One of the handsomest pieces of 18th-century furniture in the New France collection at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is this butternut and pine commode from the Montréal area, dated 1740-1760.  As mentioned in the two previous posts, Louis XV styles in New France only took hold around 1740 and persisted for decades after the British conquest in 1759.

A commode from New France/Québec in the ROM.

Although obviously provincial in style when compared to the work of the great ébénistes active in Paris at the same time, it’s a very fine piece.  As with provincial furniture in France itself, the furniture in New France was simpler in design and execution and used humber materials than that of the capital and the court.  In this case, the fancy floral moulding at the bottom, the sophisticated serpentine front, and the elaborate hardware indicate that it was a high-end piece for its time and place.  Very likely it was commissioned by a well-off family.

As a fan of 18C French decorative arts, there’s nothing I love more than a Louis XV-style fauteuil, or armchair.  Naturally, the first exhibits in the Royal Ontario Museum’s New France collection that caught my eye were these 2 elegant Louis XV fauteuils.

Two handsome fauteuils from New France in the ROM.

The dates given for both pieces are 1760-1790.  To look at them, you would think they were from before 1760 — and you would be right if they were French.  In New France, however, Louis XV styles persisted well into the 19C.  This was the effect of being cut off from the mother country after the British conquest of 1759.

Let’s look more closely at each chair.

During my long weekend in Toronto, I managed to check out the furniture of New France collection at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM).

Attentive readers who also follow Versailles Century on Instagram might remember that I posted this photo some time ago.

Rococo to Rustique, a book about the early French-Canadian furniture collection at the ROM.

I promised to visit the museum and write a follow up post.  In fact, I think there will be a series of posts.

The only church that most visitors to Versailles see is the Château’s own chapel.  This is understandable, of course, because it’s the Château that people come to see.  Today, however, we’re going to explore 2 churches in the town of Versailles, the Church of Our Lady (Notre-Dame) and the Cathedral of St. Louis.

The interior of the chapel at the Château de Versailles.

Let’s begin with the older one, the Église Notre-Dame, or the Church of Our Lady.

This church was built quite early in the development of Versailles.  It was erected by Jules Hardouin-Mansart (1646-1708) between 1684 and 1686, presumably in the time that he could spare from his work at the Château.  Remember that Louis XIV had only moved into the Château for good in 1682.

Before the chapel that we see today was completed in 1710, there were other chapels in the Château, but the town needed a church, too, hence the construction of Notre-Dame in the Rue de la Paroisse.  If you walk northward from the Château, you can make the church out as you approach the Place Hoche.

Place Hoche, with the Church of Our Lady (Notre-Dame), one of the 2 main churches of Versailles, clearly visible to the right of the statue.

We’re not nearly done with our commemorative series of visits to mark the temporary closure of the Carnavalet Museum.  Today we go to the Café Militaire.

As I’ve remarked before, one of the wonderful things about this museum is that it preserves interiors from vanished buildings, such as the staircase of the vanished Hôtel de Luynes, which we inspected in a recent post.  Another one of these preserved interiors is that of the Café Militaire.

The decoration of this establishment was  commissioned from the young architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux by the distiller Godeau.   The venue was a house built in 1761-62 by another architect on the site of what is now the Louvre des Antiquaires.  The house, which no longer exists, was in the ‘Greek’ style, so Godeau wanted a suitably ‘Greek’ decorative scheme.

According to the onsite info placard — from which I got all of this information, by the way — the architect opted for a martial scheme of 12 columns in the form of fascicles (vertical bundles) of lances topped by capitals in the guise of warriors’ helmets.

The paneling of the vanished Café Militaire preserved in the Carnavalet Museum.  Note the columns with the helmet capitals.

In the wake of the recent closing of the Carnavalet Museum for renovations, we’re touring some of its Versailles Century-related exhibits. Today we inspect what I’ve dubbed the ‘Green Salon.’

The ‘Green Salon’ in the Carnavalet Museum.

You see that info placard in the centre?  I usually photograph such things as a memory aid, but for some reason I forgot to snap it.  The official name of this room, not to mention its provenance, was on that placard. All memory of it is gone, and the museum’s website says nothing about it. Hence I’ve dubbed it simply the ‘Green Salon,’ after the mint-green trim on the boiseries.  It’s obviously from some Louis XV-era aristocratic residence in Paris, but if you know which one, please comment below.

In the wake of this week’s closing of the Carnavalet Museum for a 3-year program of renovations, I’ve decided to devote this and the next several posts to highlights of the museum’s collections.  Today we inspect the Escalier de Luynes, or the Luynes staircase, which was once in the now-disappeared Hôtel de Luynes, townhouse of the dukes of Luynes.*

Marble steps of the Escalier de Luynes in the Carnavalet Museum.

One of the things that makes the Carnavalet Museum so special is that it showcases complete rooms and architectural elements from buildings that no longer exist, or whose interiors have been completely altered.  In other words, the minds behind the museum were farsighted early preservationists who already in the late 19th century were salvaging priceless treasures of Paris’s built heritage that would otherwise have been lost forever.

It’s a sad day for museum lovers and Versailles Century enthusiasts.  As of today, 3 October, 2016, the Carnavalet Museum in Paris is closed for a massive 3-year program of renovations.  If all goes well, it should re-open in the autumn of 2019.

A facade in the main courtyard of the Carnavalet Museum.

In this edition of VC Museum Visits, we tour the Museum-School of Portuguese Decorative Arts in Lisbon.

Located in the shadow of an ancient Moorish wall in the hillside district of Alfama, this exquisite museum is run by the Ricardo Espirito de Santo Silva Foundation.*  It’s housed in the former palace of the Viscounts of Azurara, which the late Senhor Espirito do Santo Silva (1900-1955), a banker and lavish patron of the arts, purchased in 1947 specifically for the purpose of creating a museum.  A lifelong admirer of Alfama, Lisbon’s most historic district, he was also keen to preserve the skills and traditions of the artisans who lived in the area, hence the inclusion of a school in the foundation.

I knew I was going to love it as soon as I saw what was in the vestibule.

A Cinderella-like 18C carriage in the vestibule.

Today we visit Madame Victoire’s apartment at Versailles.

Louis XV had 8 daughters, of whom 7 survived to adulthood, and of whom 2 lived long enough to see the Revolution.  Mme Victoire, born in 1733, was the younger of those two.  Like all but one of her sisters, she was sent away from Versailles to the abbey of Fontevrault for her education.  As a Daughter of France, i.e. the daughter of a reigning king, she was called Madame rather than Mademoiselle even though she never married.  This portrait of her was painted when she returned to live at Versailles at the end of her schooling in 1748.

Mme Victoire by Nattier.  Credit: Wikipedia

Curiously, only one of the sisters married.  This was the eldest, Mme Louise Elisabeth, known simply as Madame, later as Madame Infante when she was married at 13 to the Infante Philip of Spain, a younger son of Philip V.  He later inherited his mother’s sovereign duchy of Parma,* thus making him and Mme Louise Elisabeth the founders of the house of Bourbon-Parma,** whose descendants now include all the Catholic royalties of Europe.

By the time their nephew Louis XVI came to the throne in 1774, only 3 of the sisters were left at Versailles: Mme Adelaide, Mme Victoire, and Mme Sophie, who died in 1782.  Mesdames Adelaide and Victoire remained in the apartments that we see today until the royal family were forced to leave the Chateau in October of 1789.  The sisters withdrew to their estate at Bellevue, from which they fled in 1791 to seek refuge in Italy.  Mme Victoire died of breast cancer in Trieste in 1799, leaving Mme Adelaide the sole survivor of the sisterhood until her own death the following year.

In her final years at Versailles, Mme Victoire luxuriated in a suite of 6 principal rooms: an antechamber, a salon, a large drawing room, a bedchamber, a small drawing room, and a library.  Few people at Versailles had such spacious lodgings.  Even duchesses had to make do with a garret if they were not in favour, and anyone who could afford it kept a house in the town of Versailles as an escape from their cramped quarters in the Chateau.