To enjoy for Christmas....
These gorgeous, beautifully re-imagined, rococo interiors are by Vicente García de Paredes, a Spanish artist who settled in Paris in 1884 where he specialised in 18th-century genre scenes. His watercolours were very popular at the time and were widely reproduced, notably in Le Monde Illustré. They appear regularly at auction.
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| "Her Best Hand" - sold by Sotheby's in 2018 |
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| "The Raconteur" - sold by Christie's in 2015 |
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| Cenotaph of King Stanislas, Église Notre-Dame-de-Bonsecours, Nancy |
Death and autopsy
It had taken King Stanislas eighteen long days to die.
Immediately following his death, he was laid out on his bed, with his face and hands uncovered, surrounded by candles. Six canons from Lunéville sang prayers around the body. The doors to the apartment remained open and people were free to enter.
The following day, Monday 24th February, at six in the morning, the body was transported into the "chambre de la balustrade" (which room was this? I'm not sure). Here it was exposed on a lit de parade, again surrounded by candles. The clergy and Court officials were seated nearby with careful attention to rank: on the right was an armchair to accommodate the Cardinal de Choiseul-Beaupré, Stanislas's Grand Almoner, with stools for his confessor Father Louskina and the other palace chaplains; on the left were folding chairs for the First Gentlemen of the Bedchamber and principal officers of the Royal Household. Beyond the balustrade two altars had been set up, draped in black, where masses could be said. Six members of the regular clergy sang psalms continuously.
King Stanislas to Marie Leszczyńska, 3rd February 1766
[probably the last words he ever wrote in his own hand]
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| The death of Stanislas. From an illustration by Ksawery Pillati for the collection "Images of Polish princes and kings" (1888). [Wikimedia] |
On Wednesday 5th February 1766, at about half-past-seven in the morning, the aged Stanisłas Leszczyński, former King of Poland, now Duke of Lorraine, was alone in his chamber at Lunéville when he accidentally fell into the open fire and sustained serious burns. Despite the best endeavours of his doctors, he suffered terrible agonies and died eighteen days later. Both at the time and subsequently, there were rumours of negligence on the part of Stanislas's attendants. However, since there were no eye-witnesses, what happened can never be known with absolute certainty.
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| This photo and the those below are from Wikimedia, taken in 2011 |
This sad little building, just a stone's throw away from the Château in Lunéville, is the "Petit Château" or "Château de la Favorite", once the residence of Leopold's youngest son, Charles-Alexander. Like the palace itself, it is the work of the renowned 18th-century architect Germain Boffrand. In 1999 the property was sold off by the municipality, and, since that time, "it has not ceased to deteriorate" .
Here are some notes from another of Pierre Boyé's evocative studies, this time concerning King Stanislas's relationship with his grandchildren, the offspring of Louis XV and Marie Leszczyńska. Boyé's article was originally published in the Mémoires of the Lorraine Archaeological Society in 1922 where it prefaces a collection relevant documents, and letters from Stanislas's copious correspondence.
Births
"If ever anyone, after the marriage of a cherished child, was eager to become a grandparent", writes Pierre Boyé, "that person was was Stanislas". Clearly, apart from any personal considerations there were huge political and dynastic interests at stake.
The marriage between Louis XV and Marie Leszczyńska took place on 5th September 1725. At this time Stanislas, and his consort Catherine Opalińska were resident at Chambord. "Astonishing notes" from the duc de Bourbon and Cardinal de Rohan made Stanislas privy to the intimate secrets of the royal wedding night. After months of false alarms and anxiety, in March 1727 he was finally able to announce with joy his daughter's first pregnancy. His correspondents were treated to bulletins on the most private details of her condition - Pierre Boyé found himself "embarrassed to follow the King of Poland into such territory"(p.219-220).
On 7th May he reported that she has felt the first movements of her "precious fruit"; on 25th that she has her first milk. On 1st June he announces that a pastoral instruction had been issued, by order of Louis XV, to implore divine mercy for a safe delivery.
