Lines of sight: Israël Silvestre and the axial symbolism of Louis XIV’s gardens at Versailles

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Notes

1. On the fêtes of Louis XIV see: Marie-Christine Moine, Les fêtes a la cour du Roi Soleil, 1653–1715 (Paris: Éditions F. Lanore, 1984); Sabine du Crest, Des Fêtes a Versailles: les Divertissements de Louis XIV (Paris: Aux Amateurs de Livre, 1990); Emile Magne, Les plaisirs et les fêtes en France au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Éditions de la Frégate, 1944); Kathryn A. Hoffmann, Society of Pleasures: Interdisciplinary Readings in Pleasure and Power During the Reign of Louis XIV (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1997); Georgia Cowart, The Triumph of Pleasure: Louis XIV and the Politics of Spectacle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008); Chandra Mukerji, Territorial Ambitions and the Gardens of Versailles (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Jean-Marie Apostolidès, Le roi-machine: Spectacle et politique au temps de Louis XIV (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1981); Louis Marin, Portrait of the King, trans. Martha M. Houle (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), pp. 193–205; and Rachelle Nadine Johnston, Performing Power and Prestige: The Great Fêtes in the Gardens of Versailles (PhD Diss., University of Sydney, 2014).

2. Louis Marin and Anna Lehman, ‘Baroque: Versailles, or the Architecture of the Prince’, Yale French Studies, 80, 1991, pp. 167–182.

3. On Colbert and the Petite Académie see Robert Wellington, Antiquarianism and the Visual Histories of Louis XIV: Artifacts for a Future Past (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2015), Chs 2 and 4.

4. See in particular Allen S. Weiss, Mirrors of Infinity: The French Formal Garden and 17th Century Metaphysics (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1995), pp. 57–58.

5. See J. R Mulryne and Elizabeth Goldring (eds), Court Festivals of the European Renaissance: Art, Politics and Performance (Aldershot; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002) and J. R. Mulryne, Helen Watanabe O’Kelly and Margaret Shewring (eds), Europa Triumphans: Court and Civic Festivals in Early Modern Europe, 2 vols (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004).

6. On festival books see: Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, ‘The Early Modern Festival Book: Function and Form’, in Europa Triumphans: Court and Civic Festivals in Early Modern Europe (Aldershot & Burlington: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 3–17. The British Library has digitized its collection of Renaissance and Early Modern festival books on an extensive web resource that includes commentaries from leading scholars in the field: Treasures in Full: Renaissance Festival Books: http://www.bl.uk/treasures/festivalbooks/homepage.html (accessed November 2014).

7. The book documenting a ballet given at court by Catherine de’ Medicis to celebrate the accession of Henri III to the throne is a notable exception to this, as it includes a single engraving representing dancers within a hall. Magnificentissimi spectaculi, a regina regum matre in hortis suburbanis editi, in Henrici regis Poloniae inuictissimi nuper renunciati gratulationem, Descriptio (Paris, 1573).

8. There has been some confusion about the relationship between images and text in Louis XIV festival books. Stefan Germer argued that ‘these engravings, realized two, four, or ten years after the events that they present were not accurate testimonies, but works of fiction, strongly influenced by the writings of [André] Félibien’. Germer’s comments relate specifically to Félibien’s descriptions of the fêtes held at Versailles in 1664, 1668, and 1674. Stefan Germer, ‘Pouvoir du texte, force de l’image: Felibien et les representations gravees des fetes royals de 1668 et de 1674’, in L’Illustration; essays d’iconographie; actes du seminaire CNRS (GDR 172), p. 153.

9. Silvestre’s prints for the Grand Carousel and The pleasures of the enchanted isle were made in advance of the festival books into which they were later bound. Eight of the eleven prints that Silvestre made to document the Grand Carousel can be dated to 1664 as that date appears in the lower left of the frontispiece to that set. The remaining three large-format engravings of the Carousel were produced between 1664 and 1670 as part of Silvestre’s official remit to make ‘drawings of Architecture, views and perspectives of the royal Houses, carousels, and other public assemblies’. Silvestre was to receive his annual pension of 400 livres on those terms from 1664 until his death in 1680. See Louis Étienne Faucheux, Catalogue raisonné de toutes les estampes qui forment l’oeuvre d’Israël Silvestre (Paris, 1857), p. 13. The accounts are published in Jules Guiffrey (ed.), Comptes des bâtiments du roi sous le règne de Louis XIV, tome premier, Colbert, 1664–1680 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1881), cols 293, 462, 575, 658, 722, 862, 1001, 1097, 1216, 1353. The nine engravings of the 1664 fête are undated but were extant prior to 22 February 1670 when they were recorded in an inventory of prints in the royal collection: ‘9 planches qui representent le petite carousel de Versailles en l’année 1664’ [‘9 plates representing the small carousel at Versailles in the year 1664’]. Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Mémoire de Monseigneur adressé touchant la publication des ouvrages ou il y a des Planches gravées, 22 February 1670, AN. º1 196h ² n° 2. Given the early view of the old palace of Versailles from the side of the Orangerie built in 1663 forms the frontispiece to this set, it is likely that these engravings were produced very soon after the event, before significant alterations were made to the palace and gardens in the late 1660s.

10. Félibien made this comment in relation to the allegorical devices designed by the Petite Académie for the corners of tapestries in the Elements series: André Félibien, Tapisseries du roy, ou sont representez les quatre elemens et les quatre saisons (Paris: l’Imprimerie Royale, 1670), pp. 1–2; see Claire Goldstein, Vaux and Versailles: The Appropriations, Erasures, and Accidents that Made Modern France (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), p. 102.

11. I have explored this concept elsewhere in greater detail: Wellington, The Visual Histories of Louis XIV.

12. André Félibien, Idée du peintre parfait: pour servir de règle aux jugements que l’on doit porter sur les ouvrages des peintres, réimpression de l’edition de Londres, 1707 (Genève: Slatkin Reprints, 1970), p. 68.

13. The British Library hold a 22 volume set of the Cabinet du Roi prints bound in the early eighteenth century: Cabinet du Roy, 22 vols, The British Library, 561. h. 1–22. For commentary on the Cabinet du Roi engravings see: Anne Sauvy, ‘L’illustration d’un régne: Le Cabinet du Roi et les projets encyclopédique de Colbert’, In L’Art du Livre à l’Imprimerie nationale (Paris, 1973), pp. 103–127; George Duplessis, ‘Le cabinet du roi: Collection d’estampes commandées par Louis XIV’, Le Bibliophile Français, II, 1869, pp. 87–105; André Jammes, ‘Louis XIV, sa bibliotheque et le cabinet du roi’, The Library, 20, 1965, pp. 1–12; and J. F. Méjanès, Le cabinet du roi et la collection des planches gravées de Louis XIV (Paris: Chalcographie du musée du Louvre, 1977). Exhibition catalogue.

14. Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Mémoire de Monseigneur adressé touchant la publication des ouvrages ou il y a des Planches gravées, 22 February 1670, AN, °1 196h ² n°. 2.

15. Ibid.

16. See note 9.

17. On the Grand Carousel see: Jarrad, ‘Representing Royal Spectacle in Paris, 1660–1662’; Lacroix, ‘Quand les Français jouaient aux sauvages … ou le carrousel de 1662’; Moine, Les fêtes a la cour du Roi Soleil, 1653–1715, pp. 21–29; Magne, Les Plaisirs et les Fêtes en France au XVIIe Siècle, pp. 89–98.

18. Jousting ceased to be popular in France after the accidental death of the Valois king Henri II in a public joust in Paris in 1559.

19. It was not, however, the first illustrated festival book of Louis XIV’s reign. A richly illustrated book to celebrate the triumphal entry of Louis XIV and his bride Marie-Thérèse was commissioned by the senior municipal officials of Paris. Jean Tronçon, L’entrée triomphante de leurs maiestez Louis XIV, roy de France et Navarrem et Marie Therese d’Austriche son espouse, dans la ville de Paris … au retour de la signature de la paix generalle et de leur heureux marriage (Paris: Francois Le Cointe, 1662). On the King’s entry into Paris and the accompanying publication see: Abby E. Zanger, Scenes from the Marriage of Louis XIV: Nuptial Fictions and the Making of Absolutist Power (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997); and Jarrad, ‘Representing Royal Spectacle in Paris, 1660–1662’, pp. 26–37.

20. Louis XIV, Mémoires. Suivis de Manière de visiter les jardins de Versailles, ed. Joël Cornette (Paris: Éditions Tallandier, 2007), p. 171.

21. Ibid., p. 170. This translation is from Kathryn A. Hoffmann, Society of Pleasures, pp. 13–14, 173–174.

22. Jarrad, ‘Representing Royal Spectacle in Paris, 1660–1662’, p. 30.

23. Fabien de Silvestre, a descendant of Israël Silvestre, has created an informative website that catalogues much of the artist’s oeuvre, israel.silvestre.fr (accessed 29 November 2014). For further details of these images see Louis Étienne Faucheux, Catalogue raisonné de toutes les estampes qui forment l’oeuvre d’Israël Silvestre.

24. See Robert Wellington, ‘The Cartographic Origins of Adam Franz van der Meulen’s Marly Cycle’, Print Quarterly, XXVIII, 2011, pp. 142–154.

25. This idea is indebted to Erwin Panofsky’s seminal essay, Perspective as Symbolic Form, trans. Christopher S. Wood (New York; Cambridge: Zone Books; Distributed by the MIT Press, 1991).

26. On 1664 fête at Versailles see: du Crest, Des Fêtes a Versailles, pp. 4–21; Mukerji, Territorial Ambitions and the Gardens of Versailles, pp. 206–219; Apostolidès, Le roi-machine, pp. 93–113; Marin, Portrait of the King, pp. 193–205; Orest Ranum, ‘Islands and the Self in a Ludovician Fête’, in David Lee Rubin (ed.), Sun King: The Ascendancy of French Culture during the Reign of Louis XIV (London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1992), pp. 17–34; Magne, Les Plaisirs et les Fêtes en France au XVIIe Siècle, pp. 102–116.

27. These figures are likely to have been Philippe duc d’Orléans and his wife Henriette d’Angleterre, the queen Marie-Thérèse and the queen mother, Anne of Austria.

28. See note 25.

29. Thierry Mariage, The World of André Le Nôtre, trans. Graham Larkin (Philidelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), pp. 5–9.

30. Ibid.

31. On this see Allen S. Weiss, Mirrors of Infinity: The French Formal Garden and 17th Century Metaphysics (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1995).

32. See Louis XIV for 1662. Louis XIV, Mémoires, p. 172. On the solar imagery of Louis see: Gérard Sabatier, Versailles ou le figure du roi (Paris: Éditions Albin Michel S. A., 1999); Peter Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).

33. On the movement of Louis XIV’s bedchamber see: Guy Walton, Louis XIV’s Versailles (Harmondsworth: Viking, 1986), pp. 189–190.

34. Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet cited in Paul W. Fox, ‘Louis XIV and the Theories of Absolutism and Divine Right’, Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne d’economique et de science politique, 26/1, 1960, p. 135.

35. On the estates of Versailles as a reflection of the rational management of France see Mariage, The World of André Le Nôtre.