magnanimity, see Gérard Sabatier, Versailles, ou la figure du roi (Paris: Albin Michel, 1999), p. 89. A simpler version is represented in a roundel in the upper corner of the tapestry of Water.

26. See Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Lettres, instructions et mémoires de Colbert, ed. Pierre Clément (Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1868), Vol. V, p. 297, doc. 49 (a letter of 5 May 1670). The figures were repaired four days later, then regilded.

27. Pierre de Nolhac, the great Versailles scholar, lamented in 1900: ‘The brothers Marsy were responsible for the modeling of this group, which, with quite superfluous zeal, was re-constituted some ten years ago. The work produced by the admirable modern sculptors entrusted with this undertaking was altogether out of keeping with the decorative style of Versailles; and the new Bassin du Dragon affords striking proof of the impossibility of reconstructing satisfactorily a perished work of art. Let us hope the taste for such experiments is past, and that for the future we may content ourselves with reverently preserving the masterpieces which Time has spared’. See his ‘The Early Fountains of Versailles’, The International Studio, 10, 1900, p. 23.

28. The amour in the first plane (right) and the one in the third plane (left) are armed but not shooting; their arms are raised, their elbows pointing toward their faces. The bows of the two other amours (first plane, left; third plane, right) face the monster; neither amour blocks his face with his hands. See n. 114, below, for Noël’s abuse of the dolphins.

29. See Josèphe Jacquiot, Médailles et jetons de Louis XIV, d’après le manuscrit de Londres add. 31.908 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1968), 3 vols. It was later renamed the Académie royale des inscriptions et belles-lettres,

30. Perrault, Mémoires, p. 210.

31. Jacques François Blondel, Architecture françoise (Paris: Charles-Antoine Jombert, 1756), Vol. IV, p. 103 n. n.

32. Perrault, Mémoires, p. 210. He said that Claude’s drawings for the marble and bronze vases were included in one of the volumes of drawings, that is, the lost volumes of 1693.

33. Ibid., p. 211.

34. Ibid., pp. 209–210.

35. Or so Charles claimed in his lost manuscript of 1693, according to Blondel, Architecture françoise, Vol. IV, p. 104 n. r. Blondel, unable to find Claude’s drawings in their expected places, doubted the claim.

36. Weber, Brunnen und Wasserkünste, pp. 108–110. For an attribution of the Pyramid’s design to Girardon, the sculptor, see Robert W. Berger, ‘The Pyramid Fountain at Versailles’, Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, 30, 2010, pp. 263–282.

37. Perrault, Mémoires, pp. 207–208. Claude was an accomplished draftsman, Charles was not.

38. Ibid., p. 209. Charles ends his account by crediting Claude with the designs of all the ornaments of the Grotto, including the other figures, the rocailles and the floor patterns, and the portals.

39. Blondel, Architecture françoise, Vol. IV, p. 107 n. x. Blondel, still following Charles’s lead, notes that Claude designed the entire Grotto, including the vault and floor, and that his drawings are in the manuscripts. Earlier in the same n. x, Blondel referred to a projet by Claude for colossi carved in white marble and partially coated in rocailles; his proposal was rejected outright.

40. Claude Nivelon, Vie de Charles Le Brun et description détaillée de ses ouvrages [c. 1698], ed. Lorenzo Pericolo (Geneva: Droz, 2004), p. 418. See also Liliane Lange, ‘Le grotte de Thétis et le premier Versailles de Louis XIV’, Art de France, 1, 1961, pp. 138–148.

41. His successful memo, which exists in the form of a copy and is dated 1666, involved a suite of statues for the dome of the Tuileries (Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris, NA, Ms 181, fols. 170–173), publ. Geneviève Bresc-Bautier, ‘Iconologie de l’Etat monarchique: la statuaire du dôme central des Tuileries (1666–1668)’, La Revue du Louvre et des Musées de France, 37, 1987, pp. 31–38. His unsuccessful one, undated but likely written in 1665, focused on the round basin above the Fer-à-Cheval (see figure 1, middle) and the oval one below it (the future Bassin de Latone, our figure 12) (AN, O¹ 1595, no. 115). See Hedin, ‘From Basin to Fountain’, pp. 216–218.

42. See the letter of 12 March 1664 to Colbert from the Abbé de Cassagnes, a founding member of the Petite Académie, in Colbert, Lettres, instructions et mémoires, Vol. V, pp. 499–500, doc. XII. Near the end he said: ‘Ça donc esté un des sujets de nostre entretien dans la dernière assemblée, et nous sommes demeurés d’accord … ’. Charles Perrault authored most of the devises. Later, during his preparations for the vault of the Galerie des Glaces, Le Brun conferred again with the members of the Petite Académie. See Robert W. Berger, In the Garden of the Sun King (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1985), p. 76, n. 13.

43. Blondel’s maddingly vague remark, that Claude ‘appears to have had a share in the decoration of several of the fountains and bosquets of Versailles’, returns to mind (n. 31, above).

44. Nivelon, Vie de Charles Le Brun, p. 420. We have it from Nivelon, p. 422, that Le Brun also designed the (figurative) Crowns of 1669–1671.

45. The first payment to Tuby was issued on 13 May 1668, but his group was already well advanced in planning and design by that date.

46. Louis Petit, the contrôleur des bâtiments de Versailles, told Colbert on 18 September 1666 that ‘il serait bon d’avertir Sa Majesté qu’au lieu de quatre jets, il y en a six, qui feront un plus bel effet, à cause de ladite forme ovale et de la grandeur dudit bassin’ (my emphasis). See BnF, Mss., Mélanges Colbert 140, fol. 441, publ. Pierre de Nolhac, La Création de Versailles (Paris: L. Bernard, 1901), p. 214 n. 8. The design of the Latona Fountain, like that of the Dragon, was largely determined by the ‘forme’ and the ‘grandeur’ of Le Nôtre’s preexisting basin. See Hedin, ‘From Basin to Fountain’, pp. 215–220.

47. See especially his lecture from 5 November 1667 on Poussin’s Manna, in Conférences, Vol. I (1), pp. 156–174. Weber, Brunnen und Wasserkünste, pp. 107–108, points to the similar design solutions of the Dragon and Latona Fountains.

48. See n. 41 above. The sculptors were Philippe de Buyster and Thibaut Poissant, with help from assistants. It is probably the case that Le Brun exerted more control over his sculptors than the Perraults over theirs, while still urging them to propose new three-dimensional solutions.

49. See L.-A. Barbet, Les grandes eaux de Versailles (Paris: H. Dunod et E. Pinat, 1907), p. 275: ‘Déjà en 1668, les artistes avaient les commandes des principaux groupes dessinés par Le Brun. Leurs sujets sont principalement tirés de la fable d’Apollon. Le Roi a conservé dans son coeur le souvenir des guerres civiles dont fut témoin son enfance: Apollon, terrassant le serpent Python, est pour lui le symbole qui figure l’écrasement de l’émeute. Le bassin du Dragon, où le serpent est représenté percé de fleches, est l’un des premiers créés. Dans la suite la flatterie aime à revenir sur cette image et compare le roi vainqueur à Apollon, au Dieu soleil’.

50. See his ‘Myth and Politics: Versailles and the Fountain of Latona’, in Louis XIV and the Craft of Kingship, ed. John C. Rule (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1969), pp. 286–301.

51. Sabatier, Versailles, pp. 72–99.

52. Hedin, ‘The Petite Commande of 1664’, pp. 675–678. The French version of my article, 2004, does not include this section.

53. Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. Frank Justus Miller, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), Vol. I, pp. 3–35.

54. Perrault, Parallèle [1688], Vol. I, pp. 248–249.

55. Nicolas Renouard, Les Métamorphoses d’Ovide … (Paris: Langelier, 1619), p. 22, in his ‘explication’ of the fable, at the end of his book. For a later translator, Pierre Du Ryer, Les Métamorphoses d’Ovide … (Paris: Antoine de Sommaville, 1660), pp. 30–32, the beast was known by the name of Python and no other.

56. Félibien, Relation de la feste de Versailles, p. 198.

57. Gazette de France, 1670, no. 112, 809–820. See Robert W. Berger and Thomas F. Hedin, Diplomatic Tours in the Gardens of Versailles Under Louis XIV (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), pp. 20–21, 78–82 (App. A4).

58. See Colbert, Lettres, instructions et mémoires, Vol. V, p. 526, doc. XXXIX (a letter of 4 October 1670). The Bishop of Fréjus was also known as Joseph Zongo Ondedei.

59. For example, the commentaries on the tours of the Duchess of Modena (1673), the Russian ambassador (1681), the Moroccan ambassador (1682), and the Algerian ambassadors (1684). See Berger and Hedin, Diplomatic Tours, pp. 22, 26–28 (App. A). A ground plan from 1693 is inscribed with the refrain.

60. My gratitude to Jean-Claude Le Guillou for answering my questions and sending copies of his important maps of the southern and northern gardens. Saint-Simon’s biting indictment, issued a generation later, seems to have been based in part on memories of the ‘étang puant’ by the older members of the court. See Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon, Mémoires de Saint-Simon [1715], ed. A. de Boislisle (Paris: Hachette, 1916), Vol. XXVII, pp. 159–162.

61. The run-off reached the Bassin des Cygnes in a stream that bordered the meadow (see figure 20). The squarish block of land through which it passed was later occupied by the Bosquet de l’Isle Royale. The smaller, triangular block was later occupied by the Galerie d’Eau (Galerie des Antiques); it was laid out diagonally to follow the stream’s northwesterly course. One purpose of the Grand Canal was to unite the errant waters in this lowest part of the domain.

62. Félibien, Description sommaire, pp. 301–302.

63. Scudéry, La promenade, p. 63.

64. Ibid., pp. 91–92. These words by Scudéry figure prominently in Berger and Hedin, Diplomatic Tours, pp. 11–12. The water was raised to the top of the Tour d’Eau by horse-drawn machines.

65. The first three pipes traveling to the Rondeau were said in Jolly’s inventory for March–August 1665 to be a foot in diameter (AN, O¹ 1762A, cahier 3, no. 21). According to his inventory for June–December 1666, the first pipe heading to the Cygnes was a foot in diameter at one end and 10 pouces at the other (cahier 7, no. 5). Pipes with diameters of ten pouces were commonplace.

66. John Locke, writing in his journal in 1677, detailed the method by which windmills and horses raised the water from level to level; he also remarked on the economy of recycling. See Locke’s Travels in France: 1675–1679, ed. John Lough (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), pp. 154, 165. The supply of water had increased in the decade separating Scudéry and Locke, and would increase even more with the construction of the Machine de Marly in the 1680s. For the ‘moulin de retour’, see Barbet, Les grandes eaux, p. 35.

67. The bosquets grew in number with the availability of water. Plans from the second half of the 1660s (e.g. figure 20) show the outlines of what will soon become the Pavillon d’Eau to the east of Allée d’Eau and the Berceau d’Eau to the west; the Théâtre d’Eau to the west of the Berceau; and the Etoile (the Montagne d’Eau) to the west of the Théâtre.

68. See his ‘Le Labyrinthe de Versailles’, in Recueil de divers ouvrages en prose et en vers (Paris: Jean-Baptiste Coignard, 1675), pp. 234–235. I owe the translation to Berger, In the Garden of the Sun King, p. 31. The bosquet was laid out by Le Nôtre in 1665 but not filled with fountains until the early 1670s. See now Le Labyrinthe de Versailles: du mythe au jeu, ed. Elisabeth Maisonnier and Alexandre Maral (Paris: Magellan & C^ie, 2013).

