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This is a study of royal absolutism in a most extreme form in modern European history, and of the nature of Louis XIV's concept of personal glory and of the embodiment of France as a new superpower. It is a study of political ideas expressed in architecture to establish Versailles as the centre of French world power and royal prestige. It is also a personal story, full of social, cultural, and economic history of the period as seen in the life and work of Louis Le Vau, from a humble family of craftsmen, who was a self-taught architect in the early history of the profession, skilled in technical craft skills and even grand design. He was a major contributor to the architectural glories of Paris including the Louvre, Vincennes, Versailles and the College of the Four Nations. And all achieved despite interference from the great magnates of the age like Mazarin and Colbert and constant mind-changing by the King who wanted every feature in the buildings to reflect his concept of personal, royal, prestige. Le Vau was Louis XIV's First Architect from 1654 until his death and disgrace in 1670. The social, cultural, economic and political backdrop is striking with court intrigue, scandal, corruption, luxury, indulgence and the rise of a rich bourgeoisie, but the main thrust of the story concerns Louis XIV and the royal personal ambition, and the work of a stone-cutter's son who became the Sun King's instrument. The study is good on the more technical features of architectural history - reminiscent of Pevsner's marvellous Buildings of England series.
This monograph examines the wide artistic production of Louis XIV's most prolific and powerful artist, Charles Le Brun (1619-1690), illustrating the magnificence of his paintings and focusing particularly on the interiors and decorative art works produced according to his designs. In his joint capacities of Premier peintre du roi, director of the Gobelins manufactory and rector of the Acad mie royale de peinture et de sculpture, Le Brun exercised a previously unprecedented influence on the production of the visual arts - so much so that some scholars have repeatedly described him as 'dictator' of the arts in France. The Sovereign Artist explores how Le Brun operated in his diverse fields of activities, linking and juxtaposing his portraiture, history painting and pictorial theory with his designs for architecture, tapestries, carpets and furniture. It argues that Le Brun sought to create a repeatable and easily recognizable visual language associated with Louis XIV, in order to translate the king's political claims for absolute power into a visual form. How he did this is discussed through a series of individual case studies ranging from Le Brun's lost equestrian portrait of Louis XIV, and his involvement in the Querelle du coloris at the Acad mie, to his scheme for 93 Savonnerie carpets for the Grande Galerie at the Louvre, his Histoire du roy tapestry series, his decoration of the now destroyed Escalier des Ambassadeurs at Versailles and the dramatic destruction of the Sun King's silver furniture. One key theme is the relation between the unity of the visual arts, to which Le Brun aspired, and the strong hierarchical distinctions he made between the liberal arts and the mechanical crafts: while his lectures at the Acad mie advocated a visual and conceptual unity in painting and architecture, they were also a means by which he attempted to secure the newly gained status of painting as a liberal art, and therefore to distinguish it from the mechanical crafts which he oversaw the production of at the Gobelins. His artistic and architectural aspirations were comparable to those of his Roman contemporary Gianlorenzo Bernini, summoned to Paris in 1665 to design the Louvre's East fa ade and to create a portrait bust of Louis XIV. Bernini's failure to convince the king and Colbert of his architectural scheme offered new opportunities for Le Brun and his French contemporaries to prove themselves capable of solving the architectural problems of the Louvre and to transform it into a palace appropriate "to the grandeur and the magnificence of the prince who was] to inhabit it" (Jean-Baptiste Colbert to Nicolas Poussin in 1664). The comparison between Le Brun and Bernini not only illustrates how France sought artistic supremacy over Italy during the second half of the 17th century, but further helps to demonstrate how Le Brun himself wanted to be perceived: beyond acting as a translator of the king's artistic ambition, the artist appears to have sought his own sovereign authority over the visual arts.
A Royal Passion is the first in-depth study of the Sun King as a patron of architecture. Surveying such monuments as the Louvre, Versailles, the Invalides, and other buildings that are closely identified with Louis XIV, Robert W. Berger demonstrates why these buildings, gardens, urban spaces, and their decorations were so important to him. Serving as functional necessities, objects of aesthetic delight, and as political statements, his architectural enterprises collectively underscored his absolutist authority. Moreover, by adopting the guise of 'builder-prince', Louis XIV reasserted his kinship with the Roman emperors, whose grandeur he sought both to emulate and to surpass.
Cultivated Power explores the collection, cultivation, and display of flowers in early modern France at the historical moment when flowering plants, many of which were becoming known in Europe for the first time, piqued the curiosity of European gardeners and botanists, merchants and ministers, dukes and kings. Elizabeth Hyde reveals how flowers became uniquely capable of revealing the curiosity, reason, and taste of those elite men who engaged in their cultivation. The cultural and increasingly political value of such qualities was not lost on royal panegyrists, who seized upon the new meanings of flowers in celebrating the glory of Louis XIV. Using previously unexplored archival sources, Hyde recovers the extent of floral plantations in the gardens of Versailles and the sophisticated system of nurseries created to fulfill the demands of the king's gardeners. She further examines how the successful cultivation of those flowers made it possible for Louis XIV to demonstrate that his reign was a golden era surpassing even that of antiquity. Cultivated Power expands our knowledge of flowers in European history beyond the Dutch tulip mania, and restores our understanding of the importance of flowers in the French classical garden. The book also develops a fuller perspective on the roles of gender, rank, and material goods in the age of the baroque. Using flowers to analyze the movement of culture in early modern society, Cultivated Power ultimately highlights the influence of curious florists on the taste of the king, and the extension of the cultural into the realm of the political.
The first book to examine how the vast gardens of Versailles were used as a setting for the receptions of ambassadors, heads of state, and other visiting dignitaries who conducted diplomatic and political business with France.
"In a many-sided examination of the artistic, cultural, and political worlds of Louis XIV, Thomas F. Hedin masterfully reveals how and why an elaborate fountain depicting the origin of frogs came to be the centerpiece of the gardens of Versailles"--
First director of the Académie royale d'architecture, François Blondel established a lasting model for architectural education that helped transform a still largely medieval profession into the one we recognize today. Most well known for his 1676 urban plan of Paris, Blondel is also celebrated as a mathematician, scientist, and scholar. Few figures are more representative of the close affinity between architecture and the "new science" of the seventeenth century. The first full-length study in English to appear on this polymath, this book adds to the scholarship on early modern architectural history and particularly on French classicism under Louis XIV and his minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert. It studies early modern science and technology, Baroque court culture, and the development of the discipline of architecture.
This richly illustrated volume, the first devoted to maritime art and galley slavery in early modern France, shows how royal propagandists used the image and labor of enslaved Muslims to glorify Louis XIV. Mediterranean maritime art and the forced labor on which it depended were fundamental to the politics and propaganda of France’s King Louis XIV (r. 1643–1715). Yet most studies of French art in this period focus on Paris and Versailles, overlooking the presence or portrayal of galley slaves on the kingdom’s coasts. By examining a wide range of artistic productions—ship design, artillery sculpture, medals, paintings, and prints—Meredith Martin and Gillian Weiss uncover a vital aspect of royal representation and unsettle a standard picture of art and power in early modern France. With an abundant selection of startling images, many never before published, The Sun King at Sea emphasizes the role of esclaves turcs (enslaved Turks)—rowers who were captured or purchased from Islamic lands—in building and decorating ships and other art objects that circulated on land and by sea to glorify the Crown. Challenging the notion that human bondage vanished from continental France, this cross-disciplinary volume invites a reassessment of servitude as a visible condition, mode of representation, and symbol of sovereignty during Louis XIV’s reign.
Architecture in France in the Eighteenth Century Wend von Kalnein French architecture of the eighteenth century - which exhibited great technical ability and refined taste - influenced architectural style throughout Europe. This handsome book is a survey of the French architecture of the period. It begins with the origins of the 'style moderne' under the last years of Louis XIV, discusses the end of Rococo and the return to antiquity, and concludes with the Revolutionary architecture and the house of Madame Récamier. Kalnein describes the development of palace and hôtel architecture by the two great architects de Cotte and Boffrand, discussing such large urban projects as the reconstruction of Rennes and the Places Royales. He traces the return to antiquity (which began when the scholars of the Académie d'Architecture were sent to Rome), the revolutionary architecture with its grand, but never executed, projects, and the shift from neoclassicism to early romanticism. Kalnein also examines the decorative arts of the period, which became even more important than architecture in the Rococo period. Focusing on such architects as Boffrand, Gabriel, and Redoux, he shows how a study of their building decoration illuminates the evolution of 'style moderne,' the battle between Rococo and Neoclassicism, and the dissemination of French styles throughout Europe.
As the author writes, "Versailles is the most famous palace in the world. Its name evokes, more than that of any other monument, the political institution of absolute monarchy and the aesthetic qualities of vast scale and bombastic display--features which are often evident in Baroque art." In 1668 Louis XIV decided to enlarge Versailles by preserving his father's building, the Petit Chateau, and by enclosing it in a new structure, the Envelope. This decision, and the history of indecision that went before and after it, are prominent themes in this book about the new Chateau of Louis XIV and its most important interior spaces. Architect of the Eveloppe Louis Le Vau departed from his usual Italian Baroque sources to draw upon Italian High Renaissance models for the first (and last) time in his career. Inside, the Escalier des Ambassadeurs was designed by Francois d'Orbay, who drew upon a slightly earlier project for a Louvre stair by Claude Perrault. The history of the frescoes in d'Orbay's staircase proves that decorative schemes at Versailles were especially susceptible to bearing imagery directly alluding to or representing contemporary events. Chapters on the Planetary Room and the Galerie des Glaces, then, continue the discussions of decorative themes and the pull between tradition and innovation in design. The palace at Versailles has been the subject of an abundance of published documents and modern art-historical studies; however, the investigator will discover that numerous art-historical problems are unresolved and there are new and fruitful questions to be posed. The author offers new solutions to old problems, explores new questions, and discusses artistic forms within a broader art-historical context than is encountered in past treatments. Though modern scholarship on Versailles has been strengthened by important studies by Alfred Marie, Fiske Kimball, and other who have drawn on both primary published sources and unpublished documents, Professor Berger has discovered that published sources of the late 17th century and the 18th century provide rich material that has as yet been underutilized.