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The Pyramid Fountain at Versailles

2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 30; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14601170903411275

1943-2186

Robert W. Berger,

Historical and Literary Studies

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgments I wish to thank Professor Thomas F. Hedin for providing valuable information, which I have acknowledged in the notes. Notes 1. Paris, Archives Nationales, 01 1762A, cahiers 7 and 8. I am most grateful to Thomas F. Hedin for alerting me to these archival sources and providing me with photocopies. 2. ‘Plus une boiste de cuivre rouge avec neuf gros tuyaux dessus qui fait l'effet de la grande piramide d'eau du rondeau, pour ce, argent desbourse … 45 [livres] argent’ (ibid., cahier 7, fol. 11v). The Dragon Fountain, the work of the Marsy brothers, perhaps working after a design by Le Brun, dates from 1666–67 (see Thomas F. Hedin, The Sculpture of Gaspard and Balthazard Marsy. Art and Patronage in the Early Reign of Louis XIV. With a Catalogue Raisonné [Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1983], p. 131, no. 15). 3. ‘Plus un grand adjustage de cuivre rouge, en figure d'un double esvantaille sur lequel il y a cinquante cinq petits adjustages de cuivre fondu et pour y avoir remis un autre fondu a la place de celuy qui fut emporte en presence du Roy par la force de l'eau pour ce … 160 [livres] argent’ (ibid., cahier, 7, fols. 11v–12r); ‘Plus un autre adjustage de cuivre fondu jetant l'eau par neuf endroits en figure de piramide que le Roy a voulu qu'on ayt adjuste au dessus dud. double esvantaille pour ce … 30 [livres] argent’ (ibid., cahier 7, fol. 12r). 4. ‘104. Plus un adjustage de cuivre fondu jetant l'eau en figure de piramide que le Roi desira dans le bassin de l'Orangerie pendant le Carozel du Carnaval dernier pour ce … 30 [livres] argent’ (ibid., cahier 8, fols. 7v–8r). 5. For earlier discussions of this fountain, see mainly Pierre de Nolhac, La création de Versailles (Versailles: L. Bernard, 1901), pp. 128–129; idem, Les jardins de Versailles (Paris: Goupil, 1906), pp. 60–61; Pierre Francastel, Girardon (Paris: Les Beaux-Arts), pp. 70–71, no. 22 and passim; idem, La sculpture de Versailles (Paris and The Hague: Mouton, 1970), pp. 27–28 and passim (reimpression of 1st ed. 1930); Alfred Marie, Naissance de Versailles. Le château — Les jardins (Paris: Vincent, Fréal, 1968), Vol. I: 82–85; Dean C. Walker, Jr., ‘The Early Career of François Girardon, 1628–1686: The History of a Sculptor to Louis XIV during the Superintendence of Jean-Baptiste Colbert’, dissertation, New York University, 1982, Vol. I: 143–146; Gerold Weber, Brunnen und Wasserkünste in Frankreich im Zeitalter von Louis XIV (Worms: Werner'sche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1985), p. 109 and passim. 6. Weber, Brunnen, figure 141. 7. See below, n. 26. 8. Girardon was sent by the Crown to the Midi of France and Italy in late 1668; he reached Rome by 4 February 1669 and was reported back in Paris on 24 May of that year. His itinerary was drawn up by Charles Perrault (see Francastel, Girardon, pp. 44–45). On Girardon's career, see ibid., François Souchal, French Sculptors of the 17th and 18th Centuries: The Reign of Louis XIV (Oxford: Cassirer, 1977–93), Vol. II: 14–83, Vol. IV: 95–115, and Walker, ‘The Early Career of François Girardon’. I have found no evidence for the statement in Souchal, French Sculptors, Vol. II: 14, that Girardon submitted several models for fountains for Versailles from 1667 on. 9. For the documentary history of the fountain see Marie, Naissance de Versailles, Vol. I: 84 and Weber, Brunnen, pp. 281–282. Payments from 1669–71 for ‘ornemens’ by Girardon for unspecified Versailles fountains may include the Bath of Diana (Bath of the Nymphs), which the sculptor was working on concurrently with the Pyramid Fountain (Jules Guiffrey, [ed.], Comptes des Bâtiments du Roi sous le règne de Louis XIV [Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1881–1901], Vol. I: cols. 333, 418 [hereafter referred to as CBR]). A payment on 18 February 1670 (CBR, Vol. I: col. 415) to the mason Louis Jeannot (who was probably the executant of the stone podium and core vertical support), mentions ‘la fontaine en pyramide’. Payments are recorded to Girardon for the fountain from April to September 1671 (CBR, Vol. I: col. 511); he was paid 1000 livres separately for it on 27 June of that year (Nouvelles archives de l'art français, 1873, p. 344); and a payment was made to him on 20 June 1672 (CBR, Vol. I: col. 617). The payments to Bailly for gilding and bronzing began on 11 June 1671 and extended to 24 August of that year (CBR, Vol. I: cols. 509, 527). Nolhac (La création de Versailles, p. 129) suggested that the figures were gilded, the ornamental features bronzed. 10. Weber, Brunnen, p. 282. Beginning in 1684, bronze figures were prepared by the Kellers to replace those in lead; seventeen pieces were ready c. 1707, but were never put in place (ibid.). 11. The lowest part of the core support is decorated with faun or satyr masks (difficult to see), separated by vertical rows of scallop shells, all apparently of metal. Its second level has an acanthus pattern, the third a spiral, and the top level features incised vertical ‘tongues’ with scallop shells. According to the Mercure galant (Nov. 1686, pt. 2, p. 202), the lowest and largest basin is twelve French feet in diameter, made from a single block of marble; the Mercure adds: ‘C'est peut-estre le plus grand ouvrage que l'on puisse voir d'un seul morceau’. 12. On the gilding and bronzing of the sculptures during the Ancien Régime, see Francastel, La sculpture de Versailles, p. 58, n. 1. 13. Bertha Harris Wiles, The Fountains of Florentine Sculptors and their Followers from Donatello to Bernini (New York: Hacker Art Books, 1975), Chap. III (first published 1933). Unlike the Renaissance examples discussed by Wiles, the Pyramid Fountain lacks a dominant statue or group at the top; instead, it is terminated by a vase. 14. Gerold Weber, Review of Alfred Marie, Naissance de Versailles. Le château — Les jardins (Paris: Vincent, Fréal, 1968, 2 vols.) in: Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, XXXIII, 1970, p. 253. See also idem, Brunnen, p. 109. 15. Liancourt: Engraved by Israël Silvestre in 1656 (Weber, Brunnen, figure 27); Rueil: Engraved by Perelle after a design by Silvestre (illus. in Dominique Hélot-Lécroart, Le domaine de Richelieu à Ruel de 1600 à 1800 [Rueil-Malmaison: Société historique de Rueil-Malmaison, 1985], p. 34). Both prints depict the waterplay. 16. ‘ … le tout ensemble ne fait qu'une nape d'eau, au travers de laquelle on aperçoit les Figures’ (Le Mercure galant, Nov. 1686, pt. 2, p. 203). 17. Weber, Brunnen, pp. 96ff. provides a succinct account. 18. Plaster models of the sculptural groups were replaced by marble versions only in 1676. On these interrelated garden features, see Robert W. Berger, In the Garden of the Sun King. Studies on the Park of Versailles under Louis XIV (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1985), pp. 20–24. 19. Designed by Charles Le Brun, executed by Jean-Baptiste Tuby and Étienne Le Hongre; see Weber, Brunnen, p. 281, figures 151, 283. The crowns are no longer extant. 20. It should be emphasized that many areas of the garden do not contain such imagery and references. This is true of the immediately adjoining Bath of the Nymphs (Bath of Diana) and Allée d'Eau — features set upon sloping land to the north of the Parterre du Nord and which form a zone entirely different from it in imagery, composition, and garden mood (see figures 7 and 8). And Hedin has demonstrated how the lower reaches of the Allée d'Eau around the Dragon Fountain originally formed a stage for burlesque allusions in the statuary, with no monarchical references (Thomas F. Hedin, ‘The petite commande of 1664: burlesque in the gardens of Versailles’, Art Bulletin, LXXXIII, 2001, pp. 651–685; French version [slightly abridged]: ‘La petite commande de 1664. Apparition du burlesque dans les jardins de Versailles’, Versalia, no. 7, 2004, pp. 74–111). 21. A memo of 1669 reveals that this part of the garden was supplied at that time with more water-pipes than any other area; see Robert W. Berger and Thomas F. Hedin, Diplomatic Tours in the Gardens of Versailles under Louis XIV (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), p. 10. Additionally, a reservoir sat atop the Grotto of Tethys. 22. Le Brun's drawing for a crowns fountain (Paris, École des Beaux-Arts) is dated to the 1670s by Weber and hence cannot be the preparatory drawing for the Crowns Fountains of the Parterre du Nord, which have an entirely different composition (Brunnen, p. 111 and figure 152). 23. Some of these differences are noted by Marie, Naissance de Versailles, Vol. I: 83 and by Weber, Brunnen, p. 110, n. 181. In his earlier review of Marie (as in n. 14, above, p. 253), Weber had characterized our figure 6 as ‘nur ein Contre-Epreuve’, a puzzling remark. 24. The third level of the central ‘column’ shows a spiral pattern, as in the executed work, but the other levels in the drawing are not sufficently delineated to match with the final fountain. 25. Weber, Brunnen, p. 110. 26. Paris, Archives Nationales, 01 1854, liasse 1, no. 4. Integral transcription in Ann Friedman, ‘The ‘Grande Commande’ for the Sculpture of the Parterre d'eau at Versailles, 1672–1683’, dissertation, Bryn Mawr College, 1983, pp. 358–361. 27. Waterworks were installed within the Grotto. 28. The Bassin des Cygnes, the site of the future Apollo Fountain. 29. The site of the future Latona Fountain. 30. ‘Pour faire joüer les fontaines et la grotte lorsque le Roy est a Versailles Il fault du moins cinq ou six personnes pour cela[.] Il fault remarquer quil y a des fontaines qui joüent tousjours quand le Roy est a Versailles et dautres qui ne jouent que quand sa Maté. passe aux endroits ou elles sont. Ces dernieres sont le dragon la gerbe lovalle et la piramide avec lallée deau de sorte qu'estant necessaire de les ouvrir et fermer a propos Il fault avoir des gens pour [faire?] cela’ (Paris, Archives Nationales, 01 1854, liasse 1, no. 4, fol. 3v; transcribed in Friedman [as in n. 26, above], pp. 358–361; I have reproduced my reading of the last sentence, which slightly differs from Friedman's). See also Berger and Hedin, Diplomatic Tours, pp. 10–11. 31. Paris, Archives Nationales, 01 1854, liasse 1, no. 7; published by Albert Mousset, Les Francine (Paris: A. Picard, 1930), pp. 86–88, where it is ascribed to François Francine, the head of hydraulics at Versailles; attributed to Charles Perrault, Colbert's first clerk in the Bâtiments, in Berger and Hedin, Diplomatic Tours, pp. 14–16. 32. ‘Le Roy veult que les fontaines aillent tousjours dans l'ordre cy après lorsque Sa Majesté arrivera à Versailles; et lorsqu'Elle ne le voudra point Elle l'envoyera dire’ (Mousset, Les Francine, p. 86). 33. See Berger and Hedin, Diplomatic Tours, figure 8. 34. Mousset, Les Francine, p. 86. 35. Ibid., pp. 86–87. 