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Versailles
In this opulently illustrated volume, the eminent French architectural historian Jean–Marie Pérouse de Montclos traces the transformation of Louis XIII's modest hunting lodge into the fabulous château we know today as the extravagant height of the French monarchy. Robert Polidori's sublime photographs show Versailles' architecture, interiors, and gardens, from sweeping aerial views, to grandiose views of the elaborately decorated palace ceilings, to intimate photographs of the paintings and sculptures that grace the walls and gardens. The exquisite artistry of each carefully considered decorative detail reveals Versailles in all its magnificence.
The photographs show all the beauty and ornate decoration of Versailles, in every season and from every possible perspective. Polidori presents quiet, warmly-lit landscapes of the gardens and pools, dramatic visions of the colonnades, and expansive views of the vast, airy, luxurious salons. The text is a scholarly study of the history of the evolving aesthetic of this remarkable palace, attesting not only to its importance as the ultimate expression of European absolutism but also to its significance as an experimental design workshop that was to become widely influential.
The photographs show all the beauty and ornate decoration of Versailles, in every season and from every possible perspective. Polidori presents quiet, warmly-lit landscapes of the gardens and pools, dramatic visions of the colonnades, and expansive views of the vast, airy, luxurious salons. The text is a scholarly study of the history of the evolving aesthetic of this remarkable palace, attesting not only to its importance as the ultimate expression of European absolutism but also to its significance as an experimental design workshop that was to become widely influential.
424 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 1991
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 25, 2023
If you could read only one book about the Palace Of Versailles... this is the one you want.
Beautiful and sumptuous photographs of the architecture, art, gardens, pathways, trails and sculpture of the Palace and property are at the centerpiece of the book.
But the author also includes much history about the building and subsequent evolution of the palace and Gardens from its beginning to the present. Many first hand accounts of the goings on just add to the history.
Beautiful and sumptuous photographs of the architecture, art, gardens, pathways, trails and sculpture of the Palace and property are at the centerpiece of the book.
But the author also includes much history about the building and subsequent evolution of the palace and Gardens from its beginning to the present. Many first hand accounts of the goings on just add to the history.
November 15, 2024
Beautiful photographs.
July 10, 2016
What a great book to be reading right before Bastille Day (July 14th.) I've been wanting to read this book since it first came out. It is still available online (my copy was from an interlibrary loan.) Oversized, with glorious photography. You get nicely detailed diagrams and layouts of Versailles, but also the parts that I like best--that which is hidden from the usual view: attics, back stairwells, stables, etc.
Within the book I found a passage by Proust from his Les Plaisirs et Les Jours: Les Regrets, Rêveries, Couleur du Temps (1896.)
From the chapter called “Versailles,”
“In the wake of so many others, I would prefer not to pronounce you here, Versailles, that grand name, tarnished and agreeable, that royal cemetery of greenery, with its vast expanses of water and marble, a site truly aristocratic and demoralizing, where remorse for the lives of so many workers sacrificed not so much to refine and augment the joys of another period as to increase the melancholy of our own, does not trouble us. In the wake of so many others, I would prefer not to articulate your name, and yet how often, at the reddish basins of your pink marble pools, have I drunk to the dregs and even to the point of delirium the intoxicating, bittersweet raft of those superb autumn days The earth covered with faded and rotting leaves from a distance resembled a tarnished mosaic, yellow and purplish. Passing near the Hamlet, putting up the collar of my overcoat against the wind, I heard doves cooing. Everywhere the odor of boxwood, like that of Palm Sunday, left one intoxicated. How could I have managed to gather even a skimpy spring bouquet in these gardens ravaged by autumn? On the water, the wind crumped the petals of a trembling rose. Amid the general falling of leaves at Trianon, only the fragile peak of an arch of white geranium lifted its blossoms, resilent before the force of the wind, above the icy water. To be sure, having breathed the strong winds and the salt in the sunken roads of Normandy, having seen the sea shimmer through flowering branches of rhododendron, I fully understand how proximity to water can enhance the graces of the vegetal world. But what a virginal purity there is in this sweet white geranium, bending with its gracious retinue above the icy waters edged by borders of dead leaves. Oh silvery decline of woods yet green, oh weeping branches, ponds, and pools placed here and there by pious gestures, like urns offered up to the melancholy of the trees!”
To say that Proust had a rich interior life is understating things. As for the pure white geranium—I put out five pots along a wall in my yard, muted turquoise from Vietnam and in them I planted white geraniums. About two weeks ago, the city deer came through and ate every blossom. It looked like someone had taken sheers and cut every stem at the same level. They are blooming again, slowly, but this time I come armed with deer repellant. Proust remembers the odor of boxwood? I have an entirely new scent for the geranium.
It's always a pleasure to linger in Versailles, even in the pages of a book.
Within the book I found a passage by Proust from his Les Plaisirs et Les Jours: Les Regrets, Rêveries, Couleur du Temps (1896.)
From the chapter called “Versailles,”
“In the wake of so many others, I would prefer not to pronounce you here, Versailles, that grand name, tarnished and agreeable, that royal cemetery of greenery, with its vast expanses of water and marble, a site truly aristocratic and demoralizing, where remorse for the lives of so many workers sacrificed not so much to refine and augment the joys of another period as to increase the melancholy of our own, does not trouble us. In the wake of so many others, I would prefer not to articulate your name, and yet how often, at the reddish basins of your pink marble pools, have I drunk to the dregs and even to the point of delirium the intoxicating, bittersweet raft of those superb autumn days The earth covered with faded and rotting leaves from a distance resembled a tarnished mosaic, yellow and purplish. Passing near the Hamlet, putting up the collar of my overcoat against the wind, I heard doves cooing. Everywhere the odor of boxwood, like that of Palm Sunday, left one intoxicated. How could I have managed to gather even a skimpy spring bouquet in these gardens ravaged by autumn? On the water, the wind crumped the petals of a trembling rose. Amid the general falling of leaves at Trianon, only the fragile peak of an arch of white geranium lifted its blossoms, resilent before the force of the wind, above the icy water. To be sure, having breathed the strong winds and the salt in the sunken roads of Normandy, having seen the sea shimmer through flowering branches of rhododendron, I fully understand how proximity to water can enhance the graces of the vegetal world. But what a virginal purity there is in this sweet white geranium, bending with its gracious retinue above the icy waters edged by borders of dead leaves. Oh silvery decline of woods yet green, oh weeping branches, ponds, and pools placed here and there by pious gestures, like urns offered up to the melancholy of the trees!”
To say that Proust had a rich interior life is understating things. As for the pure white geranium—I put out five pots along a wall in my yard, muted turquoise from Vietnam and in them I planted white geraniums. About two weeks ago, the city deer came through and ate every blossom. It looked like someone had taken sheers and cut every stem at the same level. They are blooming again, slowly, but this time I come armed with deer repellant. Proust remembers the odor of boxwood? I have an entirely new scent for the geranium.
It's always a pleasure to linger in Versailles, even in the pages of a book.
December 16, 2008
I read this book through Interlibrary Loan. Beautiful photos with a description of the different phases of construction of Versailles.
January 18, 2009
Fabulous writing and pictures.
November 8, 2012
Gorgeous coffee table book. Lovely to pore over and dream :-)
July 25, 2010
Versailles was conceived as a kind of luxurious Memory Theatre
-Robert Polidori
-Robert Polidori
February 8, 2016
Fabulous.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews