num_pages: 256
description: Louis XIV's Versailles has passed beyond historical interest to become a part of legend. In this superbly written study, Guy Walton considers the Sun King's accomplishment in detail and explores the meaning of what he built. The result is the first work in English--and the most up-to-date in any language--to provide a comprehensive history of Versailles in a single volume.Louis XIV sought to create in his residence a new Rome, a palace that wold represent at once the personal dignity and political glory of th eking and the ascendancy of French art and design over Italian. Walton interprets every aspect of this ideal residence, from the king's concern for technological innovations to the importance of the menagerie. With attention to the poltical and social climate of seventeenth-century France, he describes the ruler's unusually active role in the palace's design and interior decoration, his handling of architects, artists, and construction problems, and his amassing of one of the greatest art collections of Europe. Walton shows how Louis XIV's personal preferences, his huge royal household, and the growth of the French government during his reign influenced the transformation of his father's hunting lodge into a vast, resplendent complex of buildings that ultimately set the standards for art and design in all of Europe.For this study, Walton has examined thousands of original drawings and related documents in the Cabinet des Estampes of the Bibliothèque Nationale and Archives Nationales in Paris and in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, as well as architects' plans, views in Versailles in prints and paintings, and written accounts of occupants, guests, and house artists. The book features over 150 rare illustrations that demonstrate Louis XIV's carefully refined style in architecture, sculpture, painting, decorative arts, and landscape design. Louis XIV's Versailles will be of great value to scholars, students, and anyone interested in Versailles as an outstanding monument to a complex period in French history.Guy Walton is associate professor of fine arts at New York University.
language: English
title: Louis XIV's Versailles
titlecomplete: Louis XIV's Versailles
genres: France, History
ratings_count: 8
publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr