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11. The Menagerie and the Labyrinthe: Animals at Versailles, 1662-1792
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11 The Ménagerie and the Labyrinthe: Animals at Versailles, 1662–1792 Matthew Senior The Ménagerie of Versailles, built by Louis Le Vau between 1662 and 1664, was one of the first structures to be completed as part of Louis XIV’s vast domain of parks, fountains, buildings, and monuments. An extravagant display of magnificence that only a monarch could afford, the Ménagerie was an architectural innovation that served as a model for the collection and control of animals for nearly a century and a half throughout Europe. The animal park at Versailles was, in some sense, a scale model, in design and ideology,of the entire royal project.As Pierre Lablaud observes,the Ménagerie was “a sort of miniature palace, a reduced-scale production of the much more ambitious complex being developed simultaneously around Louis XIII’s palace.”1 The zoo at Versailles was the first to separate animals into groups and provide a simultaneous view of all of the animals.From the balcony of his garden pavilion, the king and his guests looked down on an octagonal courtyard joined to cages containing different kinds of animals (figure 11.1). Like the king’s apartments, the pavilion faced east, toward the rising sun; hence,the view in Aveline’s engraving is from the west,toward St.Cyr.Moving counterclockwise in Aveline’s drawing, from left to right, the first enclosure one sees is the Quartier des Cigognes, containing storks. The second pen, the Quartier des Demoiselles, named after its demoiselles de numidie (demoiselle cranes), also contained an aviary with more than forty species of exotic birds. The third yard, the Cour des Pélicans, was home to pelicans, cranes, flamingos, and wild ducks, as was the fourth enclosure, the Rondd ’eau, a habitat for storks, herons, and wading birds. The fifth compound, the Quartier desAutruches,contained ostriches,Egyptian herons,eagles,and porcupines, living in a decor of sand and rocks meant to evoke the African desert.The sixth pen,the Cour des Oiseaux,was home to civets,foxes,crows, rare pigeons, spoonbilled cranes, and exotic birds; for a time it also housed an elephant and a camel before these large mammals were moved to their own Cour de la Ferme.The seventh yard,the Basse-Cour,contained domestic Figure 11.1. Pierre-Alexandre Aveline, Versailles Ménagerie (1689). Reproduced by permission of the Bibliotèque Nationale de France, Cabinet des estampes. [3.237.91.98] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 23:01 GMT) farm animals destined for the royal kitchens and tables. Lions, leopards, elephants , gazelles, and other rare animals were housed in cages constructed behind the seven main compounds. At the end of the century, Louis XIV consolidated his collection of bêtes sauvages by moving lions,tigers,and panthers fromVincennes toVersailles.In the years leading up to the Revolution, the Sun King and his successors managed to collect a huge number and variety of animals. Gustave Loisel’s census of the animals that lived in the Ménagerie tallies up as follows: one hundred twenty-three species of mammals, two hundred thirty-nine varieties of birds, and ten species of amphibians.2 All of these animals were on display in a fanlike structure that ensured maximum visibility and symbolized the king’s dominion over the natural world. The architectural sources for this strikingly original design cannot be directly established since Le Vau left behind no written texts on the Ménagerie .3 By examining the architect’s career against the backdrop of absolutist politics and prevailing ideas about architecture and garden design at Versailles , one can advance with varying degrees of certainty and speculation as to the purpose and meaning of the Ménagerie. Two fundamental intentions seem apparent in the design of the first modern zoo: the desire to encompass nature and make it visible from a single vantage point and the desire to confine animals and separate them according to species.Thus put on display, the animals fulfilled several purposes: they were emblems of royal prestige and amusing spectacles for the king’s guests.They were studied and painted by an emerging school of peintres animaliers (Desportes, Nicasius, Boël,and Oudry),who were able to observe many of these exotic species for the first time.4 And, finally, they were dissected and vivisected by members of the newly formed Académie des Sciences, who recorded their observations in collective proceedings and precise anatomical drawings.5 The desire to...