69. Perrault, Parallèle, Vol. I, pp. 247–248.

70. See n. 41 above.

71. La Fontaine, Les amours de Psyché et de Cupidon, pp. 121–122.

72. John Locke noted in 1677 that the jet at the Bosquet de la Renommée was said to reach 70 feet, but that ‘the highest and bigest of all the jet d’eaux is that in the Fountain of Dragons [sic]’ (Locke’s Travels in France, pp. 164, 178). Jean-Aymar Piganiol de La Force, Nouvelle description des chasteaux et parcs de Versailles et de Marly, 3rd edn (Paris: Florentin Delaulne, 1713), p. 30, said the Dragon’s jet ordinarily rose to a height of 35 feet, but could be raised to 85 for the pleasure of the King.

73. Musée de Versailles, inv. no. 770. See Antoine Schnapper, Tableaux pour le Trianon de marbre, 1688–1717 (Paris: Mouton, 1967), pp. 105–109 (III 11), who dates it about 1688–1690.

74. Natural History, XXXIV, 59.

75. Nivelon, Vie de Charles Le Brun, p. 427; Lydia Beauvais, Inventaire général des dessins, école française: Charles Le Brun, 1619–1690 (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 2000), Vol. II, p. 704, no. 2450; Le Brun, ‘Recueil de divers desseins de fontaines’ [c. 1686], BnF, Est., Da 39a, fol. 5; and the study by Gerold Weber, ‘Charles Le Bruns “Recueil de divers desseins de fontaines”’, Münchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst, 32, 1981, p. 170.

76. Yet we know with absolute certainty, thanks to Charles Perrault, that the Dragon ‘is the serpent Python whom Apollo mortally wounded’ (n. 54 above) (my italics).

77. Perrault, Parallèle, Vol. III, pp. 296–298. In the alternate form, notably represented by Boileau’s Le Lutrin of 1674–83, the roles are reversed: the serious is outside, the ridiculous inside. Charles prefers Scarron’s method to Boileau’s, though he acknowledges the originality of the latter. See Hedin, ‘The Petite Commande of 1664’, pp. 672–673.

78. The Perraults, but Charles more than Claude, were stalwarts on the side of the modernes in their burgeoning quarrel with the anciens.

79. Renouard, Les Métamorphoses d’Ovide, p. 22 (new pagination at the end).

80. Natale Conti, Mythologie, ou explication des fables, trans. Jean de Montlyard, ed. Jean Baudouin (Paris: Pierre Chevalier, 1627; reprint, Paris: Hachette, n.d.), pp. 322–346.

81. Roger de Piles, Remarques sur l’art de peinture de Charles Alfonse Du Fresnoy (Paris: Nicolas l’Anglois, 1668), p. 82.

82. In the Homeric Hymns he read that Apollo earned his surname ‘Pythian’ by slaying the giant Pyphon, whose own name derives from pythesthai, or pourrir (to rot) in French. There are authors who claim the menace to the temple was the serpent Python, not Pyphon. From here Conti jumps to Ovid, who said the games at Delphi are named ‘Pythian’ not because Apollo dispatched Pyphon through the process of putrefaction but because he killed the serpent with his arrows (Mythologie, p. 336). ‘Latona’, an extract from Letò or Lethò, is Greek for cachette (ignorance), but her son, the redeeming light, is the creation of the sovereign god, who sent him into a world of ‘confused and deformed matter’. ‘Delos’, the birthplace of Apollo and Diana, means apparoissant or manifeste because man was henceforth able to see and understand the world clearly (ibid., p. 343).

83. Ibid., p. 346. Baudouin opens his ‘explication’ by equating Apollo and Diana with the celestial bodies, then heads to the etymology (ibid., p. 45, new pagination at the end). The Sun is often called ‘Hecatos’ and the Moon ‘Hecate’ because they send their warm rays from vast distances. The ancients invoked such etymologies when seeking relief from contagions in the air. If Diana maintains the body in health, Apollo rids it of sickness. If Apollo is sometimes called ‘Delian’ for his ability to render all things visible, at others he is named ‘Pythian’ for his shrine at Delphi that attracts people worldwide. His music brings ‘perfect harmony to the world, banishing discord from the nature of things, and maintaining order and symmetry’. Swans are sacred to Apollo for their beauty and sweet song. Apollo is the guardian of the Muses.

84. Du Ryer, Les Métamorphoses d’Ovide, p. 32. Greek etymology bears this out, he says, because ‘Python’ means putrefaction or nourriture. Apollo, the Sun, dissipates, then consumes, the earth’s infections. If Python personifies the sicknesses and plagues brought on by the putrefaction of the earth and the infection of the air, then it follows that the Sun, his slayer, is the god of medicine, the purifier of earth and air, the protector of plants, the exterminator of maladies and illnesses — all those dreaded ‘Pythons’ born of ‘the corruption of the humors’.

85. De Piles, Remarques, p. 80.

86. For earlier Pythian imagery, see Jean Babelon and Josèphe Jacquiot, Histoire de Paris d’après les médailles de la renaissance au XX^e siècle (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1951), p. 81, no. 59; Françoise Bardon, Le portrait mythologique à la cour de France sous Henri IV et Louis XIII: Mythologie et Politique (Paris: Picard, 1974), pp. 40–41, 131–32, 170, 217, 246–47, pls. XVII, XVIII; and Berger, In the Garden of the Sun King, p. 25.

87. Musée de Versailles, inv. no. 6927–2. See Nicolas Milovanovic and Alexandre Maral (eds), Louis XIV: l’homme et le roi, exh. cat., Musée de Versailles, 2009, pp. 184, 394, no. 47.

88. Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis, 1547–1550.

89. Cicero (Orator, XII, 74); Quintilian (Instututio oratoria, II, xiii, 6); Pliny (Natural History, XXXV, 73–74); Valerius Maximus (Factorum et dictorum memorabilium libri novem, VIII, xi, 6).

90. Roland Fréart de Chambray, Idée de la perfection de la peinture [1662], ed. Frédérique Lemerle-Pauwels and Milovan Stanic (Paris: Ecole nationale supérieure des beaux-arts, 2005), pp. 224–225.

91. ‘Aussy Le Brun, l’Apelle de la France/Dans son tableau sut marquer sa constance:/Loin de cacher son visage et ses yeux/Il les a peints élevés vers les cieux,/Et plus savant en ce point que Timanthe/La fermeté du père ne l’épouvante [sic]’. For this verse, see Jacques Thuillier and Jennifer Montagu, Charles Le Brun: 1619–1690, exh. cat., Musée de Versailles, 1963, p. 59, no. 23. Félibien, in the first volume of his Entretiens (1666), praised Timanthes, his Iphigenia, and his rightful claim to admiration by ‘les meilleures plumes de l’Antiquité’.

92. Nivelon, Vie de Charles Le Brun, pp. 202–203. See Jennifer Montagu, ‘Interpretations of Timanthes’s Sacrifice of Iphigenia’, in Sight and Insight. Essays on Art and Culture in honour of E. H. Gombrich at 85, ed. J. Onians (London: Phaidon, 1994), pp. 310–312; idem, The Expression of the Passions (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 39.

93. See Francis H. Dowley, ‘French Baroque Representations of the “Sacrifice of Iphigenia”’, in Festschrift Ulrich Middeldorf, ed. A. Kosegarten and P. Tigler (Berlin: Walter de Gruyler, 1968), pp. 469–470.

94. It was a shrewd move by Le Brun to put the face-covering amours in the first plane, in close proximity to the ideal viewer, who appraises them against the backdrop of the monster.

