Terms and conditions of use
The ballroom in the gardens of Versailles
(La salle de bal donné dans le petit parc de Versailles)
1678
plate 4 from Relation de la feste de Versailles du 18 juillet 1668 (An account of the festival given in Versailles on 18 July 1668) (1679)
Medium
etching and engraving
Measurements
26.9 × 40.8 cm (image) 31.4 × 41.5 cm (plate) 45.6 × 59.0 cm (sheet)
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Gift of Mr George Collins Levey, 1879
Gallery location
18th Century Decorative Arts & Paintings Gallery
Level 2, NGV International
About this work
While Jean Le Pautre portrays the ball held in the gardens of Versailles as an orderly and elegant affair, contemporary accounts suggest that the palace struggled to accommodate the estimated 1,500 attendees of the 1668 festival. According to the ambassador of the court of Savoy, ‘There had never before been such a great crowd of people … combined with the lack of care and preparation’. The pavilion erected for the ball proved far too small, and foreign ambassadors attempting to enter were reportedly ‘pushed, turned away [and] beaten’ by inexperienced officers and bodyguards ‘who hardly [knew] to do anything except make war’.
Artwork Details
Place/s of Execution
Paris, France
Catalogue/s Raisonné
IFF 931
Inscription
printed in ink l.l.:La Salle du Bal donné dans le petit Parc / de Versailles
printed in ink l.c.: IV
printed in ink l.c.r.: Aula frondibus et virgultis septa, ad saltationes et choreas / ducendas parata, In Hortis Versalianis
printed in ink l.r.: le Pautre sculps. 1678.
Accession Number
p.183.88-1
Departments
International Prints / International Prints and Drawings
This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of the Joe White Bequest