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Chapter Five: French
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French 0715_FINAL_384pp.indd 264 8/10/10 1:45:02 PM 265 T The Gardens of Versailles En sortant du château par le vestibule qui est sous la chambre du roy, on sera sur la terrasse . . . On leaving the chateau by the vestibule under the King’s bedchamber, go out onto the terrace . . . —Louis XIV, The Way to Present the Gardens of Versailles Thus begins Louis XIV’s walking tour of the gardens of Versailles. Never published in his lifetime, the six versions of this tour, recorded either in his own hand or by secretaries between 1689 and 1705, were used as guides to lead official visitors through the groves and around the fountains of one of the most complex and extensive architectural extravaganzas of the seventeenth century. Like any host, the king wanted the satisfaction of showing his guests the gardens through his eyes. On an August day in 1700, Louis XIV walked through the gardens himself, probably along the preordained route, in the company of André Le Nôtre, whose vision since 1662 was responsible for the brilliant arrangement of bosquets (open-air rooms surrounded by high hedges), parterres (ornamental flower beds), and waterworks. This was Le Nôtre’s last walk in the garden, for he died the following month at his house in the Tuileries Garden in Paris, where he had been First Gardener to Louis XIII even before Louis XIV was Facing page: François Halard, Column house, Le Désert de Retz, Chambourcy. 0715_FINAL_384pp.indd 265 8/10/10 1:45:02 PM [44.197.113.64] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 08:46 GMT) c h a p t e r f i v e 266 born. At his death, he left the fruits of this lifetime collaboration to his greatgrandson , Louis XV. The gardens and park of Versailles and the Trianon—more than two thousand acres in all—have both evolved and deteriorated since the early 1700s, reflecting the innovations and renovations decreed by the taste of succeeding epochs. However, the strong lines of Le Nôtre’s plan have remained relatively intact so that visitors today can follow the map in the current guidebook with a copy in hand of Louis XIV’s recently reissued tour, The Way to Present the Gardens of Versailles. The conservation of the chateau and gardens of Versailles was long overseen by a single architect, and anyone following the restoration of the chateau knows that boiserie and regilding have been high on the list as newly resplendent interior suites have been unveiled to the public. But by the fall of 1989, with the scholarly Jean-Pierre Babelon at the helm as director, and with many of the trees dangerously overgrown or diseased, the decision was made to divide the responsibilities for the buildings and the gardens. On February 1, 1990, Pierre-André Lablaude, a chief architect of Historic Monuments and a native of the town of Versailles, assumed the task of restoring the gardens. The next night a dramatic storm felled at least fifteen hundred trees at Versailles and devastated a great swath of the Île-de-France. The storm alerted the country to its garden heritage and stimulated a new concentration on treasures long neglected. At Versailles, it is invigorating to be in a garden that appears to be beginning all over again. Although the tall, iron grille gates to the bosquets can be opened by remote control from Lablaude’s Renault rather than with the large keys once used by Louis XVI’s inspector of buildings, Lablaude’s inspection tours to oversee the work of contractors in the gardens, now denuded of trees, have the feel of a seventeenth-century enterprise. “At one time,” said Lablaude, “gardens were considered like the sauces in grande cuisine, but now we approach their restoration with the same rigorous methods we apply to the great cathedrals.” The architectural historian Vincent Scully makes a similar comparison between the seventeenth-century constructed garden and the Gothic cathedral: “To those cathedrals the gardens of the seventeenth century are linked in many ways: in plan, in the ideal geometry of square and circle, and in the common objective of shaping the fundamental harmony of the universe around the ritual of the French crown. . . . Paradise itself . . . moves back outdoors to the space of nature.” The most memorable portrayals of the park at Versailles in our time are in 0715_FINAL_384pp.indd 266 8/10/10 1:45:02 PM 267 f r e...