36. ‘Sa Majesté veult que la mesme chose s'observe lorsque quelque personne considérable sera dans le parc, c'est-à-dire que la Piramide doit aller dans toute sa beauté autant de temps que cette personne la pourra voir’ (ibid., p. 87). 37. Ibid. This bosquet was later transformed into the Bosquet de l'Arc de Triomphe. 38. Ibid., p. 88. 39. ‘Le Roy veult que tout ce qui est dit pour Sa Personne soit observé pour les personnes considérables qui seront dans le parc ou auxquelles Sa Majesté aura ordonné de faire voir les eaux’ (ibid.). 40. The document is discussed in Berger and Hedin, Diplomatic Tours, pp. 14–17. 41. ‘Explication de toutes les grottes, rochers et fontaines du chasteau royal de Versailles, maison du soleil, et de la Ménagerie’. On this poem, see Robert W. Berger, ‘Versailles in verse: some notes on Claude Denis’ “Explication”’, Journal of Garden History IV, 1984, pp. 127–138; idem, ‘The earliest literary descriptions of the gardens of Versailles’, Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, XXVIII, 2008, pp. 456–487; the Pyramid Fountain is discussed on pp. 476–477. 42. Marcel Raynal, ‘Le manuscrit de C. Denis, fontainier de Louis XIV, à Versailles (suite)’, Versailles, no. 37, 4th trimester, 1969, p. 59. 43. ‘ … quatre grands Tritons qui semblent nager dans le grand bassin’ (André Félibien, Description sommaire du chasteau de Versailles [Paris: G. Desprez, 1674], p. 56). 44. ‘Quatre Tritons … semblent se joüer & courir les uns aprés les autres’ (Jean-Aymar Piganiol de La Force, Nouvelle description des chasteaux et parcs de Versailles et de Marly [Paris: F. & P. Delaulne, 1701], p. 171). 45. Raynal (as in n. 42, above), p. 59. 46. Denis wrote ‘Congres’, i.e. conger eels, a gross error in identification. 47. Berger, ‘Versailles in verse’, pp. 127–138; idem, ‘The earliest literary descriptions’, pp. 474–480. 48. Berger, ‘Versailles in verse’, p. 137, n. 8. 49. Raynal (as in n. 42, above), p. 55. 50. Raynal, ‘Le manuscrit de C. Denis’, Versailles, no. 41, 4th trimester, 1970, p. 12. 51. Idem in Versailles, no. 37, 4th trimester, 1969, p. 55; Versailles, no. 41, 4th trimester, 1970, p. 12. 52. Berger, ‘Versailles in verse’, pp. 132–137; idem, ‘The earliest literary descriptions’, pp. 475, 477. 53. Berger, ‘Versailles in verse’, p. 131; idem, ‘The earliest literary descriptions’, p. 476. 54. Berger, ‘Versailles in verse’, pp. 130–131; idem., ‘The earliest literary descriptions’, p. 475. 55. ‘ … une Syrene qui jette l'eau par une grosse coquille qu'elle tient à sa bouche, & que soustient un Triton qui est aupres d'elle’ (Félibien, Description sommaire, p. 51). 56. ‘ … on voit dans la niche du milieu Apollon environné des Nymphes de Thetis, don[t] les unes luy lavent les pieds, les autres les mains & les autres parfument ses cheveux. Dans les autres niches des costez sont des Chevaux avec des Tritons qui les pensent’ (ibid., pp. 52–53). 57. ‘Dans chacun de ses Bassins est une couronne fermée soûtenuë par des Tritons & des Syrenes … ’ (ibid., p. 55). 58. Berger, ‘The earliest literary descriptions’, pp. 475 (waters of the Grand Canal), 477 (fruit and trees of the Orangerie). 59. ‘ … tous semblaient danser et témoigner le plaisir qu'ils ressentaient de se voir visités par un si grand monarque suivi d'une si belle cour’ (André Félibien, Relation de la fête de Versailles du dix-huit juillet mille six cent soixante-huit, ed. Martin Meade [Maisonneuve et Larose: Éditions Dédale, 1994], p. 39 [1st ed. Paris, 1668]. 60. Ibid., p. 38. I am grateful to Thomas F. Hedin for bringing these passages from Félibien's text to my attention. 61. Cf. a design for a Fountain of Bacchus by Thomas Francine (1624; Weber, Brunnen, figure 68) and a fountain design by Antoine Le Pautre (publ. 1652/53; Robert W. Berger, Antoine Le Pautre. A French Architect of the Era of Louis XIV [New York: New York University Press, 1969], figure 74). 62. See Guy de Tervarent, Attributs et symboles dans l'art profane 1450–1600. Dictionnaire d'un langage perdu (Geneva: Droz, 1958), cols. 152–153, s. v. ‘Écrevisse’. 63. See Colbert's letter of 9 May 1670 to the King (Pierre Clément, [ed.], Lettres, instructions, et mémoires de Colbert [Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1861–70], Vol. V: 299, doc. 50): ‘Le défaut de fondeur pourra mesme causer quelque peu de retardement à la Pyramide; mais Vostre Majesté peut estre assurée que tout ce qui sera possible sera fait’. 64. Lydia Beauvais, Charles Le Brun, 1619–1690 (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2000) (Musée du Louvre, Département des arts graphiques. Inventaire général des dessins, École française), Vol. II: 678, nos. 2363, 2362. A studio drawing for Winter (Saturn) also exists (Vol. II: 678, no. 2364). 65. Explication historique, de ce qu'il y a de plus remarquable dans la maison royale de Versailles, et en celle de Monsieur à Saint-Cloud (Paris: B. C. Nego, 1681), p. 82. 66. The attribution to Girardon is also found in Piganiol de La Force, Nouvelle description, p. 171 (1701) and in ‘Remarques historiques sur les figures du parcq de Versailles’, Versailles, Bibliothèque, MS 21M, fols. 55–56 (1699–1702). 67. On 2 November 1680. The approval by Regnaudin and Coysevox is recorded in the privilège du roi, dated 7 November 1680; on 30 October the guidebook was approved by the painters Noël Coypel and Antoine Paillette (Paillet), also active at Versailles. 68. 1666.–75. See Souchal, French Sculptors, Vol. II: 25–28, no. 17. 69. Charles Perrault, Memoirs of My Life, ed. and trans. Jeanne Morgan Zarucchi (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1989), pp. 97–98. The attributions were confirmed by Jacques-François Blondel, who examined Claude's drawings (later destroyed) for these features, and by the manuscript guide by Jourdain (cited in Weber, Brunnen, p. 109, n. 174). 70. Perrault, Memoirs, pp. 97–98. 71. Cf. Weber, Brunnen, p. 110: ‘Auch wenn Perrault den Pyramidenbrunnen nicht für seinen Bruder in Anspruch nimmt, scheint mir die Homogenität, die das Ensemble von Allée d'Eau, Bain de Diane und Fontaine de la Pyramide auszeichnet, doch für eine einzige Entwerfpersönlichkeit zu sprechen.’ Walker (‘The Early Career of François Girardon’, Vol. I: 144) noted how the Pyramid Fountain shares motifs with the Crowns Fountains, the Bath of the Nymphs, and the Allée d'Eau, and wrote (p. 145): ‘Even if we hypothetically accept Girardon's authorship of the design, the close relationship of the fountain to other sculptures should be used as evidence that he was given some kind of instructions. This could have extended to the selection of the pyramid type itself … ’. This is undoubtedly true for all Versailles garden sculpture, and points to the process of decision-making in the artistic hierarchy that I have discussed in In the Garden of the Sun King, Chap. 2 (‘Artistic Consultation and Decision-making at Versailles’). 72. ‘Considerons … ces trois fontaines, celle du milieu se nomme la fontaine de la Pyramide, & celle des costez les fontaines des Couronnes, ce sont des morceaux d'ouvrages qui meriteront long-temps d'estre regardez’ (Parallèle des anciens et des modernes en ce qui regarde les arts et les sciences [Paris: J. B. Coignard, 1688–97], Vol. I: 247). 73. On Claude's activity in the garden, see Michael Petzet, Claude Perrault und die Architektur des Sonnenkönigs. Der Louvre König Ludwigs. XIV. und das Werk Claude Perraults (Munich and Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2000), Chap. IV.2, 3. The Pyramid Fountain is discussed on p. 538; our figure 6 (Petzet, figure 410) is given as ‘von Claude Perrault?’