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 in Lorraine, 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" .
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 |
