Metropolitan Museum Tour: Art and Culture of Pre-Revolutionary France 

Directions for self-directed tours:

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is located at 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street. To get to the Museum from Cooper Union, take the no. 6 subway (local) to 77th Street and walk north and west to Fifth Avenue; or, take either the no. 4 or no. 5 subway (express) to 86th Street and walk south and west to Fifth Avenue.

Enter the main entrance of the museum (you will be required to pay some admission fee--whatever you can afford) and walk straight ahead to the main stairway. Walk in the corridor to the left of the main stairway and through the first room you come to until you reach the medieval choir screen. Turn left just before you reach the choir screen and pass through a doorway with "European Sculpture and Decorative Arts" above it; continue through the room this doorway leads to and out the opposite doorway, which will have above it "The Renaissance in France 1480-1600." On your left just after you exit this doorway you should see (1) the bas-relief portrait of Louis XIV on the wall on the left side of the entrance into (2) the state bedroom of Louis XIV (the numbers refer to the items on the tour described in the numbered paragraphs below). After you view this room, retrace your path back into the room containing objects from "The Renaissance in France 1480-1600" but make a left out of this room down a hallway (on your right will be a wooden shop-front from old Paris) until you reach a room decorated with gilded rococo woodwork. To your left after you enter this room will be (3) the portrait of Louis XV as a child with (4) the bust of Louis XV just opposite that portrait. Next, walk past the portrait and turn right into (5) the Varengeville room. If you look to your left while you are standing in this room you will see the blue-gray panelling of (6) the Paar room, which you should enter next. Once you exit the Paar room you will turn right into (7) the Cabris room. Turn right as you exit this room and walk down a short hallway to (8) the Tessé room. Then, retrace your steps until you come to the central room out of which radiate the entrances to the Varengeville, Paar, and Cabris rooms and observe on the wall opposite the Varengeville room (9) the bas-relief portrait of Louis XVI; also in this central room you will see (10) the neoclassical paintings by Robert. You should then walk past the portrait of Louis XV (item 3 on the tour), turn right, and enter the first room on your right, (11) the Bordeaux room opposite the Paris shop-front you passed by earlier. Finally, exit the Bordeaux room and go out of the period rooms the way you came in, then walk past the choir screen through rooms exhibiting medieval objects until you reach the American Wing. Go through the heavy glass doors and walk to the right of the central atrium and out the glass doors opposite the ones you entered. Walk past the collection of early American clocks and furniture, turn left (the restrooms should be on your right after you make the turn), down a few steps, turn right, and then left to (12) the Vanderlyn panorama of Versailles.

Introduction:

The 150-year period in France from the accession of Louis XIV in 1643 to the guillotining of Louis XVI in 1793 is remarkable for several reasons: political organization shifted from absolutist to republican, the authority of religion diminished, capitalist economies developed and declined. The history of art over this period reflects all of these developments in one way or another. The artistic styles that accompany the reigns of Louis XIV, XV, and XVI--respectively, baroque, rococo, and neoclassical--need to be understood in terms of the larger historical currents they express.

The baroque style (so-called originally because of its "rocky" or "irregular" quality) is generally understood to have developed in Rome as a Jesuit invention to counteract the attractions of the Protestant Reformation. Baroque art was an aesthetic strategy of the Counter-Reformation used to woo the masses back to the Catholic Church; as such, it represents the triumph of theatricality over theology. This style--at once grand and dynamic, serious and sensuous--was modified and muted by Louis XIV to accord authority to his absolutist regime.

The rococo style is also known as "the style of Louis Quinze" (i.e., Louis XV), but in truth the style is not so much the expression of absolutism as of private wealth (this is true even today, for the style is still used by the likes of Leona Helmsley and Donald Trump). Rococo style is lively, frivolous, ornate--it is sometimes called "feminine," in part because the highly decorative style was so thoroughly exploited by Madame de Pompadour, the celebrated mistress of Louis XV. In many ways rococo art can be understood as a scaled-down version of the baroque. Because the nobles were no longer obligated to remain at Versailles, they moved from the palace to Paris to live in hôtels (town mansions). The grandeur of the baroque style was simply inappropriate to the decoration of the smaller spaces of the city. The rococo style also expresses sensuality and even hedonism (as some of Boucher's paintings show), a feature that serves as a political marker of the French aristocracy's reputation for decadence and corruption.

