Château de Choisy
The Château de Choisy was a royal French residence in the commune of
The Château of La Grande Mademoiselle
The site had been purchased well before 1680
The Château de Choisy was set in an elaborate series of gardens laid out by
The lost château is known today through engravings by Pierre-Jean Mariette, Gabriel Perelle and Pierre Aveline. Its interiors were well described in the Grande Mademoiselle's Mémoires.
The château passed in 1693 more accessible from Versailles.
Reign of Louis XV
In 1716, it was sold to
In spite of the loss of the immediately surrounding woods in favor of
The furnishings of Choisy were intentionally kept simple. The King's writing table for his use at Choisy, delivered by royal
The surrounding parish received an influx of business due to the royal presence, and a new parish church. For fêtes on the river at Choisy, the king had gondolas imported from Venice.
Later history
After the king's death, Marie Antoinette came often to Choisy, though at the time of the purchase of the Château de Saint-Cloud from the Orléans, it was briefly suggested that Choisy be part of the exchange.[14] Louis XV installed at Choisy the portrait he commissioned from Drouais of Marie Antoinette as Dauphine, in 1773[15] In 1777, when the Queen wished to build at Versailles a little theatre for private performances in which she joined, she instructed the architect Richard Mique to take for his model the theatre at Choisy built by Gabriel for Mme de Pompadour; as a result, the theatre, finished in 1779, though it is modest and fully Neoclassical on the outside, has an interior unexpectedly rococo for its date.[16]
The château and the petit château were royal residences; thus at the
Notes
- ^ Mémoires of Mlle de Montpensier, part iii, chapter 2: 1680: "Toute ma vie j'avois eu envie d'avoir une maison auprès de Paris...". The allées she had planted were already "coming along very well" by the time she wrote the memoire under the year 1680.
- alléeswhich are coming along very well" she remarked in 1680, but the reader scrutinizing the plan will notice that few of the allées begin or end at a place of great consequence, one sure mark of a strong-minded and enthusiastic amateur.
- ^ "On n'y voyait la rivière que comme par une lucarne",
- ^ Memoires of Mlle de Montpesier, part iii, chapter 2: 1680
- ^ "Comme j'ai fait bâtir ma maison pour y aller en été, j'ai pris mes mesures pour que l'on vît la rivière dans le temps où elle est la plus basse; de mon lit, je la vois et passer tous les bateaux."
- ^ Germain Boffrand, later an architect of repute, was paid this year for drawing plans of Choisy (Kimball 1943, p 38)
- ^ The Château de Meudon (demolished) was the property of Anne de Souvré, widow of Louvois.
- Versailles before it was removed to Choisy, where its erotic subtext was more appropriate. [1].
- ^ Four grand marble vases designed by Gabriel and ordered in 1742 were ready to be sent to Choisy in 1753, but the order never came. (John Goldsmith Phillips, "The Choisy-Ménars Vases" The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin New Series, 25.6 (February 1967, pp. 242-250) p 242).
- ^ It is conserved at the Hôtel de Soubise (illustrated)
- ^ Les attributs de la Musique and Les atributs de l'Art are conserved at the Louvre; the others are lost.
- ^ These were to be military conquests, needless to say, achieved by Louis' armies.
- ^ The bust was in the collection of Maurice de Rothschild in 1952. a terracotta modello is at the Victoria and Albert Museum. (Terence Hodgkinson, "A Bust of Louis XV by Lambert Sigisbert Adam" The Burlington Magazine 94 No. 587 (February 1952, pp. 37-41) p 37.
- ^ Mme de Campan's Memoirs, ch. xii [2].
- ^ Conserved at Chantilly (illustrated Archived 2006-07-01 at the Wayback Machine).
- ^ "Versailles: Le théâtre de la Reine". Archived from the original on 2007-05-04. Retrieved 2006-08-05.
References
- Marie-Emmanuelle Plagnol-Diéval et al., "Théâtres de société".
- Supper menu of Louis XV at Choisy, 17 August 1757.
- Fiske Kimball, The Creation of the Rococo (Philadelphia) 1943.
Further reading
- B. Champchine, Le château de Choisy (Paris) 1910.