When you visit the gardens of Versailles today, the plantings you see are not those of Louis XIV and Le Nôtre.

The Sun King and his great gardener together oversaw the design and planting of the gardens in a series of campaigns that was largely completed by the late 1680s, though the King continued to tinker with various elements until the end of his life.  The only major alteration in the reign of Louis XV was the construction of the Bassin de Neptune in the northeastern corner of the gardens.  Le Bien Aimé otherwise concentrated his gardening efforts on the Petit Trianon.

The Bassin de Neptune on a rainy day in late March, 2016.

The layout of the gardens as we see them today, then, is still more or less as it was at the death of Louis XIV in 1715.  Plants are living things, however, and though some live long, none are eternal.  According to ‘The Gardens’ page on the Château’s official website, it was understood from the start that the gardens would have to be replanted once every hundred years or so.

The staircases of the King’s private apartments (le Petit appartement du roi) have a complicated history.

The original staircase was the famous Ambassador’s Staircase.  It was so grand that Louis XIV used to receive ambassador’s and foreign dignitaries on it.  Later, in the reign of Louis XV, it was also the venue for Mme de Pompadour’s theatre, which was made of wood and could be assembled and dis-assembled on demand.

Engraving of the Ambassadors’ Staircase. Credit: Wikipedia.

In 1754, wishing to create a suite of rooms for his daughter Mme Adélaïde, Louis ordered this grand staircase to be demolished.

I had never heard of Cristobal de Villalpando (1649-1714) before stepping through the doors of the Palacio de Iturbide in Mexico City’s Centro Historico in May, 2017.

The Palacio (see the previous post for details of this building: http://versaillescentury.com/2017/06/20/versailles-century-building-palacio-de-iturbide/#more-1068) now belongs to the Banamex Cultural Foundation, which happened to be running an exhibition dedicated to Villalpando.

Sign for the Villalpando exhibition at the Banamex Cultural Foundation, May, 2017.

Walking through the exhibition, I was thunderstruck by Villallpando’s canvases and amazed that I had never heard of him.

The Palacio de Iturbide in Mexico City has a double distinction: it’s one of the great surviving baroque mansions of New Spain AND it was home to independent Mexico’s first emperor.

It was built between 1779 and 1785 for Miguel de Berrio y Saldívar, Count of San Mateo Valparaíso and Marquis of Jaral de Berrio, a creole aristocrat whose fortune was based on mining.  He commissioned it as a wedding gift for his daughter, allegedly spending the exact amount of the dowry for fear that his new Italian son-in-law, one Marquis of Moncada, would otherwise squander the money.

He certainly got his money’s worth.

The facade of the Palacio de Iturbide on Madero Street in Mexico City.

The palace was designed in the Mexican Baroque style then still prevalent in New Spain, but architects  Francisco Antonio Guerrero y Torres and Agustín Duran purportedly modelled it on the royal palace in Palermo, perhaps in honour of their employer’s son-in-law.  It has 3 floors and the inner courtyard is surrounded by an 18-arch arcade.

In some ways, the Kingdom of New Spain, centred in what we now call Mexico, was at its height in the Versailles Century (1682-1789).

It certainly reached its greatest territorial extent in the 1700s, as the map below illustrates.

By Eddo – Own workFile:BlankMap-World-90W.svgFile:New Spain.pngFile:Nueva España 1795.pngFile:Spanish Provinces in the Pacific.png, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11435488

The light green areas represent the last areas to be claimed by the Spanish before the onset of the Napoleonic Wars and the War of Independence, which resulted in the collapse of Spanish rule and Mexico’s independence in 1821, not to mention that of the other countries of Central and South America.

The Metropolitan Museum has just made a stunning announcement: 375,000 images from its collections will be made available for free use.

That’s right: free use.  As in, you can use the images freely for both commercial and non-commercial purposes.  You can even adapt, modify or build on them.  This initiative has come about through the Met’s Open Access policy and is being operationalized via Creative Commons.  You can read all about it in this post from the Met’s Facebook page: http://mymodernmet.com/metropolitan-museum-of-art-open-access/

For us, here at Versailles Century, this obviously means worry-free, user-friendly access to hundreds of images of the Château, its contents, and its surroundings.  As a foretaste, here are some images of Versailles from the Met’s collections.

A view of the Château from the courtyard by Sylvestre:

“Château de Versailles seen from the forecourt, from Chalcographie du Louvre, Vol. 22” by Israel Silvestre (French, Nancy 1621–1691 Paris) via The Metropolitan Museum of Art is licensed under CC0 1.0

This week’s musical monarch, Frederick the Great, was not only a music lover, but a proficient flautist and composer.

Frederick the Great.  Credit: Wikipedia.

Prussia’s future third king developed his musical tastes and talent early.  In the little Crown Prince Frederick’s household was one Rentzel, who was not only Frederick’s drill master but a flautist.  Nancy Mitford, in her biography of Frederick, says of Rentzel that “it was he who started Frederick on music and taught him to play the flute, an accomplishment which was to mean so much to him.”  Frederick’s father, King Frederick William I, was not keen on the flute playing, which he regarded as effeminate, and at times attempted to ban his son from pursuing this past time.  He was not successful.

It’s well known that Louis XIV was an avid and accomplished dancer in his youth.  In 2000, the Belgian filmmaker the Gérard Corbieu memorably depicted the young king’s dance spectacles in the movie Le Roi Danse (The King is Dancing).

It’s also quite well known that the Sun King was surrounded by music from morning till evening.  Indeed, he was rarely out of earshot of one group of musicians or another.  Even while he was hunting there would have been horns, after all.

At HMV Canada’s going-out-of-business sale at its flagship store in Toronto, I purchased this boxed set of music from Louis XIV’s court.

Les Menus Plaisirs de Louis XIV de Paris à Versailles (Harmonia Mundi), a 10-CD boxed set of music from Louis XIV’s court.

It looks like a salon in a grand 18th century hôtel particulier in Paris, doesn’t it?

A salon in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga (MNAA), Lisbon.

In fact, this salon is from the Paar Palace in Vienna, but it’s now installed in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga (MNAA) in Lisbon.  I apologize for the slight blurriness of these images.  The light was difficult.  I also apologize for the inadvertent selfie!

The rape of Orithyia by Boreas seems to have been a popular subject in art during the Versailles Century (1682-1789).  A Google search turns up a number of works in oil, in bronze, and in porcelain.  Our featured art work today on the blog is the small bronze Rape of Orithyia by Boreas by the Florentine sculptor Foggini, pictured below. Dated “before 1702,” it’s on display at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) in Toronto.

The Rape of Orithyia by Boreas; Giovanni Batista Foggini, Florence, before 1702.

The lighting was not conducive to getting a clear shot on my phone camera, so I’ve had to doctor it with filters.  My apologies for the sepia tone.