: The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration vol. 06 No. 04 April 1900 The Petit Trianon: Versailles; English Carved Fireplaces by Various - Architecture Periodicals

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THE BROCHURE SERIES The Petit Trianon: Versailles English Carved Fireplaces APRIL, 1900

THE BROCHURE SERIES OF ARCHITECTURAL ILLUSTRATION.

THE PETIT TRIANON: VERSAILLES.

Whatever may have been the motive, however, he decided to erect upon this desolate, waterless and uninhabited site a vast palace to be surrounded by a park.

The cost of accomplishing this project was fearful, not in money alone , but in human life. In 1681 twenty-two thousand soldiers and six thousand horses were employed on the work, and so unhealthy was the site that the workmen died by thousands. Writing in 1767, Madame de S?vign? says: "The King is in haste that Versailles should be finished; but it would seem that God is unwilling. It is almost impossible to continue the work owing to the fearful mortality among the workmen. The corpses are fetched away by cartfuls during the night,--night being chosen that they who still live may not be terrified into revolt by the sight." But no difficulty, nor the pestilence, nor the ruin of the treasury was allowed to interfere with the King's pleasure. The palace rose; the stately gardens, peopled with statues, spread about it; and a royal city sprang up where before had been only a desolate forest; and, after 1682, Versailles became the permanent headquarters of the Court.

Marie Antoinette's first wish, after becoming mistress of her new domain, was to establish there a garden after the English style. The rage for the English garden had just then seized French society, for it was believed to be a return to Nature--Nature which Rousseau just then had made it the fashion to adore, and the nobility were all for playing at rusticity, and full of sentimental admiration for the country.

The King humored the whim, and gave orders that the gardens already existing at the Trianon should be remodelled, that the strip of land joining it should be added, and the whole surrounded with a wall, and the work pushed as rapidly as possible.

The plans for the English garden were drawn by Comte de Caraman, an officer who had already arranged such a garden in connection with his own residence, and this garden the Queen had visited. In 1775 the new royal architect, Mique, seconded by the painter, Hubert Robert, the sculptor, Deschamps, and the landscape gardener, Antoine Richard, joined in working out the plans of the Comte de Caraman, and created an English garden after the Queen's fancy. Unhappily, however, in order to create this new garden it became necessary to destroy a large part of the botanical garden which had before existed; but many of the fine exotic trees were employed in working out the new design, and these trees still remain the finest ornaments of the park.

The plan for the English garden was comprised as follows: In the more formal portions of the grounds near the ch?teau an artificial grotto and a "Belvedere," and, shadowed by overhanging trees, a little "Temple de l'Amour." Separated from these classical constructions by an artificial lake, bordered with rustic paths and intended to represent a bit of natural country, was erected a picturesque miniature hamlet of nine or ten rustic cottages in which the court ladies, under the lead of the Queen, might play at peasant life.

The grotto was a work of some elaboration, and it was said that no less than seven relief models of it were made before the Queen expressed herself as satisfied with the design. It is an arrangement of artificial rocks covered with moss, through which flows the outlet stream of the little lake. It was at one time proposed, after the then fashion in English gardening, to build on the top of the grotto a picturesquely contrived ruin, but this project was abandoned.

Near the grotto stands the Belvedere--a coquettish little octagonal pavilion set on a stone platform. Four windows and four doors are set alternately in its eight surfaces, and a balustrade surrounds the domed roof. The interior was ornamented in delicately frescoed stucco.

The Temple of Love consists of twelve Corinthian columns supporting a cupola. The pavement is of white blue-veined marble. In the centre is a carved pedestal on which stands a statue of Cupid drawing his bow, modelled by Bouchardon.

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