The restrained neoclassical style developed partly as a reaction to the excesses of the rococo. The term neoclassical, however, is slightly misleading, since baroque and even rococo art are classicistic in various ways. The baroque style in general was an extension of Renaissance classicism; the French baroque was especially classicistic because of the influence of the painter Poussin (who was inspired by the Italian Renaissance classicism of Raphael). In a sense, the prefix neo- is the most significant element in the term neoclassical since it connotes "revival"; thus the neoclassical style can be understood as an expression of dissatisfaction with contemporary life: it implies the desire to return to an earlier, simpler time, removed from the corruption of the present. The sense of nostalgia implicit in neoclassical art forms, paradoxically, a link with Romanticism (a style and sensibility that developed in full after the French Revolution).

Tour:

1. Bas-relief portrait of Louis XIV (late 17th century). Louis XIV was the incarnation of absolute monarchy, the "sun" about whom everything else revolved. His enormous patronage of art was part of a systematic campaign to elevate the monarchy to spectacular heights of material splendor. For such a project he required a "producer" and a "set designer" (the theatrical terms are really quite appropriate): the "producer" was the Finance Minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1618-93); the "set designer" was Charles Le Brun (1619-90). When Colbert became Chief Minister upon the death of his predecessor Cardinal Mazarin in 1661, he set about to reform the financial structure of France, especially the existing system of "tax-farming" whereby nobles were allowed to purchase from the King the right to collect taxes. Colbert forced these fermiers-généraux ("tax-farmers") to return to the King much of the huge profits they had realized through extortion of the taxpayer (note that this "reform" benefited the King, not the taxpayer). Two years after assuming full responsibility for the King's finances Colbert established the Manufacture royale des meubles (Royal Factory of "Movables"--meubles refers to all the movable furnishings of a house). The royal manufactory was actually a kind of conglomerate of existing entities (such as the Gobelins tapestry-works) and newly-founded enterprises. The vast operation of architects, sculptors, painters, weavers, cabinetmakers, landscapists, etc., was overseen by Le Brun. In 1648 Le Brun had helped to found the Academy of Painting and Sculpture to separate those arts from the influence of the Guilds, a division carried over into the present day in the distinction between "fine arts" and "decorative arts." Since Le Brun was still director of the French Academy in 1663, his involvement with Colbert meant that, with the creation of the Manufacture royale, all of the arts in France--both fine and decorative--were effectively under the control of Louis XIV.

2. State bedroom of Louis XIV (late 17th century). This reconstruction of a state bedroom at Versailles illustrates the muted but still pompous style of the French baroque. For more overt, "Italian" expressions of the baroque style, look at the fireplace andirons to the left of the room or the painting on the right. The andirons illustrate the twisting, corkscrew device known as figura serpentina, a favorite means of suggesting movement through static, sculptural forms. The painting is typical of the baroque in its representation of a dramatic biblical scene in action, as it occurs: baroque artists capture bodies in motion, not repose. By contrast, the tortoiseshell table attributed to the Dutch-born cabinetmaker Pierre Gole (1620-1684) presents the vertical and horizontal lines of classical art, combined with florid, ornate surface patterns. The table harmonizes with the desk made by another Dutch-born cabinetmaker, Alexandre-Jean Oppenordt (1639-1715). The closed top of this desk displays a crown above a monogram of interwoven L's that was one of Louis XIV's personal devices. The principal cabinetmaker to the king was André-Charles Boulle (1642-1732), whose work is represented by the armoire that sits by the wall outside the bedroom display. Boulle's interest in sculpture is shown by the brass heads of the wind gods that decorate the corner mounts of this piece. The veneer of ebony on the front and sides of this armoire reveal the work of highly specialized craftsmen known as ébénistes (from ébène, "ebony"); this type of work earned Boulle the title of ébéniste du roi. Boulle's work is also on display in the form of the elaborate pedestal clock that, like the armoire, combines gilded bronze and tortoiseshell inlay. A more restrained example of baroque ornamentation appears in the embroidered panels and bed valences. The panels represent the seasons ("Spring" and "Summer" are on display) and elements ("Fire" and "Air" have survived). The panel representing "Air" is noteworthy for the depiction of Louis XIV as Jupiter. "Spring" contains a portrait of one of Louis's illegitimate daughters, Mlle. de Nantes (the fleur-de-lis pattern associated with her image is a device indicating her legitimization). The images set into the bed valances are scenes from Ovid's Metamorphoses and from the fables of Aesop and La Fontaine. The difference between the heavy ornamentation of the baroque and the lighter decorative touch of the rococo style to come is suggested by the contrast of the sphinx-legged, marble-topped side table designed by Charles Le Brun just before he died (1690) and the pair of candlestands made around 1710.

3. Portrait of Louis XV as a child. When Louis XIV died in 1715, his successor Louis XV was only five years old. Before he died Louis XIV entrusted the maintenance of the kingdom to Philippe, duc d'Orléans (1674-1723), who performed his duties as Regent until Louis XV attained his majority in 1723 at the age of 13. The eight-year period of the Regency is sometimes understood in art-historical terms as a transition from baroque to rococo. The stylistic shift, however, cannot be understood apart from the shift in the audience for art that was itself the result of significant economic changes. When the Duke of Orleans took over the administration of France he inherited an empty treasury and a portfolio of discredited government securities. The expense of court life under Louis XIV (10,000 nobles and their attendants were maintained at Versailles) combined with the king's military campaigns had brought France to the verge of bankruptcy. The same year that the Regency began, an expatriate Scot named John Law (1671-1729) turned up in Paris and began promoting a set of radically new economic theories that Orléans eventually embraced. Basically, Law argued that money symbolized not only accumulated wealth (e.g., reserves of gold bullion) but potential wealth as well, especially as embodied in land. France had extensive holdings in America known as "Mississippi," so the mere adoption of Law's theory made it possible to bring a new kind of reserve into the national bank and to circulate this potential wealth in the form of credit and paper currency, elements of what Law called "The System." Miraculously, the economy of Regency France went from bankruptcy to boom, and by the time the financial bubble burst in 1720 the wealth of France was no longer exclusively in the hands of the nobility: financiers and bankers now had money to spend on art for the decoration of their Paris homes. The devaluation of Law's paper currency in 1720 actually spurred the art market because hard assets were in high demand. Perhaps for the first time, merchants and speculators wanted works of art as a hedge against inflation. The cabinetmaker Boulle, for example, had more orders than he could fill. When Cardinal Dubois, Louis XV's first minister, died in 1726, his fortune was valued at two million livres; almost half of that amount--800,000 livres--was realized when his furniture was sold at auction.

4. Bust of Louis XV. The reign of Louis XV is notorious for the hedonism and hypocrisy of the aristocracy. The King himself delegated the management of state affairs to his former tutor Cardinal Fleury (1653-1743) and devoted his own energies to love affairs: the Sun King was succeeded by the Sin King. Actually, Louis was faithful to his wife, the Polish princess Marie Leczinska, until she decided that her marital duties were hazardous to her health--this after bearing the King ten children. One of Louis XV's most successful mistresses was Madame de Mailly, whose less-fortunate sister had died in childbirth bearing a son to the King (the boy resembled his father so much he was called the "demi-Louis"). Madame de Mailly organized parties at Versailles for a while, until she was supplanted by another one of her sisters. Louis's delectation of these three (and possibly four) sisters inspired a poem about the King as the "amateur de la famille"--the lover of the whole family, except for "Monsieur le père," the father who continued to be hounded by creditors despite the King's attentions to his daughters. When the last daughter died Louis met Jeanne Antoine-Poisson (1721-64), better known as Madame de Pompadour, wife of an important public official. The King was introduced to his most famous mistress at a costume party at Versailles in 1745: she was dressed as Diana, virgin goddess of the hunt (hunting was Louis XV's other obsession); he was dressed as a yew tree. The affair lasted until 1751, but the two remained friendly until Madame de Pompadour's death in 1764. Indeed, Madame de Pompadour's influence on artistic fashion probably exceeded the King's: entries in the account book kept by Lazare Duvaux, furniture dealer to the court, refer to some pieces as "à la Pompadour." She spent huge sums to decorate her numerous houses, and evidently understood the social implications of aristocratic excess: "Après nous," she observed, "le déluge" ("After us the flood").

5. Varengeville Room (1736-1752). This room is a reconstruction, using original panelling, of a part of the Hôtel de Varengeville in Paris built by the architect Jacques Gabriel (1667-1742) for Charlotte-Angélique Courtin, widowed marquise de Varengeville. She left it to her daughter, who sold it in 1736 to Marie-Marguerite d'Allegre, comptesse de Ruppelmonde (d. 1752); the comptesse had the room decorated in something like its present Louis Quinze style. The most distinctive feature of the room is the elaborate gilded boiserie or woodwork, attributed to Nicolas Pineau (1684-1754). Note in particular the fantastic stork-like birds that adorn the top curves of the mirror. The rococo style offers early evidence of the influence of Asian art: notice the pair of Japanese porcelain bowls on the mantel to either side of the gilded clock and the pair of corner cabinets with lacquer panels cut from Chinese screens. Chinoiserie is also evident in the gilded ornamentation of the scarlet-and-gold japanned writing table. This table was made for Louis XV in 1759 (the publication date of Voltaire's Candide, incidentally) by the royal cabinetmaker Gilles Joubert (1689-1775). The King's scientific interests are suggested by the tripod microscope that sits on the table. The two portraits that flank the fireplace are by Jean Marc Nattier (1685-1766); the one on the right depicts the duchesse d'Orléans, wife of the Regent (the other represents the marquise d'Argence). Conventional aristocratic taste in boiserie form is suggested by the hackneyed allegories of the seasons to the right and left of the main entrance of the room, and by allegorical representations of Music, Poetry, Gardening, Hunting, and Commerce.

6. Paar Room (1765-72). The Paar Room is so named because its panelling or boiserie was taken from the Paar Palace in Vienna; the palace itself, razed in 1938, was the home of Austrian nobility very much in favor with the Hapsburg Empire. In 1769 Empress Maria Teresa elevated Count Wenzel Johann Joseph von Paar to the rank of prince; then, in 1770, she asked him to help escort her daughter Maria Antonia (a.k.a. Marie Antoinette) to France for marriage to the future Louis XVI. A different sort of French connection is suggested by the Savonniere carpet designed by Charles Le Brun for Louis XIV: the central sunflower design obviously refers to the Sun King, as do the interlaced L's and fleur-de-lis motifs. The room should not be read, however, as a revival of the baroque but as late rococo, a transition to the neoclassical style: here you can see rococo curves straightening out. This statement is less true of the furnishings, perhaps, especially in the case of the two-legged console table to the right of the fireplace. The table was probably designed by Bernard Vanrisamburgh II (ca. 1730-64), who was also responsible for the corner cabinets in the Varengeville room (see above). Like those cabinets, the console table incorporates Asian motifs: note the lacquered panels taken from an earlier Japanese cabinet and framed by elaborate gilt-bronze scroll-work. Another representative rococo work is the portrait of a young woman reading by Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806). Fragonard did more than one portrait of women reading; the choice of subject matter points not only to an aristocratic leisure activity (as here), but to an important development in literary and social history: the growth of literacy among women--especially after the French Revolution--made them the main audience for the novel.

7. Cabris Room (ca. 1775-77). This room comes from a hôtel in the town of Grasse in the south of France (where Fragonard was born, incidentally). The hôtel was built by one marquis de Cabris (1749-1813), who was not able to see its interior decoration through to completion because he was declared legally insane in 1778. This room illustrates the early style of Louis XVI: the irregular arabesques of rococo design are abandoned in favor of balance, symmetry, and (relative) simplicity. Interest in classical antiquity was renewed in the middle of the eighteenth-century by Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-68), who took his own inspiration, in part, from the recent excavations of the towns of Herculaneum and Pompeii (both destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D.). In the Cabris room, neoclassical features include the gilded pattern of smoking incense urns and laurel branches cut into the paneling; the pair of gilt-bronze and ivory vases on the side table; and the chandelier incorporating figures of nymphs and satyrs. The chandelier is attributed to the gilt-bronze worker Francois Rémond (1745/47-1812), who was employed by the court from 1784 to 1787. The neoclassical style is easiest to see in the straight legs and rectangular design of the marquetry table (marquetry refers to the inlaid, "checkered" pattern) at the center of the room.

