The King's Animals

From 12 October 2021 to 13 February 2022, the Palace of Versailles is hosting the exhibition The King’s Animals. Some 300 works will breathe new life into a spectacular artistic menagerie encompassing the thousands of animals that lived in and around the Palace during the Ancien Régime.

The Exhibition

Looking at the Palace and Gardens of Versailles today, we can hardly imagine them awash in animal life. And yet the Palace was once home to dozens of companion animals, with dogs, monkeys, cats, birds and more occupying the apartments and antechambers. The now bygone Royal Menagerie featured the rarest species, from the coati to the quagga, and from beavers to black crowned cranes. Game was plentiful in the park, the royal stables accommodated 2,000 horses and the kennels held 300 hunting dogs. Animals are omnipresent as well in the decor of the Palace and Gardens, depicted for their mythological or political symbolism.

Since its creation, the Palace of Versailles contributed to establishing a new rapport with the animal world. Fierce resistance to the Cartesian theory of “animal machines” even emerged at court: in the Palace of the Kings of France, there was never any doubt that animals were endowed with a soul.

This legendary fauna is returning to Versailles for the exhibition The King’s Animals. Indeed, the King’s finest painters — Bernaerts , Boel , Le Brun , Desportes , Oudry — raised animals to noble standing through portraiture, alongside their paintings of Court worthies. Monarchs’ favourite dogs were also eligible for immortalisation on canvas, with their names gleaming in golden letters: visitors will thus make the acquaintance of Misse, Turlu, Tane, Blonde, Diane and other four-legged friends, not to mention Louis XV’s cat, Le Général, painted by Oudry.

Animals were also portrayed in tapestries woven at the Manufacture des Gobelins, and some were dissected and stuffed by taxidermists for the Academy of Science and the King's Garden. The public will also discover Louis XV’s stuffed elephant, as well as the skeleton of the first elephant to inhabit Versailles (a female given to Louis XIV by the King of Portugal).

Finally, the exhibition will look back on the Labyrinth Grove, adorned with a fantastic bestiary illustrating Aesop’s Fables. Never since the destruction of this mythical alcove of the Gardens of Versailles in 1774 have so many of the sculptures that once embellished it been presented to the public.

Paintings, sculptures, mounted animals, tapestries, sleds, vellums, porcelain, goldwork and more: some 300 works will be brought together for the exhibition, exemplifying the ubiquity of animals at Versailles. They are taken from some 50 collections in France and abroad (Louvre Museum, National Museum of Natural History, Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence, Sèvres Museum of Ceramics, Natural History Museum of the University of Pavia, etc.).

Exhibition curators

Alexandre Maral, General Curator at the Palace of Versailles in charge of sculptures and Director of the Palace of Versailles Research Centre.

Nicolas Milovanovic, Chief Curator at the Louvre Museum, in charge of 17th century French paintings.

Decor

Guicciardini&Magni Architetti

The exhibition is organised with special support from the Louvre Museum

Photos

Poster of the exhibition

View of the exhibition

Vue de l'exposition

View of the exhibition

Crowned crane. Study

Pieter Boel (1622/1625-1674)
Louvre Museum
© RMN-Grand Palais (musée du Louvre) / René-Gabriel Ojeda

Ostrich

Nicasius Bernaerts (1620-1678)
1664-1668
Oil on canvas,
Musées de la Ville de Montbéliard
© C.-H. Bernardot

Frontal view of an elephant from the Congo

Pieter Boel (1622-1674)
ca.1668-1674
Black stone with pastel highlights
Louvre Museum
© RMN-Grand Palais (musée du Louvre) / Michèle Bello

Three Hounds Facing an Antelope

Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686-1755)
Oil on canvas
Irlande, Russborough House,
© Alfred Beit Foundation

Portrait of Élisabeth Charlotte d’Orléans, Madame Palatine (1652-1722), petting a Dwarf Spaniel

Johann Baptist Ruel (1634-1685)
France, ca. 1667-1668
Oil on canvas
Johann Baptist Ruel (1634-1685)
France, ca. 1667-1668
Oil on canvas
Eichenzell, Kulturstiftung des Hauses Hessen, Museum Schloss
© Kulturstiftung des Hauses Hessen, Museum Schloss Fasanerie, Eichenzell bei Fulda 285

Wall hangings depicting birds in the Versailles Menagerie

A vulture and pink flamingo surrounded by greenery based on a cartoon (or model?) Pierre Charles Firens (?)
ca. 1684-1711
Tapestry, wool and silk
Royal Manufacture of Beauvais
ville de Lausanne, Benoist collection
© Musée Historique Lausanne

Portrait of “Le Général”, Louis XV’s cat

Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686-1755)
1728
Oil on canvas
Elaine and Alexandre de Bothuri Collection
© All rights reserved

Louise-Marie de France (1728-1733), known as Madame Troisième

The Farm, based on a work by Jean-Baptiste Oudry

American Independence Candelabra

Pierre-Philippe Thomire (1751-1843)
1785
Chiselled and gilded bronze, Sèvres biscuit porcelain and green porphyry
Palace of Versailles
© Palace of Versailles, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / C. Fouin

Labyrinth of Versailles

Engravings by Sébastien Leclerc, painted in gouache by Jacques Bailly, calligraphy in golden ink by Nicolas Jarry, hand printed on vellum, red morocco binding featuring the coat of arms and monogram of Louis XIV
Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris
© All rights reserved

Monkey riding a billy goat and looking to the left

Fountain 12 (Animal Combat)
Pierre Legros, Benoît Massou
1673-1674
Colour-coated lead
Palace of Versailles
© Palace of Versailles, Dist. RMN © C. Fouin

View and perspective of the Menagerie of Versailles as seen from the Royal Gate

Chameleon

Anatomical description of a chameleon, beaver, dromedary, bear and gazelle, Paris, 1669
Abraham Bosse (ca. 1604-1676), based on the work of Sébastien Leclerc (1637-1714)
Paris, library of the musée national d'Histoire naturelle
© Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / image du MNHN, bibliothèque centrale