Today we pay another visit to Lisbon’s Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga (MNAA)* to have a look at Fragonard’s ‘The Two Cousins.’ As I’ve said in a previous post, Portugal is actually a great place to see French fine and decorative art because the Portuguese aristocracy collected it with such enthusiasm.
Fragonard’s ‘The Two Cousins’ as seen in the MNAA.
I’m no longer a regular Architectural Digest reader, but I couldn’t resist the October issue.
The cover of the October, 2016, issue of Architectural Digest.
Why? The cover story is the Chateau du Fresne near Tours, built in 1770. The current owner is the Brussels gallery owner Flore de Brantes, who visits her ancestral home regularly with her husband and sons.
Today I’m pleased to bring you Versailles Century’s first house tour, except the house is now a hotel. I’ll explain.
The most famous facade of the Palacio do Freixo.
The Palacio do Freixo was built around 1750 on the banks of the Douro river near Porto for one Dom Jeronimo de Tavora e Noronha. Portuguese Wikipedia informs me that he was a wealthy gentleman with estates in the Douro valley. He was also the heir of the Dean of the Porto Cathedral, and was instrumental in bringing Nicolau Nasoni (see the previous post), the Italian artist and architect who designed the Palacio, to Porto in 1725 to work on projects for the archdiocese. Dom Geronimo left the Palacio to his younger brother, a knight in the Order of Malta, whose descendants sold it in the 19th century to a rich merchant, who built a soap factory next door. It passed through several more hands and uses before finally being declared a national monument in 1910. The Porto municipal administration acquired it 1986 and extensive restoration work was undertaken between 2000 and 2003. Since 2009, the Pestana Group has operated it as a pousada, or heritage hotel.
I take these to be Dom Jeronimo de Tavora e Noronha’s arms.
We’ll take a tour of the Palacio as a historic house in this post, and in the next one I’ll review it as a hotel.
Porto, Portugal’s second city, was founded in Roman times, but came into its own during the Versailles Century.
Porto’s historic heart with the cathedral and archbishop’s palace on the hilltop.
Brazilian gold flowing across the Atlantic after the discovery of the precious yellow metal in Minas Gerais in the 1690s, combined with the boom in the port wine trade after the signing of the Methuen Treaty with Great Britain in 1703, made Porto rich. Much of the loot was spent on spectacular churches. Modern visitors to the city will find the built heritage of the northern Portuguese Baroque all around them. The star exhibits are the buildings designed by the transplant Nicolau Nasoni (1691-1773), an all-around talent who arrived from Italy to execute some paintings for the archbishop and stayed for the rest of his life, undertaking not only paintings, but interior design and architecture.
We’re switching gears now.
The Versailles Century was led by France, but it played out all over Europe, indeed the world, as we’ll see in due course. This post is the first of several inspired by my travels in Portugal in April of 2016, when I visited Porto and Lisbon after leaving Paris and Versailles. I’m going to bring you words and images about all the Versailles Century art and architecture I found in Europe’s westernmost Latin country. As it happens, Portugal is a great place to see French fine and decorative art because the Portuguese elite was so heavily influenced by French taste. Versailles lovers, don’t despair — there will be many more posts about the Chateau in future!
I don’t know about you, but when I think of 18th century painting, a handful of artists spring immediately to mind. Two that leap fastest are Canaletto (1697-1768) and Bellotto (1721-1780), probably the most famous uncle and nephew artists in history, both known best for their cityscapes. It was my luck that when I visited the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga (the National Museum of Ancient Art) in Lisbon, there was a special exhibition of a work by Bellotto. The museum, which we’ll call MNAA for short, went all out to highlight it:
Versailles: A Visit to the King’s Private Apartments, Part 2
In the late afternoon of the first day of my visit to Versailles, I went along to the ticket office of the Chateau to buy my ticket for the next day, including a guided tour of the Private Apartments. There were various tours in several languages, but the young woman behind the counter flatteringly recommended that I take the French language tour at 10:30, on the grounds that it was the most thorough one. I duly purchased a ticket and wandered off in the rain — the weather was relentlessly wet throughout my visit — to find my dinner.
Semi-restored room in the ticket wing. My inner interior decorator sees some sleek Italian sofas and striking contemporary art in here.
All but skipping with excitement, I turned up the following morning at the designated entrance for the Private Apartments tour. This entrance is on the north side of the Cour Royale (the Royal Court), the great courtyard that precedes the Cour de Marbre (the Marble Court) at the heart of the palace. A uniformed man checked my ticket and waved me inside. A young woman in a smart black pantsuit and a headset then asked me which tour I was there for, and directed me into an adjoining salon. This turned out to be the holding tank for imminent tours. It retained its 18th century boiserie, but was furnished with sleek contemporary furniture, which I’m tempted to say was by Philippe Starck, but I’m not sure. Another pant-suited young lady appeared and gave me a pair of earphones. I nearly protested that I hadn’t asked for an audio guide, but held my peace. All became clear when the actual guide appeared, a brisk, middle-aged Frenchwoman. She instructed us to put in our earbuds and see if we could hear her on the audio system that was connecting us. A very sensible system, this. Nothing is more annoying on a guided tour than straining, and failing, to hear what the guide is saying. We were a group of about 15 or 20. As far as I could tell, I was the only non-francophone apart from a young woman from Brazil who was studying art history in Paris, which I know because we had a chat after the tour. In fact, it turned out that she was taking a course on museology and asked me if I would oblige her by taking a short survey about my Versailles experience. I obliged, of course.
Versailles: A Visit to the King’s Private Apartments, Part 1.
It’s a little embarrassing to admit, given my longstanding interest in the place and the fact that I have a degree in French, that I didn’t visit Versailles, or even Paris, until April of this year. Basically, I was distracted for nearly 20 years by my work and travels in Asia, which you can read more about on my other blog and gallery website, Lotus & Persimmon.
I’m happy to say that Versailles lived up to 30 years of expectation. My visit did not proceed quite as planned, though. I had devised a very specific program for myself:
Day 1: Take a midday train from Paris to Versailles; check in to my hotel; scout the town; but my tickets for the Chateau for the next day; wander in the gardens of the Chateau; dine in the town; turn in early.
Day 2: Join a guided tour of the Private Apartments; see the State Rooms; have lunch in the town; see Mesdames’ Apartments; visit the Musee Lambinet in the town; dine in the town again; turn in early.
Day 3: Visit the Trianons in the morning; have lunch in town; take an early afternoon train back to Paris.
Needless to say there was a fly in the ointment, which in this case was the weather. Late March and early April 2016 were very wet in France (and Portugal, as I subsequently experienced). I saw very little of the gardens because of the frequent downpours, and by the end of Day 2 I simply abandoned the idea of visiting the Trianons, which was just as well because the Chateau was closed on Day 3 due to a transport strike! I was lucky even to make it back to Paris.
Versailles from the garden on a rainy day.
