Two other 17th century drawings for Versailles

31/7/24 - Acquisitions - Versailles, Musée national du château - In addition to the pastel by Simon Vouet (see news item of 29/7/24), two other 17th-century sheets have recently joined the collections of the Château de Versailles. A study for the statue des Mathematics (ill. 1) in the Parterre du Midi was purchased from Jérôme Plouseau, the new president of the Friends of Versailles since April 2023, who had won it shortly before at the sale organised by Christie’s in New York on 1 February 2024. Appointed first painter to the king by Louis XIV in 1664, Charles Le Brun provided the drawings for the thirty-two allegorical statues for the south wing of the Château de Versailles, facing the garden, which were executed in stone by twenty-four sculptors between 1681 and 1682. As Bénédicte Gady points out in her article entitled ‘Charles Le Brun et les sculpteurs de Versailles. Étude de la genèse des statues de l’aile du Midi’ published in Versalia. Revue de la Société des Amis de Versailles in 2008, ‘the long façade required three groups of eight statues placed two by two on the attic above the columns, plus a group of eight figures on the south wing’.

1. Charles Le Brun
Study for Mathematics, c. 1680
Black chalk and grey wash - 24 x 12.2 cm
Versailles, Musée national du château de Versailles
Photo: Versailles, Musée national du château

See the image in its page

2. Statue of the Aile du Midi on the Parterre du Midi
Mathematics, c. 1681-1682
Stone - H. 243 cm
Versailles, Musée national du château de Versailles
Photo: Versailles, Musée national du château

See the image in its page

Executed c. 1680 in black chalk and grey wash, this drawing, which bears the handwritten note Mathématiques at the bottom, is a study for a statue of the group of eight figures in the southern forepart of the great façade representing the Arts and Sciences. The statues in the north and central forebodies represent the Muses and the ‘Forms and Virtues…