95. For Le Brun’s crainte, see Conférences, Vol. I (1), p. 276; trans. Montagu, The Expression of the Passions, p. 136; illus. Beauvais, Inventaire général, Vol. II, p. 554, no. 1983. For his horreur and frayeur, see Conférences, pp. 271, 274–275; trans. Montagu, p. 134; illus. Beauvais, p. 564, nos. 2013, 2015. A version of Le Brun’s etonnement has an element of frayeur in it (ibid., p. 566, no. 2017). Nivelon referred to the ‘étonnement’ of Agamemnon in Le Brun’s lost painting.

96. See Conférences, Vol. I (1), p. 280; trans. Montagu, The Expression of the Passions, p. 139.

97. Félibien summary of the lecture appeared in 1668. It reappears in Conférences, Vol. I (1), pp. 111–120.

98. The associate was Henri Testelin, the then secretary of the Académie, who published his account about 1693–1694. It is republished in ibid., Vol. I (2), p. 728.

99. The classic definition is found in the preface to André Félibien’s book on the first seven conférences at the Académie (1668): ‘[J]e passerai au costume qui n’est autre chose qu’une observation exacte de tout ce qui convient aux personnes que l’on représente, qui doivent paraître avec des caractères de grandeur ou de bassesse, de bonté ou de malice, conformes à ce qu’elles doivent figurer, … et qui consiste encore dans la bienséance qu’il faut conserver à l’égard des âges, et des sexes, des pays, et des différentes professions, des mœurs, des passions, et des manières de se vêtir propres à chaque nation’. See Les Conférences de l’Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture au XVII^e siècle, ed. Alain Mérot (Paris: Ecole nationale supérieure de Beaux-Arts, 1996), pp. 53–54.

100. For the many symbolic roles of swans, see Guy de Tervarent, Attributs et symboles dans l’art profane: 1450–1600 (Geneva: Droz, 1958), cols. 138–141.

101. See Hedin, ‘Les premiers jardins’, pp. 180–181. At that point it disappears from the written records.

102. See n. 22.

103. See the same n. 22.

104. It was itemized in his inventaire après décès as ‘un petit enfant de plomb de deux pieds et demy de haulteur couché sur un cigne, non parachevé’, and valued at 25 livres (Archives Nationales, Minutier central, Etude CXII, 385a, fol. 25). It is not known for whom or for where the group was destined.

105. See Roger-Armand Weigert, ‘L’inventaire après décès de Charles Le Brun, premier peintre de Louis XIV (1690)’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 44, 1954, p. 343.

106. De Piles, Remarques, p. 82.

107. Philostratus, Imagines, trans. Arthur Fairbanks, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,1960), pp. 35–41.

108. See the wonderful exegesis by Michel Conan, ‘The Imagines of Philostratus’, Word & Image, 3, 1987, pp. 162–171. It goes without saying that the Dragon fountain is filled with all sorts of ‘cleverness’ awaiting discovery by the viewer. The excited passions of the children is another common denominator.

109. For the multiple roles of dolphins, see Terverant, Attributs et symboles, cols. 143–145. See also Charles Avery, A School of Dolphins (London: Thames and Hudson, 2009), esp. pp. 135–145.

110. Herodotus, I, 23–24 (Arion); Hymn to Dionysus (7) (Dionysus and the pirates); Hymn to Apollo (3), 388 ff (Delphian Apollo); Plutarch, Moralia, XII, 36 (instinct for friendship; playing with children; mourning the loss of children; Telemachus); Pliny, Natural History, IX, vii–ix (gamboling with ships; assisting seafarers and fishermen; playing with children; mourning a boy’s death; pairing up, rearing young). Conti reviews the legends of the Delphian Apollo in his Mythologie, p. 340.

111. Cesare Ripa, Iconologie, ou explication nouvelle de plusieurs images, emblemes, et autres figures …, trans. and ed. Jean Baudouin (Paris: Mathieu Guillemot, 1644; reprint, New York and London: Garland, 1976), Vol. I, pp. 12–13. The dolphin, for his unsurpassed speed in the water, is also an attribute of Ripa’s Célerité, ou vitesse (ibid., pp. 36, 38).

