Patrick Bade
The Grand Century: From Henry of Navarre to Louis XIV
Patrick Bade - The Grand Century: From Henry of Navarre to Louis XIV
- I’m talking about the 17th century today. But of course, centuries don’t always begin and end promptly when they’re supposed to, so it’s a rather extended century that I’m talking about. I’m starting in 1589 and I’m continuing to 1715. And that very long period actually just encompasses three reigns. Henri IV, that’s Henry IV, Louis XIII, and Louis XIV. And of course, Louis XIV was the longest reigning monarch of any European country in history, longer indeed than there was a longer reign than that of our dear departed Queen Elizabeth II, because he came to the throne at the age of four and he lived to what was then the very ripe old age of 77. I’m bookending my century with two of the most beautiful urban spaces in Paris. The Place des Vosges, which you see on the left hand side and the Place Vendome on the right hand side. Place des Vosges built under the reign of Henri IV between 1605 and 1612. And the Place Vendome built in the last years of the reign of Louis the 14th between 1698 and 1715. But the, it, of course, it’s a century, which is the century of Louis the 14th. And that was a title of a book written by Voltaire in the 18th century. And you’d think that Voltaire was really stood for everything that was in opposition to Louis XIV with his authoritarianism and his orthodoxy.
But Voltaire, like everybody was fascinated by Louis XIV. And you can see the very first paragraph of his book. It says, Louis XIV in his court and throughout his reign, made such brilliance and splendour that the least details of his life seemed to interest posterity. And were the object of curiosity in all the other courts of Europe into all his contemporaries. But we’re starting with Henri IV, who, he’s my favourite French king. I find him much more sympathetic than his two successors. He’s known as the king of the chicken in the pot because he said that was his ambition as king, was that every French family should have a chicken in the pot. And I think that’s a very honourable ambition to have. His other very famous saying is, of course Paris was, is worth a mass. I would agree with that too. He was born a Protestant. He was caught up in the terrible, destructive wars of religion in the mid to late 16th century. And in order to consolidate his monarchy, he converted from Catholicism to different Protestantism to Catholicism, hence, Paris is worth a mass. And like every monarch, like every president in recent years, of course, he wanted to leave his mark on Paris, and he certainly did so. The image on the left shows you the which is on the in the middle of the River Seine and you can see the bridge in front of it. That’s the Pont Neuf.
So, these were monuments built under his reign. Many of the original buildings of the Place Dauphine have been replaced. But you can see the two pavilions that are on the very tip of the island, they are still there. Pretty much a feature of course of any picture postcard view of Paris. Here is the Pont Neuf. This was the first stone bridge that crossed the entire length of the river. It’s the oldest surviving bridge in Paris. And it was very innovatory because it had, unlike early bridges, it had no buildings on it. And it was built to be friendly towards pedestrians. They were actually sidewalks, so that the pedestrian didn’t get run down by carts and carriages. Another important monument that he built was the Grand Galilee in the Louvre. The only the exterior really dates from his time inside. You can see what it looks like now. You can see absolutely enormous length. It’s 460 metres. And it’s where the great paintings of the Italian Renaissance hang in the Louvre today. But I think he’s best commemorated by the what’s today called Place des Vosges. It was called Palais Royal in his time in the Very beautiful square, wonderful space, lovely to walk through, lovely to sit in with arcaded buildings. It was apparently inspired by the Piazza in Livorno in Tuscany.
And in turn it inspired the Piazza in Covent Garden, which became the prototype for all the later 18th century squares in London. These are paintings from the Marie de’ Medici cycle commissioned by his widow Marie de’ Medici. They were married by proxy in Florence in 1600. And by a strange coincidence, Rubens who painted these pictures more than 20 years later was actually present at the proxy marriage between the King of France and Marie de’ Medici. It was a business deal. The king of, Henri IV owed enormous sums of money to the Medici Bank. And they were written off when he married Marie de’ Medici. Rubens has to deal with all this rather tactfully. Henri IV was most definitely not smitten with Marie de’ Medici. But on the left you can see it looks a bit like the magic flute of Mozart. You can see him this Minerva with her hand on his shoulder and Mercury, who’s holding up a portrait of Marie de’ Medici who of course at the time of the marriage, Henri IV had never met. And he seems to be falling in love with her portrait. And then in the, they did meet, God knows what that was like. It must been an excruciating moment. So Rubens transforms them into gods. We have Henri IV and Marie de’ Medici bare breasted, very sexy. She wasn’t very sexy in real life, sitting on a cloud. They’ve become Jupiter and Juno. 1610, Henri IV is assassinated.
And that’s what we see here on the left hand side of this picture he’s being taken up to the heavens. And on the right we see all the citizens of France pleading with Marie de’ Medici to save them. And she becomes regent of for seven years, from 1610 to 1617 ‘cause her son Louis XIII is just a small child. And so this picture, again in the Marie de’ Medici cycle, and it’s called the, “Good Governance of Marie de’ Medici.” Well, she was probably about as successful as a ruler of France, as Liz Truss was recently as Prime Minister of England. She was a byword for incompetence, corruption. In fact, her reign as regent was a complete disaster. And as Louis the 13th reached adolescence, he was forced to exile his mother. This is also from the Marie de’ Medici cycle. I’ve always, I think this is a hilariously funny picture. It’s so Rubens, isn’t it? His idea of France being a boat that’s being rode by these bare breasted busty ladies, very enthusiastically. And in according to this image, Marie de’ Medici is graciously handing over the helm of the ship to her son. While it was anything but that, of course, he had to really grab the steering wheel from her. And she resisted furiously. Well, here is Louis XIII. He’s a bit of a colourless character, a bit of a wimp really, between much more colourful personalities of Henri IV and his son Louis XIV. He was not a strong personality, he was not a strong ruler, so he ruled through favourites.
And this was in the early, once he got rid of his mother, pushed his mother out the way, the first favourite who really effectively ruled France was Duke de Luynes who may also have been Louis’ lover. We don’t know for sure, but it is, there’s quite a lot of speculation about Louis XIII’s sexuality. They wouldn’t have had a concept at the, the concept of gay or homosexual didn’t really exist in the 17th century. They just didn’t think about it in the same way. But it is noticeable that I talked last time about the job of the official mistress. Well, I think Louis XIII is the only French king who never had an official mistress and is not known to have had relations with any women apart from his wife, Anne of Austria. And of course there was rather a lot of speculation about the fact that they didn’t have any children until their first son who was Louis XIV was born 23 years, so the 23 childless years of Louis the 13th. The Duke de Luynes died of scarlet fever in 1621. And a couple of years later, Cardinal Richelieu takes over. He’s certainly a very big personality. And he lays the foundations politically and culturally for the reign of Louis XIV later in the century. He tries to suppress the power and the rebelliousness of the nobility.
He tries to unify France. He tries to also to subjugate the Protestants of course of very important detail I missed out, but I’m sure you’ve heard in other lectures from William and Trudy is that Henri IV, one of the ways he managed to end the wars of religion was through the Edict of Nantes which guaranteed freedom of worship and certain political rights to the Huguenots, the French Protestants. But Huguenots has continued to be a thorn in the flesh for the Catholic establishment and Richelieu took measures to keep them under control. He set up the Academie Francaise, so that the centralization and control of French culture from above, which is such a feature of Louis XIV. This was beginning already under Cardinal Richelieu. In popular culture of course, he’s best known through the novels of Alexandre Dumas, “The Three Musketeers”. This is the 19th century illustration, of course, of a 19th century novel. So, you are most likely probably when you were children to have come across Cardinal Richelieu as a rather sinister character in movie versions of the Three Musketeers.
Here he is as a 19th century painting again, supervising the Siege of La Rochelle where he subjugated a Protestant revolt in the port of La Rochelle. So it’s under his reign that the two greatest artists, French artists, the 17th century really get going. Poussin on the left hand side and Claude Lorrain on the right hand side. I’m not going to talk very much about them tonight, partly because they weren’t in France, they were, they spent their entire careers in Italy. And partly ‘cause I gave a lecture devoted to them not that long ago, but just going to show you one work each of them 'cause Poussin, they both belonged to the Baroque period. But Poussin is a more disciplined, more classical, rigorous version of the Baroque style compared with say, Rubens or Bernini. These rather sculptural figures displayed out in a shallow space freeze like space. And so this is an orgy, but it’s a rather disciplined orgy, a sort of rather idealised orgy. And of course, Claude Poussin was immensely influential on subsequent history of landscape painting, particularly in England. He develops this ideal landscape, classical landscape based on the landscape in Central Italy around Rome, between Rome and Naples. These wonderful distant views where everything slightly loses focus and you get this exquisite, misty, distant landscapes. And they’re not usually pure landscapes, of course they’re landscapes with a narrative element, either biblical or more often based on classical mythology. In this, I love this picture. It’s in the National Gallery. It shows Narcissus.
I hope you can see it 'cause it’s a little bit cut off at the bottom of my image on my screen. But you can see Narcissus, he’s gazing at himself rapturously in the pool. He’s completely ignoring this drop dead gorgeous nymph who seems to be offering her charms on the left hand because he’s so in love with himself. So, Richelieu dies in 1642. And he is succeeded by his protege, an Italian cardinal, Mazarin. And again, I’m quite sure that William and Trudy, they’re covering the political side of all of this. So I’m concentrating really on the cultural aspects of the 17th century. So he lasts for nearly 20 years, 19 years. He’s another very powerful figure. He also has to contend with rebellious aristocratic factions in the two wars known as the Fronde of which he comes out triumphantly and continues the work of Richelieu in reinforcing the power of the monarchy in France. He’s a great, he’s a very cultured man. He introduces opera as a new art form to France. He was a very great collector. In this image, you can see all these classical sculptures that he collected in the background. He has seven beautiful nieces who are collectively known as Le Mazarinettes, the little Mazarins. And they are, top left, Olympia Mancini, she was briefly a love interest for Louis XIV that fell out through being involved in various intrigues, fell out with him. She was the mother of Prince Eugene of Savoy, who Louis XIV foolishly because he’d fallen out with the mother, he refused to employ Eugene of Savoy in his army.
And Eugene of Savoy was probably the greatest military genius in European history. I dunno, maybe since the Middle Ages until Napoleon and of course went over to the other side. He worked at the Habsburgs and with, and that had very disastrous effects for Louis XIV in France. Then in the middle of the top row, it is Laura Martinozzi. Then top right is Hortense, who became the mistress of Charles II. And along the bottom there’s Laura Mancini, Laura Martinozzi. Marie Mancini, she’s bottom row second from the right who Louis XIV, she was perhaps Louis XIV’s first great love. And he even wanted to marry her. But that was against the political plans of Mazarin, the Mazarin would not allow it. And bottom right is Anne Marie, Marie Anne Mancini. So this Mazarin, like all these rulers, wanted to leave his mark on Paris, and he certainly did so. This is the Palais Mazarin. And large parts of that building still exists. It later became the Bibliotheque Mazarine, It’s been closed for a few years and is about to reopen after a major refurbishment. Very curious to know what it will look like inside. I don’t think it retains very much of its 17th century interiors. I think it was very much changed in the 19th century. As I said, he was a very great art collector. And some of the greatest treasures in the Louvre came from his collection, which he then donated to the royal collection, including this picture, which is a portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, author of the very influential book, “Courtier” by this by Raphael. And it had come up for sale in Amsterdam at 1639. And Rembrandt saw it at the sale. And he noted the enormous price at 3,500 guilders.
That was a huge price in the 17th century. And from there, from Amsterdam, it went to England and it became part of Charles I’s collection, which was dispersed after his execution by Cromwell. And so that’s the reason it’s now in the Louvre and not in the National Gallery in London. Architecture. This is a building that is begun under Mazarin. Of course Mazarin is Italian, so there were important Italian influences. And this is the first great domed Baroque church in Paris. It’s the Val de Grace. On the left bank and that was built to celebrate what was considered the miraculous birth of Louis XIV in 1638. But the most beautiful building associated with Mazarin, for me, the most beautiful Baroque building in Paris, I think it’s a, I always pause to look at it and greatly admire it. It’s called the Bibliotheque Mazarine. It houses the as Institut de France. It’s on the banks of the Seine. It’s such a lovely and such a harmonious building. It’s by Louis Le Vau. For me, it’s his masterpiece. At is most important building in Paris. It’s got a very theatrical quality to it. It has the look or a little bit of a stage set. Here is an 18th century print of it. When you see this, you can see it it is very theatrical.
The part of the building that fronts the Seine is completely disconnected actually from the main part of the building behind it. And the other very great Baroque domed building is of course the Invalides, this dates from later. This is from the reign of Louis XIV. And the plans for this had a very, were seen by Christopher Wren. Christopher Wren came to Paris in 1665, he met Bernini. And the most famous dome in London of course is the dome at St Paul’s Cathedral, which was being constructed at the same time as the Invalides And I think was very influenced by the Mansart’s design for the dome of the Invalides. Now we get to Louis himself. And after the death of Mazarin, Mazarin was really a mentor to Louis and took great care of his education. But after Mazarin died, people just assumed that it would be business as usual and there would be another favourite, royal favourite who do the nitty gritty of ruling France. But Louis XIV had other ideas, very powerful dominating personality. And still in his early 20s, he’s 23, he takes over and he rules France very personally up until his death in 1715. And he identifies himself with Apollo, the god of the arts, so arts are very, very important to him. Mainly because it’s a way of glorifying himself. It’s all about him. Of course, one of his is probably his most famous saying is, the state is me. We’ve had a bit too much of that recently, I think from leaders on both sides of the Atlantic, so it’s not something I think that is enormously sympathetic to, at least to liberal thought these days. So this is a painting of Louis and his family where they’ve all become gods. And here are the women in his life. He certainly appreciated female beauty. And just to run through them again. It’s Marie Mancini, top left to who was his first great passion.
And he would’ve actually been willing to marry her, but Mazarin realised this would’ve been a political, a great political mistake, so even though she was his niece, he impeded that marriage. Then the first was Louis’ in the middle, the top there. But she was always uncomfortable with that role of role mistress. And she eventually retired to a convent. Then there was the wicked Madame de Montespan. I know Trudy is a little bit doubtful about some of the more lurid stories about Madame de Montespan, you know, sacrificing babies in order to preserve her beauty, poisoning people. And who knows really could have been her enemies who made up those stories. In the middle at the bottom is the Maria Theresa, the daughter of the King of Spain ‘cause this was a diagnostic marriage. Mazarin arranged this, he wanted to bring to end the wars, the long, long running wars between France and Spain, so it was a political triumph. And bottom right, Louis final morganatic wife, Madame de Montespan. Louis wanted to completely dominate every, every aspect of French life. It was all about him and everything had to be supporting him, so he dominated the arts, the sciences, industry such as it was in the 17th century. Everything really was about him. And these images really are reinforcing that idea that he is France and it’s all about him.
There, of course, very negative sides to Louis XIV’s reign, however glorious it may have seemed at the time and even afterwards, he was more or less constantly at war. There were these wars of aggression. He was always picking a fight either with Spain and of course he was fighting Spain on both sides because Spain ruled the Southern Netherlands, what is now Belgian. So he was always an, he was always picking a fight, so that he could do a really, and nibble off a bit of a neighbouring country. So this, on the right hand side, you can see his various wars between 1667, 1697. And then there was a last rather disastrous war. I suppose you could really draw sort of some parallels with the Ukraine 'cause he really bit off more than he could chew in the War of the Spanish Succession in between 1701 and 1713. But I think that one of the most negative aspects of Louis XIV’s reign was his revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He just couldn’t bear the thought that there could be anybody in France who didn’t follow his, it was not really about religion, it wasn’t really about God, it was about him. He wanted everybody in France to think the same way that he did. And he couldn’t bear that there were Protestants still in France, so in 1685, he revoked the Edict of Nantes provoking a massive exodus of Protestants from France. And here you can see an interesting precedent, I think for the policies of Hitler in the 1930s at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes to the flight of the Protestants impoverished France.
And it enormously enriched neighbouring countries. England owes so much of course to the influx of, I mean, it’s a wonderful example of how immigration, how accepting political refugees. People need to think a bit more about that. Enormously enriched England. It enormously enriched the Dutch and the Prussians. So this whole debate about immigration and trying to keep refugees out, it seems to be disastrously mistaken to me. So the most important artist to work for Louis was the Italian sculptor, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the greatest Italian Baroque artist. Louis demanded 'cause he was so famous. He was famous around Europe. And Louis wanted his service and he put enormous pressure on the Pope to send Bernini to Paris. Bernini already quite aged, that came to Paris in 1665. And he stayed there for several months from April to October, 1665. This is the only work that he completed while he was in Paris. And it’s a truly marvellous bust of Louis XIV. You’d think he would’ve been pleased with it. What a piece of, I mean, Bernini is of course the ultimate virtuoso in the cutting of stone. Look at this amazing depiction of the wig, you know, with these flowing locks and the lace cravat and the billowing drapery at the bottom of the bust, which full of movement, full of energy, full, those wonderful German word This has doesn’t it? It’s amazing to think that this is a hard material that has to be hard stone marble that has to be cut. Here’s another detail of that. I
t just seems to be alive. But Bernini’s stay in Paris was really not a success. Louis XIV actually was resistant to this kind of Italian Baroque. Bernini was commissioned to make a great equestrian statue of Louis XIV. Going back to the ancient Romans, equestrian statues were always a symbol of power on authority. And in fact, the statute, this is a so this is in terracotta. For the final marble statue, this is the marble statue that was actually sent, well, 20 years later it was at, didn’t arrive in France until well after Bernini’s death. And Louis XIV hated it, initially he wanted it destroyed. But that he’s persuaded not to destroy it, instead, various alterations were made to it, so that it was no longer a statue of Louis XIV. And it was a statue of an ancient hero, Marcus Curtius. And it’s now standing in the grounds of Versailles. But the biggest disaster of Bernini’s trip to Paris was the project for a new wing to the Louvre, the east wing of the Louvre. And he made various designs. And I just, how great this would’ve been. I mean, I deeply, deeply regret that none of Bernini’s designs for the East Wing were, I mean, this would’ve been such a spectacular addition to Central Paris. Talk about theatrical.
This is the ultimate in theatricality, it really does look like a stage set. Here’s a of one of the designs. I think they were probably too exuberant, too flamboyant for French taste. But in fact, while he was there, the plans were initially accepted and foundation stones were laid for his plan. But after he left, the plans were dropped. The documentation, I mean, it’s usually been assumed that this just was not Louis XIV’s taste. He wanted something more correct, more dignified in a way, not quite so Italian and exuberant and operatic. But in fact, all the documentation about the change of plan indicates that there were practical reasons that the plans were dropped, security reasons, because there were windows that were open onto that, were onto the street and so on. So again, this is the East Wing as built by Claude Perrault brother of the Perrault who wrote Claude, “Perrault’s Fairy Tales.” I think it’s a rather, it’s a dignified building, but it’s boring. It’s almost as boring as Buckingham Palace, I would say. And for comparison, we have one of Bernini’s designs. Oh, here is the Claude Perrault. Now, as I said, when Mazarin died, initially, the guy who looked set to take over from him and rule France for Louis XIV, was this man, Nicolas Fouquet. But he was very ambitious and he really overreached himself. All these people, of course, enriched themselves shamelessly. And that was expected that they would do that.
But maybe he just went a bit too far. And between 1558 and 1661, he built this castle, Vaux-le-Vicomte, one of the Greek masterpieces of French architecture. And he brought together the team of the architect, Le Vau, the painter and decorator, Le Brun and the garden designer, Le Notre. And they created what the Germans will call a It’s a total work of art. It’s a fusion of architecture, strictly designed and controlled nature and interior design. And it is, I think in its way, fabulously beautiful castle, easily visible from Paris and very well preserved. And you can see here, interiors of Le Brun. Now rather rationally when it was completed, Fouquet had a great celebration and he invited the king. And I think the king looked around and he thought, “Hmm, who is paying for all of this?” And so very shortly afterwards, Fouquet was arrested and spent the rest of his life in prison. And Louis XIV took over the team of Le Vau, Le Brun, and Le Notre for the creation of his great Palace of Versailles. This was a vast operation involving tens of thousands of workers, involving recreation of the landscape, enormous engineering elements involved with canals and fountains and so on. It was absolutely a vast project. The Versailles had previous, this is what it looked like before Louis’s transformation.
It was a modest size hunting lodge that had been created for his father, Louis XIII. Strangely Louis decided to incorporate his father’s modest palace into his vast new structure. So this is on the city side of Versailles, you can still see these pavilions look which derive, which are just incorporated from the original much more modest Palace of Versailles. And this is what it became, a city. It’s really a city in itself. In fact, I’m going there on Sunday, I’m going with some of my Prussian friends. We’re going to an opera in the 18th century opera house in this, I’m looking forward to that very much. This is the famous garden front. And I have to say, I think it misfired. But the trouble was that Louis, the palace was built in several stages. He kept on changing his ideas. He kept on wanting it to be bigger, needing more and more space. And in the end, I think it’s not a harmonious and not a well proportion building. It’s too long. It looks more like a military barracks than it does like a palace. This was Le Vau’s original design for the garden front, which I think would’ve been much more beautiful. But as I said, after he died, it was changed. Oh, this is, I mean, it must have been a, in some ways an absolute hell hole in Louis XIV’s time. It must have stunk for one thing was no hygiene.
I mean, Louis XIV, of course, I’m sure Trudy has told you he’s only known to have taken one bath in his entire life. So of course there were no bathrooms, there were no toilets. You had armies of people living in this mass building with nowhere for them to relieve themselves. So, they’d find it, they’d do it on stairwells and stair, cubby holes and so on. It must have been absolutely, I think you’d be very shocked if you went back to it. It was not a comfortable building to live in. And here is the queen’s bedroom. The whole way of life sounds like a complete nightmare. This is the state bedroom of the queen and the state bedroom of the king. And you in the morning, you had the levee when he got up, and it was all very ritualised. Can you imagine the horror, if you woke up in the morning, you found yourself surrounded by dozens, if not hundreds of people all jostling for your attention and watching you. Well, I won’t say he was performing his ablutions 'cause he didn’t perform ablution. But watching you putting on your left stocking and your right stocking, getting dressed, it sounds like a complete nightmare to me. This is the chapel. And on the face of it, Louis XIV was very orthodox in his Catholicism, though he often, he fought with the papacy for control over the Catholic church in France.
And of course he was living a life that was hardly an orthodox Christian life, flaunting his mistresses. So he and the court move into Versailles in 1682. So Versailles becomes effectively the capital of the country and the political and cultural capital of Europe. This is a tapestry that shows Louis XIV receiving foreign ambassadors. You can see he wore very high heeled shoes. And of course, in any image of Louis XIV surrounded by people, his head has to be higher than anybody else’s, even though he was actually rather a short man. You see him again on the left hand side. This is a very famous tapestry 'cause the royal manufacturer, Manufacture des Gobelins, they were made not just tapestries, but was in charge of furnishing this vast palace. So this shows Louis XIV, who took a very direct interest in all of this, going to visit the Gobelins factory and seeing all the things that have been made for him. And this tapestry is particularly famous because it shows the solid silver furniture with which for a relatively short time the palace was furnished. It all had to be melted down in Louis’ last disastrous war, the War of the Spanish Succession. This is a reconstruction of what the silver furniture, some of the silver furniture he is thought to share looked, would’ve looked like.