On morning of 14th August 1727, Marie Leszczynska gave birth to twin girls, Louise-Élisabeth and Henriette. A courier hurried with the news to Dyé-sur-Loire where the Polish royal couple were taking refuge from the malaria-ridden swamps of Chambord. On the 23rd, Stanislas visited his new granddaughters in Versailles, and pronounced himself enraptured by the two "little dolls".
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| Madame Louise-Élisabeth of France and her twin sister Henriette. Attributed to Pierre Gobert. Château de Versailles (Wikimedia) |
Since the devastating fire of 2003 at Lunéville, there has been a renewed academic interest not only in re-imagining but also in re-conceptualising the lost gardens of King Stanislas. This post summarises a lecture given at the Institut Européen des Jardins et Paysages in 2022 by Thierry Franz, director of the Musée du Château, which discusses some of the latest research.
[11: 35] A princely gardener of the Rococo era
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| Jean Pillement (?), Portrait of Stanislas in a crown of flowers, c.1760-70. Musée lorrain, Nancy. |
Stanislas's own first experiments in garden design date from around 1715 when he was installed by Charles XII of Sweden as ruler of the principality of Zweibrücken in the Rhineland-Palatinate. Here, with the aid of a Swedish architect Jonas Erikson Sundahl, he constructed the small summer residence generally known by its Turkish name Tschifflik. This building, which still survives today, has been extensively studied by the Polish scholar Jan Ostrowski. The design recalls the Turkish pavilions or "kiosks" which would have been familiar to Stanislas from exile in Bessarabia in 1709, but also shows contemporary Italianate influences.
A full understanding of Stanislas's building projects in Lorraine is hampered by a lack of documentary evidence. In contrast to the extensive archives of Leopold and Francis III, few records survive from the time of Stanislas. The loss of his building accounts is to be particularly regretted. However, thanks to newly published manuscript journal of Nicolas Durival, we now know that, scarcely three weeks after his arrival at Lunéville, when he was still moving into the apartments, the Polish king was already actively planning improvements to the park laid out by Leopold.
Thierry Franz's detailed discussion begins with some of the smaller properties which Stanislas embellished in the course of his reign. No trace survives of any of these gardens; they are now known only from the engravings published by Héré in his Recueil des plans of 1752-53, through contemporary accounts, or through paintings, a number of which were commissioned by Stanislas himself for his private apartments at Lunéville or the gallery at Einville.
La Malgrange
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| André Joly, Château de La Malgrange, seen from des Goulottes, Musée Lorrain, Nancy. Wikimedia The"Tableau Gillet" This picture, which is probably belonged to Stanislas, shows the building work as yet unfinished. |
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| The residences of King Stanislas - adapted from Google Maps |
Chanteheux
Stanislas rapidly settled into a fruitful and creative relationship with his architect Emmanuel Héré. In the years 1738 to 1741 the latter embarked on a whole series of projects for his royal master: the château at La Malgrange and the nearby church of Bonsecours (1738-41); the Trèfle (1738) and the Pavillon de la Cascade (1743) at Lunéville; and the Hôtel des Missions in Nancy (1741-43). It was in 1741 too that he began work at Chanteheux to the east of Les Bosquets on an ambitious new pavilion which was to be the Trianon of Stanislas's "Versailles lorrain".
[continued from previous post]
 Contemporary plan of the Bas Bosquets c.1750 |
| https://pop.culture.gouv.fr/notice/memoire/IVR41_20165410760NUC2A |
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| Anonymous view the Bas Bosquets with the Chartreuses in the foreground. |
At Lunéville, Stanislas also inherited the Park of "Les Bosquets" to the rear of the palace, which he embellished and ultimately extended to cover some 30 hectares. The landscaping work under Leopold had been directed between 1711 and 1719 by Yves des Hours, a disciple of Le Nôtre, who set out a jardin à la française of classical design. The remains of the ancient town fortifications were used to provide the axis for the main terrace, with a series of formal parterres flanked by wooded walkways ("les bosquets"). The waters of the River Vezouze fed a new Grand Canal overlooked by three grassed and sloping paths. In 1724 Louis Gervais, future architect of the park at Schönbrunn, took over from Des Hours, bringing with him elements of more innovative, characteristically Rococo garden design (see Refs).
An ambitious hydraulic system had been put in place from 1710 by the engineer Didier Lalance. The Grand Canal formed the northern boundary of the Park whilst, to the east, a feeder canal channelled further water from a reservoir in the bois de Mondon, ten kilometres away. In 1731 a hydraulic machine or "tower" (designed by by PhilippeVaryinge (1684-1746) and built by Jacques Richard "fontainier du duc") was installed on the level of the grand canal, capable of elevating five jets of water to a height of sixty feet.
Under Stanislas the original layout of the formal gardens was retained with additional planting, fountains, water features and, in particular, further statuary. (Pierre Boyé comments: "A nature which was already constrained was tormented more."[Boyé (1910), p. 65]). The marshland which still surrounded the Grand Canal was reclaimed and and the Park extended to the north and east. It was in these peripheral areas that Stanislas was able to show his originality by siting splendid new garden structures.
What remains?
The restoration of the modern park, which is still ongoing, aims to reproduce the formal parterres and surrounding "bosquets" as they appeared during the reign of Duke Leopold, the time when the gardens are best documented.
At Lunéville itself Stanislas's alterations to the palace were limited. The interior configuration changed little from the time of Leopold - though the furniture and most of the fittings, having been carried off to Vienna, necessarily needed replacing. Details of Stanislas's decor are difficult to reconstruct since the contents of the palace were systematically dismantled and sold at the time of his death. Only the a few inventories survive to provide clues. In addition a small number of items were pre-empted for the French crown and can be traced in French national collections.
The following description is translated from Pierre Boyé's study "Les Châteaux du roi Stanislas", which was first published in the Revue Lorraine illustrée in 1907:
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| View of the Château de Lunéville from the courtyard in the mid-18th century (from the Recueil of Emmanuel Héré) |
So much of the pleasure of history lies in discovering the little details of lost lives! In the case of King Stanislas we are fortunate to be able to profit from the thoroughly researched and stylishly presented accounts of the early 20th-century Lorraine scholar Pierre Boyé. The following evocation of Stanislas's daily routine is translated/abridged from an article of his, which first appeared in Le Pays lorrain for 1932.
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| Attributed to Nicolas de Mirbeck, Stanislas smoking his pipe. First half of the 19th c. Musée lorrain. http://journaldedurival.fr/html/galerie.html |
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| Portrait of Stanislas by Jean-François Foisse dit Brabant (1708-1763) Acquired by the Musée du Château de Lunéville in 2016. |
In 2014 I wrote a post on the portraits of Marie-Antoinette by Lorraine artist François Dumont. Since then several new portraits have appeared at auction including, remarkably, just last month, this beautiful miniature concealed in a snuffbox, which is said to have been carried by Louis XVI on the flight to Varennes.
I thought it might be an opportune moment to revisit my earlier essay, particularly with reference to the depiction of the Queen in antique costume, or "en vestale", of which the new miniature is a significant example.
[For International Women's Day]
By an odd quirk of history, whereas Marie Curie has been awarded the honours of the Pantheon, the body of the 18th-century's greatest female scientist, Émilie du Châtelet, lies under a completely anonymous black stone slab, in the nave of the parish church of Saint-Jacques in Lunéville. As the French has it, "elle est piétinée depuis 1749"; generations of worshippers and visitors have simply trampled over her grave as they enter the church.
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| Église Saint-Jacques, Lunéville |
An unmarked grave
To add to my posts on the Carmelites of Compiègne, the following translates / summarise a paper by Jean-Clément Martin on the Revolution and the concept of martyrdom, first published in 2012 (and now available on Academia). In J.-C. M.'s view, the language of sacrifice and commemoration was central to the common experience, and to subsequent memory, on both sides of the Revolutionary struggle.
Martyrs et Révolution française, autour du sacré
To find an appropriate vocabulary also remains problematic, for example whether to distinguish "victims" from "martyrs", or to talk about "religion" in general... Rival traditions have their different emblematic figures: Marat, Robespierre, Bara on the one hand, the Royal family and the "martyrs of the faith" on the other... What follows offers only a sort of "Japanese path", laying down a few stepping stones to suggest a possible route.
I want to understand why this era was obsessed with sacrifice, why different movements and groups vied with each other to claim the glory of martyrdom; and above all why this glory has been "awarded" in national memory only to representatives of the Catholic religion.
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| Paul Delaroche, Guillotine/ The Martyrs of Compiegne. Painted in the first half of the 19th century. Private Collection (Auctioned in New York in 2017) |
MARTYRS WITHOUT PERSECUTORS?
The canonisation of the Carmelites of Compiègne in December represents a significant testing point in relations between modern French Catholics and the legacy of the French Revolution.
One of the few non-Catholic historians to comment so far is the Paul Chopelin, Maître de conférence at the University of Lyon III, president of the Société des études robespierristes and a specialist on the relationship between society and religion. For Chopelin, the canonisation represents "an affair at the heart of a long conflict between memory and history, which is not yet extinguished" x.com @ChopelinP, post of 18.12. 2024 ]
In Chopelin's view, after two centuries of hostility, the Church has made its peace with the Republican regime, but has yet to formulate a consistent attitude towards the legacy of the Revolutionary aggression. The canonisation throws this omission into relief: "The memory [of the Carmelites] raises a very French problem; that of the anti-religious violence by the Revolutionaries and their reception to day. It is a question that is largely taboo, both socially and in the histories. [Commenting to La Vie, 21.12.2024 ]
Is this a fair analysis? Here are a few preliminary thoughts.
Even for assiduous relic hunters, there are pathetically few material reminders today of the martyred sisters of Compiègne. However, the website of the French Carmelites offers a short "pilgrimage", which I have tried to follow (not in real life, just on Google Maps!). We start off with a "promenade in Compiègne"
Le Carmel de France, "Les Carmélites martyres de Compiègne - Faire le pélerinage"
https://www.carmel.asso.fr/Faire-un-pelerinage.html
On 7th August 1792 the National Assembly ordered the municipalities to verify the official inventory made two years previously. The verification, seizure and removal of the convent's entire furnishings was only actually carried out on 12th September. All items were seized and transported to the former St. Corneille Abbey, the general depot for Compiègne’s confiscated church goods... Madame Philippe mentions, in particular, the disappearance at this time of the large collection of fine, life-size wax figures composing the monastery’s celebrated “crèche.” Its numerous spectacular tableaux of richly dressed images were set up not only at Christmas, but also at other times by royal request. With an indignation rare for her, Madame Philippe opines that those magnificent wax figures had all been melted down to make the candles illumining the works of darkness fomented by revolutionary committees during their sinister nocturnal meetings. It was on September 14, with their housing assured and their civilian clothing acquired, that the community finally emerged from their stripped monastery... (William Bush, To Quell the Terror, p.91-92)
The contents of the Carmel were definitively sold off in November 1794, by which time the buildings had already been transformed into a military hospital.
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G. Molinari (1906), The Carmelite martyrs mount the scaffold, 1906. Carmel de Compiègne |
The Château de Haroué in Lorraine offers an illuminating case study of the issues surrounding recent heritage policy in France.
Sometimes known as the "Chambord lorrain", the Château was built by Germain Boffrand in the 1720s for Marc Beauvau-Craon, Prince de Craon, and has the indubitable distinction of having remained in his family ever since. It was first opened to the public in 1964.
The small village of Haroué (pop.500) is located just south of Nancy, near the border of Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany. It is billed as within easy driving distance of Basel, Strasbourg and Karlsruhe - though, more problematically in terms of the tourist map, it is a solid 2.5 hours from Paris.
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| Minnie de Beauvau-Craon, photographed for the New York Times in 2013 |
