Visit of Queen Victoria to the Queen’s Hamlet at the Petit Trianon on 21 August 1855 by Karl Girardet

April 2013

This small painting by Karl Girardet is the first sketch for a watercolour commissioned by Queen Victoria in 1855 and which is still in the British royal collections. It commemorates the visit of the Queen and Prince Albert, accompanied by the imperial couple, to Trianon on Tuesday 21 August 1855 during the British sovereign’s stay in Paris.

The two sovereigns can be clearly identified in an open carriage stopped in front of the house of Marie-Antoinette, while the Emperor and the Prince Consort are on horseback on either side of it. The escort is made up by Cent-Gardes and postilions of the Emperor’s Household in full dress uniform. Under the gallery linking the Queen’s House to the Billiards House is the band of the Guides of the Imperial Guard who played during the lunch taken by the two couples.

Old paintings of the Hamlet of Trianon are quite rare. The Palace of Versailles held two views of the Mill and the Queen’s House with the Marlborough Tower from the studio of Guérard and Wallaert, dating from the Restoration, and a view of The Interior of the Queen’s Theatre during the July Monarchy by Mme Asselineau, but none dating from the Second Empire, the period of the renaissance of Trianon, spearheaded by the Empress Eugénie. The new acquisition will fill this gap with a work that will take its rightful place in the attic of the Petit Trianon in the section dedicated to the Second Empire and the Empress.

Three vases of Madame Victoire

March 2013

In 1772, Madame Victoire, one of the daughters of Louis XV, acquired these three vases for her bedroom in the Palace of Versailles. Madame Victoire in fact ordered a matching set of five vases with a green background from the Royal Porcelain Manufactory of Sèvres. The other two vases of the set are now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

These three vases are exceptional for their painted scenes and their shape. The cartouches are the work of Charles-Nicolas Dodin, one of the finest painters of figures in the Manufactory in the 18th century, to whom the Palace of Versailles dedicated an exhibition in 2012. Their unique shape had not yet been represented in the national collections. The central “beaded” vase has a cartouche based on a painting executed in 1737 for Louis XV, The Charms of Country Life. The scenes painted on the other two “laurel leaf” vases are The Lovers Surprised, based on an engraving by Gilles Demarteau, and Spring, inspired by one of the canvases of the Seasons painted in 1755 for Madame de Pompadour.

These vases have now been returned to their original place on the mantelpiece of Madame Victoire’s bedroom.

These vases have been acquired thanks to a donation from LVMH. Each of these works has been officially recognised as a "work of major heritage value".

Marie-Josèphe de Saxe in the Savoyarde style by Jean-Marc Nattier

January 2013

In 1751, Jean-Marc Nattier executed this oval portrait of the Dauphine, Marie-Josèphe de Saxe. Given to the Duchesse de Brancas, the lady-in-waiting of the Dauphine until 1762, it depicts exactly the same face painted by Nattier for the large portrait of the Dauphine in her court dress.

But the costume is quite different: the young heiress to the throne is wearing a “marmotte”, which is a scarf tied under her chin. This was the style of the Savoyardes, Parisian women from Savoie, and was a popular fashion in the years 1740-1750. After being seen as a sign of virtuous poverty, the style gradually took on a more saucy dimension. From the 1760s on, this style was ambivalent: a virtuous mountain woman or a saucy city woman, the Savoyarde could also be a woman who begs or who, especially if she was pretty, was suspected of selling other things than her songs.

The portrait of the Dauphine wearing a “marmotte” is iconographically unique, as no other portrait of the ladies of the royal family in this style has come down to us. So the Dauphine adopted this fashion and this portrait seems to have been painted when she was pregnant with her third son. The Savoyarde costume thus evokes virtuous fertility, although this type of style could be seen as shocking. Given to a lady-in-waiting, this small portrait moves away from official representations and shows the close links between the Dauphine and the ladies of her house.

Saint John the Baptist Kissing the Hand of the Infant Jesus attributed to Jacopo Amigoni

January 2013

Seemingly originating in the court of Saxony, this Saint John the Baptist Kissing the Hand of the Infant Jesus was probably brought to the Palace of Versailles by the Dauphine Maria Josepha of Saxony, the mother of Louis XVI, Louis XVIII and Charles X, when she married the Dauphin in 1747.

This painting fits into what we know of the Dauphine’s taste for religious scenes, of which Versailles has kept two examples by Charles-Antoine Coypel (Saint Piama, MV 8610, and Saint Landrade, MV 8624). Painted by the Venetian Jacopo Amigoni, it is imbued with the tenderness and delicacy so typical of Bolognese painting of the preceding century.

On her death in 1767, the Dauphine bequeathed this painting to her first chaplain, Aymar de Nicolaï, who had supported her during the most painful moments of her existence, such as the death of her son Louis-Ferdinand in 1765. Now back in the Palace of Versailles, it evokes the décor of the apartments of the Dauphine.