None survives in France. But there are examples in other countries. I think this one belongs the, I was going to say the queen, I mean the king now, it’s at Windsor. This is silver furniture at Noel House. There is also important silver furniture in the Royal collection in Sweden. But it’s the beginning of the golden age of French furniture. This is a cabinet by Pierre Gole who, and you can, it’s a cabinet on the stand. And so it’s in this period, we start to have the furniture with incredibly high quality veneers, floral marquetry. You may or may not like it, it’s not particularly my taste, but the terms of quality of craftsmanship, that this is furniture. From now on, I’ll be talking about 18th century furniture, my own Wednesday. This is a peak in the history of furniture. So this floral marquetry in this piece by Pierre Gole, which would’ve actually been much more brightly coloured, much more gaudy really when it was first made because light fades the colours and polishing over the centuries diminishes the contrast between light and dark. This is the Wallace Collection in London. So much great French furniture left France at the time of the revolution. So in fact, there’s probably more 17th and 18th century French furniture to be found in British and American collections than there is in France today. But this is certainly a piece that was made for Louis XIV by Charles Andre Boulle.
He’s probably the most famous ebonist or furniture maker. And there are lots of clues here that this is a royal piece. It’s got fleur-de-lis all over it, which is a royal symbol. And also you have the, oh, this is for comparison. It’s a French renaissance piece, which is has, as you can see, it’s got marble inlay on it, but it doesn’t have the skin of marquetry. Or in this case it’s ebony. And a technique which we call Boulle after the Boulle family because they developed it. But they didn’t create it, it’s actually a technique I think that was first created in the Netherlands. Boulle, you have panels of tortoise shell, brass and pewter. And you can see here are details from that armoire, which with stories, illustrated stories of the life of Apollo, so Apollo and Daphne on the left, and Apollo and Marsyas on the right. As I said, Louis XIV was the Sun King. He was always identified with the god Apollo. So the Baroque of Louis the XIII compared to Italian Baroque is relatively sober and sedate and it tends to be symmetric, maybe a bit heavy. But at the very end of his reign in the first decade of the 18th century, we find a style which is lighter. This use of grotesque, I talked about grotesque last time, it’s a type of decoration first discovered in the Golden House of Europe, that an open, airy lighter. And we feel this is designed by Jean Berain. And we feel here that we’re moving away from the heaviness of the Baroque and towards the lighter, more playful style of Rococo, which was to follow in the reign of Louis XIV. Now from in Louis’s lifetime, his court became a major centre of the performing arts. He was very, very interested in performing arts, in opera, in theatre and above all in ballet. ‘Cause apparently he was a very good dancer and he liked to dance.
This is the design for a ballet given in year 1653, so he’s just an adolescent actually. And in which Louis himself danced one of the main roles. And it was actually while dancing in this ballet that his eye was caught by this man, this is Lully, who’s the most important composer of the age or Louis XIV. He was born in Florence, he’s Italian, born in 1632. And when he was 14 years old, he caught the eye of a French aristocrat Duke de Guise, who took him to France and he became a page boy to the grand mademoiselle, the cousin of Louis XIV. And he soon displayed great musical gifts, gifts as a dancer, gifts as a musical instrumentalist, and then of course as a composer. And he’s usually, although ballet opera had been introduced to France under Mazarin with Italian composers, Lully develops a kind of opera, which is more characteristically French with French texts and with a vocal line, which is designed to display the French text, so he’s generally regarded as the father of French opera. This shows that the marriage of Louis XIV and Maria Theresa, which took place on the border of France and Spain in 1660 and built great musical celebrations involved. And Lully was known to be part of the retinue for that occasion.
Here, this is a costume designed for Louis XIV to dance in a ballet. And I’m going to play you a little excerpt of ballet composed by Lully to celebrate this marriage between Spanish princess and the King of France. And it’s a ballet again, in which we know Louis himself participated as a dancer. This is Marin Marais, who was also a court composer for Louis XIV, and who was a virtuous player on the viol and wrote a lot of music for the viol. He was a composer who was really forgotten after his lifetime. There’s been a big revival of interest in his music, a lot of it down to a movie that came out in 1991 called, “Tous les matins du monde,” which is very, very popular. But I’m going to play just one more excerpt and this is by a composer called Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre. And it’s nice to finish with her 'cause you may have thought I’m a bit negative about Louis XIV and I must say he’s not really one of my favourite historical characters, but this story shows him in a more sympathetic light. She came from a family of musicians and musical instrument makers.