112. See n. 25. A variation of the dolphin in our figure 36 appears in the roundel in the lower left corner of Le Brun’s tapestry of Water.

113. The commentary is nearly identical to what Féliblien wrote in his Les Quatre Elémens peints par M^r Le Brun, et mis en tapisseries pour Sa Majesté [1665], in Recueïl de descriptions de peintures et d’autres ouvrages faits pour le Roy (Paris: Sébastien Mabre-Cramoisy,1689; reprint, Geneva: Minkoff Reprint, 1973), pp. 130–131.

114. See n. 22. Is it rank anthropomorphism on my part, or is it fear that appears on the dolphin’s face? Not only are the dolphins in Noël’s reconstruction inflated in size, they bare their teeth and wave their tails in an exaggerated manner (see figure 23). Félibien said nothing of such ferocity or aggressive behavior.

115. Their manuscript of 1648 was published by Pierre Bonnefon, ‘L’Enéide burlesque: traduction inédite du sixième livre par les frères Perrault’, Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France, 8, 1901, pp. 110–142.

116. See n. 11.

117. It consists of two parts, the Mythologie des Murs de Troye and Les Murs de Troye, livre second, and was published by Pierre Bonnefon, ‘Un poème inédit de Claude Perrault’, Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France, 7, 1900, pp. 449–472.

118. For Claude’s notation, see Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Ms. 2956, fol. 44.

119. My italics. See Bonnefon, ‘Un poème inédit de Claude Perrault’, pp. 469–470, for a modern rendering of Claude’s lines.

120. Perrault, Mémoires, pp. 113–114.

121. See Michel Jeanneret, Versailles, ordre et chaos (Paris: Gallimard, 2012), pp. 47, 52.

122. The mountain faced the elevated terrace that separated the wings of the Enveloppe, and the King stood at Apollo’s level when he walked onto it. The western side of the same mountain featured Pegasus atop a ‘Fontaine des Arts’. It will be noted in passing that this Apollonian arch, in obedience to ‘Félibien’s law’, was intended for the western axis. For the Parterre d’Eau, see Weber, Brunnen und Wasserkünste, pp. 114–120, 271–273; Weber, ‘Charles Le Bruns “Recueil de divers desseins de fontaines”’, pp. 171–174; and Ann Friedman, ‘The evolution of the Parterre d’eau’, Journal of Garden History, 8, 1988, pp. 1–30.

123. Nivelon, Vie de Charles Le Brun, p. 431.

124. For his memo of 17 July 1664, see Alfred Marie, ‘Sur quelques dessins d’André Le Nostre’, Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de l’art français, 1947, pp. 23–24.

125. BnF, Mss., Mélanges Colbert 122, fol. 580r. See Hedin, ‘The Petite Commande of 1664’, pp. 651, 678.

126. Comptes des Bâtiments du Roi sous le règne de Louis XIV, ed. Jules Guiffrey (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1881), Vol. I, cols. 23–27, 81–85.

127. AN, O¹ 1762A, cahier 3, no. 13.

128. Comptes des Bâtiments, Vol. I, col. 82.

129. See n. 18. Accessories for the Grand jet and the satellites were inventoried by Jolly in August–December 1665 (AN, O¹ 1762A, cahier 4, nos. 29, 31) and in June–December 1666 (cahier 7, fols. 11r, 11v, unnumbered entries).

130. AN, O¹ 1762A, cahier 7, fol. 11v, unnumbered entry. See Hedin, ‘Les premiers jardins’, p. 195, annexe 3.

131. See n. 18.

132. See n. 19.

133. BnF, Mss., Mélanges Colbert 313, fol. 60r. Unknown parts of these programs were completed before 1666 was out because on 13 January 1667 the Marsy brothers signed a receipt of payment ‘en desduction des ouvrages de sculpture de fonte qu’ils ont faict et font pour les fontaines du chasteau de Versailles’ (my emphasis). See Ulysse Robert, ‘Quittances de peintres, sculpteurs et architectes français: 1535–1711’, Nouvelles archives de l’art français, 4, 1876, p. 46, no. CVI.

134. BnF, Mss., Mélanges Colbert 313, fol. 60v (twice); 315, fols. 84r, 84v (twice), 86r. Three times the payments are in both brothers’ names, on three others in Gaspard’s only. It was their lifelong practice to split their joint commissions in half and divide their receipts equally.

135. He listed a pipe ‘pour allonger les huit branches du cerceau qui fait jouer les quatre dauphins et les quatre cygnes du Rondeau’, and another ‘pour allonger la tige du grand jet d’eau acause de la figure [the Dragon] qui y a esté mise’ (AN, O¹ 1762A, cahier 8, nos. 99, 101).

136. Ibid, no. 103. In his 1669 inventory, Jolly cited a conduit that journeyed from the Bain de Diane to the dolphins of the Dragon, bypassing the Enfants on the Allée d’Eau en route (cahier 10, fol. 5v, unnumbered entry).

137. BnF, Mss., Mélanges Colbert 315, fol. 84v, 85r, 85v.

138. Scudéry, La promenade, pp. 86–87, 95. Robert Berger argues that a temporary mock-up of Neptune on his chariot was placed over the fountain, and that Scudéry refers to it. See his ‘The earliest literary descriptions of the gardens of Versailles’, Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, 28, 2008, pp. 469, 473.

139. See Colbert, Lettres, instructions et mémoires, Vol. V, p. 296, doc. 49. See also Hedin, ‘From Basin to Fountain’, pp. 220, 223.

140. See n. 22.

141. Félibien, Description sommaire, p. 307. The basin is exactly 20 toises in diameter (1 toise = 1.949 m. = 6 pieds). Le Nôtre scribbled that number on his 1664 drawing of the Rondeau. Félibien said nothing in 1668 or 1674 about metal vases decorating the rim of the Rondeau, and none appear in Van der Meulen’s painting of 1674 (see figure 5), but Silvestre shows twenty, possibly twenty-two, sitting there in his view of 1676 (see figure 18).

142. See his Explication de toutes les grottes, rochers et fontaines du chasteau royal de Versailles, maison du soleil, et de la Ménagerie. En vers héroïques [BnF, Mss., ms. fr. 2348], publ. Marcel Raynal, ‘Le manuscrit de C. Denis, fontainier de Louis XIV, à Versailles’, Versailles, 38, 1970, p. 10. For Denis’ peculiar ideas, see Robert W. Berger, ‘Versailles in Verse: Some Notes on Claude Denis’ “Explication”’. Journal of Garden History, 4, 1984, pp. 133–136.

143. Guillet de Saint-Georges, ‘Relecture de l’explication du morceau de réception de Gaspard de Marsy, Ecce Homo, et Mémoire sur sa vie et ses ouvrages’, in Conférences, Vol. II (1), p. 199.

144. See her ‘Remarques historiques sur les figures, termes, et vases qui ornent les jardins du parc de Versailles … le 3 janvier 1695’ (Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Ms. fr. 2546, fols. 69–70).

145. See Alfred Marie, Naissance de Versailles (Paris: Vincent, Fréal, 1968), Vol. I, p. 89.

146. For his sacred text, see n. 12 above.

147. Félibien, Description sommaire, pp. 279–280 (eastern facade), pp. 293–294 (western), pp. 294–297 (southern).

148. Ibid., pp. 297–299 (northern facade). The Salle des Festins, a bosquet in the northwest corner of the gardens, was begun in 1671. Félibien admired it in his Description sommaire, pp. 318–319. See Weber, Brunnen und Wasserkünste, pp. 314–315.