Smoking at Versailles

“A Smoking Party” was a common XVII century pass-time; yet the presence of a sleeping figure in the center of the composition begs a question about the contents of those pipes; and since any kind of vapor may represent a dream; this seems only to confirm the interpretation according to which we observe the adverse effects of tobacco on the human brain. Yet this interpretation doesn’t hold water; and I must address the moralist content of the painting; for in the XVII century all social criticism was essentially religious, and therefore, the anti-smoking stance could not have been related to health issues, but would rather have to be linked to an already well-established sin, in this case idleness, and therefore condemned as a form of hedonism.

And by the way, at Chateau Versailles the Big Apartments were officially declared a non-smoking area; and so, those courtiers who needed a smoke break (for example, Saint-Simon) would have to sneak out to their cold and lonely rooms, which of course didn’t help their relationship with the anti-smoking Sun King.

A Small Dutch Painting from the Royal Collection

This painting by Gerard Dou was in the collection of Louis XIV, for the Sun King knew a thing or two about teeth pulling. By the age of sixty, half of his mouth roof was ripped off and then catheterized with hot iron; the letters of Princess Palatine tell us that at the dinner table champagne was often flowing out of his nose.

Double Emotion

Charles Le Brun catalogs facial expressions: he raises eye-brows, lowers corners of lips, wrinkles foreheads…; once the whole range is exhausted, he complicates things; his idea of complexity is double emotion: Here we can examine admiration and astonishment, for according to Rene Descartes, there is no one without the other. In awe the daughter of King Darius stares at the man who has vanquished her father. No doubt Alexander the Great merits astonishment and admiration; but I am not convinced that Roxan’s face wouldn’t be able to cover other passions,  for I too bear witness to some double emotions; the expressions worn to sit on a toilet are frequently recycled to show me the depth of feelings.

Versailles School of Architecture Retrospective

Out of all the exuberance on display at the Versailles School of Architecture Retrospective I have paid attention to two pieces: The bust in black ceramic riddled with negative spaces by Christian Gozenbach, and the treasure map with its meandering beads by Emmanuelle Villard; the former could serve me as a negative reference to a marble or white ceramic portrait, while the latter might retrace the paths to the hidden jewel at the Little Trianon. In the context of Versailles nothing else seems meaningful.

Marie-Antoinette Milk and Dark

There are two kinds of Marie-Antoinette chocolate bars you can buy at Versailles Monoprix, Marie-Antoinette Milk and Marie-Antoinette Dark. I tested them both and report that although I really like the packaging on the first, I prefer the taste of the second.

Bathing in Vinegar

Apart from the fountains, the XVII century Versailles was not a great friend of water. Perfumes and alcohol are usually cited as substitutes. Vinegar is rarely mentioned. To repair this apparent injustice I am showing you here this wonderful solution to a whole slew of problems: you can put it on your skin, in your laundry, in your tub and the evaporator; that’s what I’ve been doing for a couple of days, and the effect is that I smell like vinegar — not a repulsive smell, just a little old-fashioned.

The Latest Mystery of Napoleon’s Tomb

Strange. I stopped by the Invalids to admire the VA hospital Louis XIV built for his veterans, and then, taken by some kind of a gravitation pull, stepped inside the chapel — the effect was cosmic — in its circular crypt, Napoleon’s tomb gave an impression of a resting place built for a demiurge, below and yet above us. But looking at the photo this morning I was disappointed: out of context the thing resembled a soap dish. I was even tempted to open it; and what if, I thought, I were to find there precisely that, a small bar of hotel soap?

Versailles, the Pond Gobert

“Where have you taken us?” is the first impression of a tourist getting off the train at Versailles-Chantiers. Now this unfavorable introduction can be mitigated by a quaint  little passage called Les étangs Gobert. This is an original XVII century project, the ponds are twin water tanks built to feed the fountains of the Chateau and blown up in 1945 by the retreating German army. So sixty-eight years later we got around to fixing the problem: now we can walk across the dry pond and descend toward the Chateau the way water used to flow — down the gradient.

So, using this newly-built short cut you can take Avenue de Sceaux, which is far more presentable than Etats Généraux, and get to Chateau some ten minutes faster! If you travel as a family, the passage also offers a small park where the kids can run around, while you run to the bakery on the corner! Although these advantages may not strike a local as important, for a tourist details count.

The Voyeurs of Fragonard

There is so much silliness in art that when coming across a masterpiece I often hesitate. Fragonard! Fragonard, described by Edmond and Jules Goncourt as a “cupid of erotic painting,” whose models “illuminate with their nudity the alcove”, is that hot wind that leafs through his own work — “the white, the blue, the red-brown of the early afternoon;” he is the painter whose poetic impertinence defines the century of rococo.

Every work of art presupposes a reader, an on-looker, almost a voyeur; to whom the description of an experience is more important than the experience; but a painting that begins as a commentary on a work of literature expects and mocks the reader’s competence; for the moral is simple, Perrette spills her milk: She has lost what she had because she was dreaming about what she could get: after selling her milk she could buy eggs; and after raising her chicken, she could acquire a pig; after selling that pig she would buy a cow…, and I could make this list pretty long, so long that in the end my reader might wonder, if the time wouldn’t be better spent making up something of her own? Let that idea of work disappear in the vapor of Fragonard’s magic lantern!

Competence is the creative agent that appears to dream for us, and in the end we hesitate to make a claim of having had any dream at all. Later you may recollect that female figure crying over her spilled milk: the lifted red skirt, her legs, her hips, her waist — image before idea; here and now depends on there and then. As for Honoré Fragonard, he appears to be illustrating the poem of Jean De Lafontaine, “Perrete and the Jar of Milk:” Chacun songe en veillant, il n’est rien de plus doux : Une flatteuse erreur emporte alors nos âmes ; Tout le bien du monde est à nous, Tous les honneurs, toutes les femmes. The above paintings can be seen, the first one at the Musée de Cognacq-Jay, and the other two at the Louvre.

Versailles and Classicism — an Imaginary Landscape: Patel, Poussin, Lorrain.

Oh, that exotic locale to which a painter transports us! And while transporting us there, he often makes us time-travel; this is how we end up in a place either far away or a long time ago, or both long ago and far away; and the farther we move in space and time, the easier it gets to suspend the weight of reality. The XVII century classicist painters — Nicolas Poussin, Claude Lorrain, Pierre Patel, were the first to apply these insights to landscape, their pastoral sites always showing an improvement over nature — a window not into reality, but a sentimental fantasy.

The most obvious difference between the three is in the treatment of human figure: where Lorrain and Poussin cling to anecdote, Patel drops the story but keeps the human efflorescence to stay bucolic. As the illustrators of story, Poussin and Lorrain show variant commitment to realism: Poussin faithfully dresses Diogenes in toga, while a relatively convincing version of Greek polis shows in the background; Lorrain makes Ulysses wear something like Renaissance clothes, with ships and buildings providing already the XVII century context.

The intention in all three is the same, to tempt the eye with the view. The figures in the foreground are either a detail or pretext; otherwise, for Lorrain and Poussin we could claim that the narrative is better understood when we peer pensively into distance; whereas for Patel distance has the value of its own. Not surprisingly, Pierre Patel is the painter responsible for those famous bird-eye views of Chateau Versailles where humans no longer clatter the landscape.

The above paintings can be found in the XVII century French Paintings section of the Louvre.

1. Pierre Patel, “Paysage avec ruines et pasteur”.

2. Nicolas Poussin, “Diogène jetant son écuelle”.

3. Claud Lorrain, “Ulysse remet Chriséis à son père”.