Vue de L'Orangerie de Versailles, prise de la balustrade au bord de la terrasse du château

Details

Jacques Rigaud (Marseilles 1681-1754 Paris)
Vue de L'Orangerie de Versailles, prise de la balustrade au bord de la terrasse du château
with number '32'
black chalk, pen and grey ink, grey wash
8 7/8 x 18 5/8 in. (225 x 475 mm.)

Provenance

The mounter's mark for J.-B. Glomy (L. 1120).
Jean Bloch; Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 21 May 1957, lot 16g.
with J. Kugel, Paris, 1996.

Engraved

By the artist for his Diverses vues de Versailles in the Maisons royales de France, 1730, pl. 7.

Special notice

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 15% on the buyer's premium

Lot Essay

This view is taken from the balustrade of the Parterre du Midi, looking back across the Orangerie and the Grande Pièce d'Eau des Suisse towards the viewpoint taken in lot 130. The serried ranks of fruit trees are clearly seen set among parterres sheltered between Hardouin-Mansart's pair of wings built after 1681. The grand staircases at the end of each wing were closed by gates adorned with sculpture, on the left Aurora and Cephalus and Vertumnus and Pomona by Le Gros, and on the right Zephyr and Flora and Venus and Adonis by Le Conte. The view was designed to have been enjoyed from the Queen's apartments on the first floor above the Parterre du Midi.

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