Of course that was the only way really a woman could get the necessary training in the arts, whether she was a painter or musician, was to come from a family of painters or musicians. A woman couldn’t go out and become an apprentice in an artist studio, so she got the training from her father and from her family. And she performed before Louis XIV when she was just five years old. And he was incredibly impressed by her. And he supported her and he entrusted her education to Madame de Montespan. You might think, “Ooh, given her reputation, was that such a good idea.” But it seemed to work out well. And she spent most of her career in the service of Louis XIV. She was the first French woman to compose an opera. She’s a very prolific composer. And of course it’s been a very big revival of interest in women composers altogether in the last few years. And she has benefit from that, benefited from that, so I’m going to end this talk with an excerpt from a suite by Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre. So, let’s see what you have to say.
Q&A and Comments:
This is Linda saying she’s got a gorgeous two-volume bio of Cellini, Benvenuto Cellini. In 1753. Really? I don’t know about that at all.
Q: Where do I get my pictures?
A: Well, a lot of them I just search on the internet to find. In the past I used to take them out of books, but these days it’s easier to get them on the internet.
Q: Is Richelieu wearing a Maltese Cross?
A: I think he probably is. I think you’re probably right about that. I’ll have a look at that later. Catherine.
Q: Was that a Rembrandt sketch of the Raphael portrait?
A: Yes, it was. As I said, Rembrandt actually was present at the sale and made that sketch at the time.
This is Margaret recently been recently reading about Louis XIV’s levee and the rituals, everything is about, everything for him was about, in a way he was, you can say he was the Donald Trump of his time. It was all about him.
Q: Why are the women mostly painted looking very anaemic?
A: It’s well, having a white skin to be was, women didn’t, if you were a respectable woman or a privileged woman, you weren’t going to go out and get a suntan. And that was true right up the early 20th century. White skin was very highly valued.
Q: Can the Louvre still use the Bernini plans?
A: I suppose yeah, they won’t though. They won’t. I mean there’s no way that the French would demolish the, but maybe somewhere else somebody could use a Bernini plans to build a Baroque palace. I think that would be a wonderful thing, but of course it would be fantastically expensive.
Bernini bast Louis XIV his Versailles bedroom. Yes, it’s in that image that I showed you of course. He used, I think he, I’m sure he, I dunno if he washed with cologne, but people covered up the smells with cologne. He had a, apparently he used to like to work up a sweat. And then of course the shirt, he replaced his shirts and his clothing very often. But he still stank. Madame de Montespan once in a bit anger told him that.
Q: What were the source of the king’s wealth to build and?
A: Well, the people of France. And of course it wasn’t, mostly it was not the Catholic church or the aristocrats who were paying the taxes. It was the ordinary people.
The last piece sounds a bit like Pachelbel. Yes, I can see what you mean.
Q: Where could a woman musician have studied composition?
A: Only as I said really with her family. Oh yes, I didn’t tell you the story of the death of Lully because it’s such a great story. Thank you for reminding me. It’s a very macabre death. Lully was a very irascible character and he fell out with lots of people, including Moliere of course, who was his first important collaborator. And one day while conducting a rehearsal, he had this stick that used to stamp on the floor with, and he hit himself onto the foot with the stick so furiously that he really did serious damage to himself. And the wound turned gangrenous. And the gangrene was creeping up his leg. And the doctor said, you know, we’ve got to take off your leg if you want to live. But he didn’t want to lose his leg 'cause he liked dancing. He didn’t want to, that was more important to him, so he refused to have his leg cut off. And he, the gangrene went right up his body and eventually affected his brain and killed him.
There’s a lovely story to finish with.
Right. Thank you so much. Thank you, Lorna. That’s all for tonight. And I’m on to the 18th century new Herrscher regime on Wednesday evening.
Thank you, everybody. Bye-Bye.