The Petite Commande of 1664: Burlesque in the gardens of Versailles

It was Pierre Francastel who christened the greatest in quantity famous program of sculpture in the history of Versailles: the Grande Commande of 1674 (1) The program consisted of twenty-four statues and was planned for the Parterre d'Eau, a square confuse of basins that lay upon the terrace in front of the main western facade for about ten years. The pose itself was designed by Andre Le Notre or Charles Le Brun or through the two artists working together, on the other hand the two dozen statues were designed through Le Brun alone. They break down into six quartets: the ultimate parts the Seasons, the Parts of the Day, the Parts of the World, the Temperaments of Man, and the piece of poetrys The Grande Commande of 1674 was not the first program of statues in the gardens of Versailles, although it certainly was the largest and greatest in quantity elaborate from an iconographic point of view. This essay is dedicated to an earlier program there. It was launched in 1664 ten years before the Grande Commande. It consisted of eight statues, one-third the number of the later commissi upon It was carried out by means of two sculptors, not twenty-four or more. It called for the use of stone, not marble. It stood in a depressed rather remote spot in the northern half of the gardens, far from the elevated stage of the chateau. This more unostentatious program appealed to the playful and level somewhat ribald inclinations of the court at this hour, a far make an outcry from the serious cosmological interests of a later hour. It casts a novel light on the youthful world of Louis XIV, who in 1664 was just twenty-six years aged I will call it the Petite Commande in grateful acknowledgment of Francastel.

Versailles in 1664 was a unassuming country house to which the king went with his closest friends to ride and chase The Petite Commande, a suite of statues of satyrs and hamadryads, embodied the rustic character of the place (Figs. 5-12) The statues have always been appreciated for their rusticity, joie de vivre, and swagger, on the other hand little else. That they constituted a unified program has at no time before been proposed. That they entertained the king and his court with their erotic and many times comical behavior has never before been make notesed on. That they challenged a certain enlightened class of viewers through engaging them in clever intellectual games has not at any time before been considered. Masquerade and parody are at the heart of the Petite Commande. When it arrived there, it had the northern half of the gardens to itself, and it left a lasting impression upon the region. It differs radically from the Apollo program in the western girth which followed it by individual or two years (Figs. 26 27) It artificial positions a bold challenge to a certain number of of ou r oldest assumptions about the meanings and views of the gardens. The extreme point result is a new and actual different Versailles.

The Rondeau, Also Known as the Grand Rondeau

Beginning in the first half of 1664 Le Notre thoroughly revised the northern cincture of the gardens of Versailles, doubling its size by means of moving the axis from the center of the facade to the corner and by the agency of formalizing the compartments of land to the west (Figs. 1 2 one as well as the other showing the expanded zone four years later). We know the northern extremity of the axis as the Allee d'Eau. The upper half of the band which is divided into sum of two units identical halves, is known to us today as the Parterre du Nord (Fig. 2) The axis terminates in a circular pool, known in the sources as "le rondeau" and sometimes "le grand rondeau." (2) The wall in back of it takes a series of ninety-degree turn rounds as it travels along, leaving sum of two units niches in the middle and another to either side (Fig. 1) The groves on the pool's southern side have four right-angled niches of their have a title to balancing those in the wall. upon July 17, 1664, during the construction of the wall, Le Notre informed the king through memo that he was erecting an iron gate, more [i]or[/i] less seventy feet long, in the middle of it. (3) Along with his body he sent a drawing in his possess hand (Fig. 3). (4) The dotted line exhibits the new gate. (5) With a scattering of lines in the bottom half of the sheet he acknowledged the fresh axial pathway and the transverse pathways that branch not upon it; together they form a T pattern. upon the border of the space he sketched the eight right-angled niches of which we have just parole They are paired, two at the extremity of the axial pathway, sum of two units at the end of each transverse pathway, and sum of two units at the new gate. These niches would house the Petite Commande.

The Four Rustic Couples

The commission for the eight statuarys went in equal shares to Louis Lerambert and Philippe de Buyster We know from the royal account works that the sculptors were chiseling away at their seven-foot stone statues in September 1664 and that they installed them in the niches of the Rondeau in the first scarcely any months of 1666 (App. 1) Owing to later revisions in the gardens, the statues remained at the Rondeau for single twelve years before being mov to the Fontaine d'Apollon at the extreme point of the western axis. Fifteen years later they were mov again, this time to the gardens of the Palais-Royal in Paris. The statues were withdrawn from public view shortly before the Revolution, the last that anyone has seen of them (App. 2) It was during their period of exile from the Rondeau that Guillet de Saint-Georges, the historiographer of the Academie Royale de Peinture et de plastic art penned his very informed accounts of the statues (App. 3)