. Petzet follows Weber in his brief discussion. Walker points out (‘The Early Career of François Girardon’, Vol. I: 144) that the eighteenth-century writer Jacques-François Blondel, who had access to mss. and drawings by the Perrault brothers (later destroyed), wrote ‘cette fontaine jaillissante est du dessein de Girardon’. Finally, we should note that Charles Perrault, in a section of his Memoirs of My Life concerned with the garden of Versailles (as in n. 69 above, pp. 97–98), mentioned Girardon twice in two successive paragraphs: as having carved two marble vases designed by Claude Perrault and as having executed and improved upon Claude's drawing for the relief of the Bath of the Nymphs, which he noted is located below the Pyramid Fountain. Yet Charles never claimed any role for Claude in the creation of the latter feature. 74. I therefore retract my attribution of the design to Le Brun, as posited in ‘The earliest literary descriptions’, p. 476. Jean Marot published an architectural fantasy that includes a pyramid fountain set in a sunken courtyard (L'Architecture françoise [Paris: J. Marot, n. d.][Le Grand Marot], ‘Veue en perspective dvne grotte avec ses Jardinages inuenté par J. Marot’; fol. 213 in Jean Mariette's edition of 1727). The lowest level contains atlas-like figures (only one is decipherable) supporting a basin, with inverted dolphins at the next level (it is not clear what is depicted on the third tier and the top one is without a motif). Weber (Brunnen, p. 110) writes that because the print is undated, ‘ … nun wirklich unbestimmt ist, ob es sich dabei um eine Antizipation oder um eine Kopie handelt’, which gives too much importance, I believe, to this small and very sketchy detail. Le Grand Marot was probably published c. 1670. 75. Francastel, La sculpture de Versailles, p. 28. Francastel (p. 28, n. 1) also suggested a comparison with the ignudi of the Carracci's Farnese Gallery, Palazzo Farnese, Rome. Walker (‘The Early Career of François Girardon’, Vol. I: 145) mainly sees the influence of Le Brun. 76. On Cortona's work, see Malcolm Campbell, Pietro da Cortona at the Pitti Palace. A Study of the Planetary Rooms and Related Projects (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), pp. 127–134, 191–199, figures 97, 99–101, 108–115. It is interesting to note that Cortona's tritons are bearded, as in our figure 6. 77. Francastel, Girardon, p. 44. 78. See Berger, In the Garden of the Sun King, Chap. 2 (‘Artistic Consultation and Decision-making at Versailles’). 79. Idem., The Palace of the Sun. The Louvre of Louis XIV (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993), p. 124 (doc. 1, entry for 18 May 1667). 80. An inscription on a contemporary plan ascribes the idea for Les Trois Fontaines to the King, and Charles Perrault claimed that Madame de Montespan conceived of Le Marais. If these ascriptions are correct, they would represent exceptional origins for Versailles garden features. 81. ‘Cette Fontaine sera vostre guide dans la promenade du jardin’ (Explication historique, p. 83). 82. ‘Une des grandes beautez de cette allée, est qu'estant au bas proche la Fontaine du Dragon; & regardant en haut, l'on voit tous ces groupes d'Enfans former une agreable perspective, dont le point de veuë se termine dans cette grande cheute d'eau qui est au bout, & qui a encore au dessus d'elle la Fontaine de la Pyramide, dont l'eau fait des effets admirables. Et de mesme quand on est au pied de la Pyramide, l'on considere avec plaisir la Fontaine du Dragon qui termine l'autre extremité de cette mesme allée’ (Félibien, Description sommaire, pp. 64–65).