Madame Louise de France was the youngest child of Louis XV and his Polish consort, Marie Leszczynska.  Dubbed Madame Septième, in reference to her place in the birth order of the royal daughters, on her birth in 1737, she was one of only two of Louis XV’s nine children  to leave the Court of Versailles and seek a life elsewhere.

In 1738, Mme Louise and three of her elder sisters were sent off to the abbey of Fontevraud for their education.  It was there, in fact, that Louise was baptized.  The decision to send them there had been made by Cardinal Fleury, Louis XV’s de facto prime minister, on the grounds of economy.  It was thought that it would be significantly cheaper to raise them there than with large households at Versailles.  Be that as it may, it meant that Louise spent most of her earliest years away from her home and family, apart from the sisters who were also at Fontevrault.  The decision might been justified by the quality of the education that the young princesses were to receive, but in later years Mme Louise alleged that she did not even know the alphabet when she left the abbey.

Mme Louise painted by Nattier in 1748, when she was still at Fontevrault.

The elder girls started returning to Versailles in the late 1740s.  Louise herself returned in 1750.  By this time, life at Court had changed a good deal since her birth, which had marked the end of her parents’ intimate life.  Asked what he intended to call his new daughter, Louis XV responded, “Madame Dernière” (“Madame the last”).  He then took up with the first of his many mistresses.  When Louise returned to Versailles, the reigning mistress was the celebrated Madame de Pompadour.  The mistress was tolerated by the Queen, but the King’s children were against her.  There were now six royal siblings living at court: the Dauphin Louis (the only son), Mme Henriette (who was soon to die), Mme Adélaïde, Mme Victoire, Mme Sophie, and Mme Louise.  In addition, the Dauphin had a wife, Marie-Josèphe of Saxony-Poland, who would give birth to the future Louis XVI in 1754.  The eldest daughter, Mme Élisabeth, had married the reigning Duke of Parma.  She was the only one of Louis XV’s daughters to marry.  The remaining royal children resented la Pompadour and formed a nucleus of opposition to the favourite.

It has been said that Louis XIV built Versailles for his court, Trianon for himself, and Marly for his friends.

To that end, Marly consisted of a main house for the King and his immediate family, and 12 guest pavilions.  Each pavilion contained 2 apartments, one on each floor.  If each guest was married, as many as 48 people could be accommodated.  The pavilions faced each other across a water feature in two rows of 6.  As the picture below shows, Marly was surrounded by forested hills, which must have given it a pleasing sense of privacy.

The Domaine de Marly as it appeared in 1724. Credit: fr.wikipedia.org.

Apart from the Queen, and later the King’s second wife, Mme de Maintenon, only his brother, Monsieur, and his son, the Dauphin, had the right to accompany the King to Marly without being invited and had their own permanent rooms there.  Everyone else, even other members of the royal family and the Princes of the Blood (i.e. the King’s cousins), had to apply for an invitation, either to the King’s private secretary, or directly to the King himself.  As the day for a departure to Marly approached, courtiers would murmur, “Sire, Marly?” as the Grand Monarque made his way from his bedroom at Versailles through the Hall of Mirrors to the chapel.  If the King invited a lady to Marly, her husband was automatically included, unlike at Trianon, where he was not.  Naturally, invitations were highly sought after.

While browsing in my local antiquarian and secondhand bookshop, Condor Fine Books, I happened on a nearly 40-year-old volume entitled Land of the Firebird: The Beauty of Old Russia, by Suzanne Massie.

Land of the Firebird: The Beauty of Old Russia, by Suzanne Massie.

Leafing through it, I was delighted to find that an entire chapter was devoted to one my favourite Versailles Century (1682-1789) characters: Elizabeth Petrovna, Empress and Autocrat of All the Russias.  An able ruler, she was also a great beauty and a woman of prodigious appetites.

The Abbé de Bernis is one of those fascinating, worldly prelates, more at home in the drawing room than the confessional, who inhabited the haut monde of pre-Revolution Paris and Versailles.  It was on 2 October in 1758 that the red biretta was bestowed on him.

The Cardinal de Bernis (1715-1794). Credit: Wikipedia.

The future Cardinal de Bernis was born in 1715 and took minor orders after finishing his studies at a seminary in Paris.  Before embarking on his political and diplomatic career he was known as a writer, indeed he was elected to the Académie Française at age 29. He was a friend and protégé of Mme de Pompadour, and through her influence was appointed ambassador to Venice (1752-1755).  He remarked on his appointment to this post, which was not one of the more important or prestigious ones, that the worst thing that could happen to him there would be to be forgotten.

As princesses go, Maria Sofia von Neuburg was a very insignificant one at the time of her birth in 1666.  Her father, Duke Philipp Wilhelm, though a member of the illustrious house of Wittelsbach, was merely the Duke of Neuburg, a very small state on the banks of the Danube in southern Germany.  Other branches of the family ruled the larger, richer states of the Palatinate and Bavaria.  In fact, they were very nearly sovereigns, except that that they nominally owed allegiance to the Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna.  Diminishing Maria Sofia’s prospects even further, she was not even an heiress.  Women could not inherit the duchy, and in any case she was only one of seventeen children.

The ducal palace in Neuburg. Credit: Mendli at German Wikipedia – own work of Mendli, Originally from de.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1728849

Things began to look up for Maria Sofia and her siblings when their relative the Elector Palatine died sonless in 1685 and Duke Philipp Wilhelm succeeded him.  The family duly moved to the Palatine capital at Heidelberg.

It was on this day in 1754 that the future Louis XVI was born.

His parents were Louis, Dauphin of France (1729-1765), and Marie-Josèphe, Dauphine of France, née princess of Saxony-Poland (1731-1767).  The infant prince was immediately named Duc de Berri by his grandfather, Louis XV, and was soon christened Louis-Auguste to distinguish him from his elder brother, Louis-Joseph.

Louis, Dauphin de France (1729-1765). I photographed this bust of him in his sister Victoire’s drawing room at Versailles in March, 2016.

Louis-Auguste was in fact the third child in the family.

It was on this day in 1830 that Louis-Philippe, Duc d’Orléans, took power in the wake of the so-called July Revolution that toppled his cousin, Charles X, who had abdicated in favour of his grandson.  Charles had intended for Louis-Philippe to rule as regent for the little boy, but the latter had other ideas and raised no objection when the National Assembly offered to make him king in his own right.  Departing from tradition, he proclaimed himself Louis-Philippe, King of the French, rather than Louis XIX (or XX, depending on your point of view), King of France.

Louis-Philippe as photographed in 1842. Credit: By Lerebours et Claudet – page, image, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8462011

Here at Versailles Century we take a dim view of this wily monarch, mainly because of his ham-handed interventions at Versailles.  Three years into his reign, Louis-Philippe decided to undertake a partial restoration of the Château de Versailles and also to create a museum of French history in it.  We’ve previously touched on one of his modifications, namely the eponymous staircase in the King’s private apartments.

The Louis-Philippe Staircase in March, 2017.

I actually like this staircase, which brings some much-needed light into this part of the Château.

Our friends at the official Château de Versailles website have published this stunning rooftop view from the centre block (I assume) down the central axis of the gardens to the Tapis Vert and the Grand Canal beyond.

View from the roof of the Château de Versailles towards the Grand Canal. Credit: http://www.chateaudeversailles.com

Looking at this view makes me feel quite kingly.  Why?  Because Louis XV is known to have enjoyed spending time on the roof of the Château.

The French furniture in the Gulbenkian Museum is impressive.  The collection includes pieces by two great masters: Séné and van Risen Burgh (also spelled van Risamburgh).

In a previous post, we looked at a set of Beauvais-upholstered chairs by Séné.

Pair of fauteuils by J.B.C. Séné in the Gulbenkian Foundation museum in Lisbon.

Today we’ll examine four pieces by van Risen Burgh/van Risamburgh.

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.