8. Tessé Room (1768-72). The comtesse du Tessé was the widow of a man who had served as brigadier general under Louis XV. This royal connection helps to explain the original purpose of this neoclassical room as a "salle du dais," or "room of the canopy." Ceremonial canopies were used for the reception of special guests (such as state visitors), but only by the highest nobility. Louis XVI possessed 39 royal canopies for use on formal occasions; the use of canopies by others was restricted by rules of etiquette to a privileged few. That the comtesse du Tessé had "canopy rights" suggests that this room is in "the style of Louis XVI" in more than one sense. A more concrete representation of the style can be seen in the rectangular containment of the boiserie ornamentation and in the furnishings. The mechanical table, the upright secretary (writing desk), and the commode (chest of drawers) were all made for Queen Marie Antoinette by the German-born cabinetmaker Jean-Henry Riesener (1734-1806), named ébéniste du roi the same year Louis XVI was crowned (1774). The mechanical table could be adjusted in various ways, depending on whether it was to be used for writing, eating, or dressing. The secretary is displayed with its drop-front writing surface closed. The scene in Japanese lacquer at the base of the secretary shows that neoclassicism continues the interest in orientalism begun in the rococo period. If you look closely at the gilt-bronze border at the top of the secretary you will see the royal monogram MA. Of special interest is the self-portrait above the sofa by Rose-Adélaïde Ducreux (1761-1802), one of the few female artists of the period. The bust of the philosophe Denis Diderot (1713-84) by the sculptor Jean Antoine Houdon (1741-1828) that sits atop the commode is rather ironic. Like Voltaire, Diderot was a virulent critic of the ancien régime: to Diderot is credited the famous remark that humanity would not be free until "the last king was strangled with the entrails of the last priest."

9. Bas-relief portrait of Louis XVI. In some ways Louis XVI was the perfect successor to his grandfather Louis XV: far from being a sexual athlete, he probably suffered from impotence (Marie Antoinette did not conceive until the seventh year of her marriage). He went to bed early while his wife went out gambling with the comte d'Artois, the King's brother. Louis XVI's primary passion seems to have been hunting; he also became a competent locksmith. The neoclassical manner associated with his reign was, at first, an expression of reason and reserve that stood in contrast to the florid rococo style with its connotations of pleasure and frivolity. Neoclassical simplicity was, therefore, politically appropriate, but, as everyone knows, Louis XVI's political problems were not fully resolved by the shift in aesthetic tastes that occurred at the end of the eighteenth century.

10. Neoclassical paintings by Robert. These paintings by Hubert Robert (1733-1808), like those by the same artist in the Paar Room, show how closely connected the revival of classicism and the return to nature were for a time. Landscapes with classical ruins and robust scenes of innocent country life aroused the sentiments: the original owners of these paintings wanted to feel something; no doubt they did. One sentimentalist who wanted Robert to point the way to the simple life was Marie Antoinette. For her Robert designed a hameau or hamlet on the grounds of Versailles occupied by real peasants performing various agricultural tasks. They supplied the Queen with milk so she could churn butter and make cheese to gain relief from court life.

11. Bordeaux Room (1785). The room is from a hôtel originally built for Joseph Dufour, one of Louis XVI's counsellors, in the thriving port city of Bordeaux on the Garonne River in southwest France. The city prospered because of its trade with French colonies, especially in the West Indies. Believe it or not, the small scale of this room, its oval shape, and the lack of gilding on the boiserie express the longing for a less formal, simpler lifestyle. Simplicity and purity are also conveyed by the pair of stoic nymphs displayed in the wall niches. These serene figures are plaster, not marble, and are commercial imitations of classical sculpture, probably by the Italian sculptor Polly who carried on a flourishing trade in plaster decorations around 1800.

12. Vanderlyn panorama of Versailles (1818-19). A panorama was a highly illusionistic form of painting that is often understood as a prelude to the cinema. This panorama of the palace and gardens of Versailles was originally displayed in a darkened, cylindrical "theater" in which only the surface of the painting would have been illuminated, thereby heightening the illusion for the viewer. The panorama concept was patented in 1787 by Robert Barker, an Irish artist who erected the first panorama building in London in 1794. The next year the panorama was introduced to American audiences by William Winstanley when he exhibited his pirated copy of Barker's View of London from the Albion Mills in New York City. The American artist John Vanderlyn (b. 1775) most likely saw that panorama in 1795. In any event, Vanderlyn became interested in the panorama form as a possible means of reviving his faltering career as a neoclassical painter of historical and mythological subjects. After the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1814 in the person of Louis XVIII, Vanderlyn seized on Versailles as a subject that was sure

to excite public interest. Note the figure of Louis XVIII himself on one of the balconies of the palace.

Works Consulted

Avery, Kevin J., and Peter L. Fodera. John Vanderlyn's Panoramic View of the Palace and Gardens of Versailles. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1988.

Davies, Norman. Europe: A History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Peck, Amelia, et al. Period Rooms in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Harry N. Abrams, 1996.

Ragio, Olga, et al. "French Decorative Arts During the Reign of Louis XIV: 1654-1715." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 46, no. 4 (Spring 1989).

Savage, George. French Decorative Art: 1638-1793. New York: Praeger, 1969.