When Branding Was Fit for a King
From the heroic Bernini bust of the young French king in 1665, a noble face framed in tumbling curls; to the florid poseur in his coronation robes, painted by Hyacinthe Rigaud in 1701, Louis XIV was the role model for creating an image and a myth.
It is hard to believe that the palace at Versailles, the king’s actual and spiritual home, has never held an exhibition focused on the man who created this illustrious tourist magnet.
Yet “Louis XIV, l’homme et le roi” (Louis XIV, The man and the king, which runs through Feb. 7) is the chateau’s first attempt to put its founder in perspective. The exhibition covers the royal cultural enthusiasm for furnishings, artworks, tapestries, and the busts and bas-reliefs that propagated his image and spread the myth.
An exceptional amount of material remains from this period, even if the French Revolution, a century after the apogee of Louis’s reign, shattered the royalist dream — literally, in the case of a marble equestrian statue that was smashed so thoroughly only Louis’s ankle remains.
You would not expect Versailles to put its Sun King in anything but a flattering light. One of the most beguiling displays among the eight rooms is dedicated to music and dance, and it includes an image of Louis at 15 costumed as “Le Roi Soleil,” his hair spreading into golden beams to match the sunburst shoes and the fringed edge to a peacock feather skirt.
One of the most arresting aspects of the royal images through a 72-year reign is that Louis allowed himself to be depicted as growing old, warts and all — or, in the case of a ghostly wax portrait by Antoine Benoist in 1705, with even the scars of childhood smallpox imprinted on his cheeks.
The acceptance of aging as part of majesty, shown by a thickening figure and blemished skin, is epitomized by Rigaud’s famous and flamboyant Louis X1V portrait. Below the ermine and fleur-de-lis robe, his corpulent figure is balanced on bowed and buckled shoes. But the king was not, as had been claimed, fresh off the dance floor in his famous Hall of Mirrors, according to the exemplary research by the exhibition’s curators, Nicolas Milovanovic and Alexandre Maral.
The taste and craftsmanship of royal objects — some like a Baroque marquetry cabinet on loan from the Duke of Northumberland and back at Versailles for the first time since the French Revolution — enforce the triple image of the Roi Soleil. He is depicted as a patron of the arts, a valiant leader in war and a scrupulous supporter of religion. The sheer volume of objects at the highest level include cameos, gilded Boulle tables, equestrian portraits, historic tapestries and images of performing arts like music and ballet.
The king or his courtiers also seem to have clicked on the 17th-century version of the “manage my image” long before the most basic of media communications.
In the final room are busts and statues that were disseminated across France, often taking as a template the Bernini bust that sets the standard at the show’s opening. Although many of the noble equestrian creations disappeared during the Revolution and the Terror that followed, remaining bas-reliefs enforce the message that this was a king whose image was paramount.
Who was Louis the man? At the entrance to the exhibition, the romantic vision is of the young man as Apollo — the original sun god — surrounded by nymphs in a marble grotto sculpture by François Girardon and Thomas Regnaudin.
Since the famous portrait by Rigaud was originally done as a gift for the king’s grandson, it is possible to imagine that Louis embraced his family as much as his lineage.
Yet the greatest monument to Louis XIV is Versailles itself. From the imposing chateau (its cornices freshly gilded) to the park and garden landscapes by André Le Nôtre, the Sun King created an image that has him up there in the stratosphere of the immortals.
Like all famous brands, just “Louis” is enough, three and a half centuries on, to define a man, enduring French taste and a historic period in time.