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Vaux-le-Vicomte
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{{Short description|Baroque French château in Maincy}}{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2020}}- the content below is remote from Wikipedia
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History
(File:Nicolas Fouquet.jpg|thumb|upright|{{center|Fouquet}})Once a small château between the royal residences of Vincennes and Fontainebleau, the estate of Vaux-le-Vicomte was purchased in 1641 by Nicolas Fouquet, an ambitious 26-year-old member of the Parlement of Paris. Fouquet was an avid patron of the arts, attracting many artists with his generosity.When Fouquet became King Louis XIV's Superintendent of Finances in 1656, he commissioned Le Vau, Le Brun and Le Nôtre to renovate his estate and garden to match his grand ambition. Fouquet's artistic and cultivated personality subsequently brought out the best in the three.WEB,weblink Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte â Vaux le Vicomte, Vaux le Vicomte, 14 December 2015, To secure the necessary grounds for the elaborate plans for Vaux-le-Vicomte's garden and castle, Fouquet purchased and demolished three villages. The displaced villagers were then employed in the upkeep and maintenance of the gardens. It was said to have employed 18 thousand workers and cost as much as 16 million livres.WEB,weblink Vaux le Vicomte's and Baroque garden design, 14 December 2015, The château and its patron became for a short time a focus for fine feasts, literature and arts. The fabulist and poet Jean de La Fontaine and the playwright Molière were among the artists close to Fouquet. At the inauguration of Vaux-le-Vicomte, a Molière play was performed, along with a dinner event organized by François Vatel and an impressive firework show.Ernest C. Peixottop, Through the French Provinces, p. 73Fête and arrest
(File:Jean-Baptiste Colbert - Nanteuil 01.jpg|thumb|upright|{{center|Colbert}})The château was lavish, refined and dazzling to behold, but those characteristics proved tragic for its owner: the king had Fouquet arrested shortly after a famous fête that took place on 17 August 1661, where Molière's play 'Les Fâcheux' debuted.William Driver Howarth, Molière, a Playwright and His Audience, p. 43 The celebration had been too impressive and the superintendent's home too luxurious. Fouquet's intentions were to flatter the king: part of Vaux-le-Vicomte was actually constructed specifically for the king, but Fouquet's plan backfired. Jean-Baptiste Colbert led the king to believe that his minister's magnificence was funded by the misappropriation of public funds. Colbert, who then replaced Fouquet as superintendent of finances, arrested him.WEB,weblink Nicolas Fouquet, Vaux le Vicomte, 14 December 2015, Later, Voltaire was to sum up the famous fête: "On 17 August, at six in the evening Fouquet was the King of France: at two in the morning he was nobody." La Fontaine wrote describing the fête and shortly afterwards penned his Elégie aux nymphes de Vaux.After Fouquet
After Fouquet was arrested and imprisoned for life and his wife exiled, Vaux-le-Vicomte was placed under sequestration. The king seized, confiscated or purchased 120 tapestries, the statues and all the orange trees from Vaux-le-Vicomte. He then sent the team of artists (Le Vau, Le Nôtre and Le Brun) to design what would be a much larger project than Vaux-le-Vicomte, the palace and gardens of Versailles.Madame Fouquet recovered her property 10 years later and retired there with her eldest son. In 1705, after the death of her husband and son, she decided to put Vaux-le-Vicomte up for sale.Recent history
(File:Vaux-le-Vicomte Front2.jpg|thumb|upright=1.25|Rhythmic massing of the entrance front)(File:Vaux le vicomte 1.jpg|thumb|upright=1.25|View of the garden front)Marshal Claude Louis Hector de Villars became the new owner without first seeing the château. In 1764, the Marshal's son sold the estate to the Duke of Praslin, whose descendants maintained the property for over a century. It is sometimes mistakenly reported that the château was the scene of a murder in 1847, when Charles de Choiseul-Praslin killed his wife in her bedroom. He did so at their Paris residence, rather than at Vaux-le-Vicomte.In 1875, after thirty years of neglect, the estate was sold to {{Interlanguage link|Alfred Sommier|lt=|fr||WD=}} in a public auction. "He came for the [Charles] Le Brun paintings, especially those on the ceiling of the Chambre des Muses â he loved art," according to descendant Alexandre de Vogüé.WEB,weblink Before Versailles, There Was Vaux-le-Vicomte, Sotheby's, 25 December 2018, The château was empty, some of the outbuildings had fallen into ruin and the gardens were completely overgrown. Restoration and refurbishment began under the direction of the architect Gabriel-Hippolyte Destailleur, assisted by the landscape architect Elie Lainé. When Sommier died in 1908, the château and the gardens had recovered their original appearance. His son, Edme Sommier, and his daughter-in-law completed the task. His descendants continue to preserve the château, which remains privately owned.Since 1967, the owner has been Patrice de Vogüé, Alfred Sommier's great-grandson, who received it as a wedding present,WEB,weblink THE NEXT GENERATION, Vaux-le-Vicomte, 25 December 2018, with his wife Cristina, the Count and Countess de Vogüé. By that time, the estate contained only a few pieces that had originally been owned by Fouquet.WEB,weblink My Home is My Castle: Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, Outside Paris, France Today, 25 December 2018, For some time, the family occupied the first floor, and then the refurbished stables, of this largest private château in France with its 1,235 acres of gardens.WEB,weblink LE JOLI BUSINESS DU CHÃTEAU DE VAUX-LE-VICOMTE, Capital France, 25 December 2018, In 1968, the property was opened for public tours. A major restoration was completed starting in 1976 and it was continuing in 2017; the roof repair alone took six years. The Baroque ceiling in the Chambre des Muses, "decorated by Charles Le Brun's workshop",WEB,weblink THE RENAISSANCE OF THE SALON DES MUSES, Vaux-le-Vicomte, 10 September 2016, was restored in 2016â2017 and was first shown to the public in March 2017. The business is now administered by their three sons: Alexandre, Jean-Charles and Ascanio de Vogüé.« In memoriam : Patrice de Vogüé » in Hallier, L'Homme debout, Jean-Pierre Thiollet, Neva Editions, 2020, p. 285-289. {{ISBN|978-23-50552-17-0}} "We donât care about the aristocratic part of this life," said Alexandre de Vogüé, but they are determined to continue the preservation. "We have a ten-year plan, detailing what to do and when; a plan that includes a project of infrastructure restoration, restoration of the garden, and smaller projects; all with anticipated costs next to it. We make this list public for our donors, and people can sponsor a special project, such as restoring a statue in the garden," Alexandre told a reporter in 2017.Approximately 300,000 visitors arrive each year, 75% of them from France. Recognized by the state as a monument historique, the property is open most of the year, but closed for approximately two months in winter, 6 January to 22 March in 2019, for example. During the Christmas season, major decorations are installed: 150 trees, 10,000 items and 4,000 metres of garlands and lights, as well as a giant illuminated squirrel and angel, in 2018.NEWS, A festive outing to a fairytale French château: a day at Vaux-le-Vicomte, The Guardian,weblink 25 December 2018, WEB,weblink THREE CENTURIES OF HISTORY, chateaux-france.com, 25 December 2018,Features
Architecture
{{Multiple image |direction=vertical |width=220|image1=Veue et perspective du Chasteau de Vaux-le-Vicomte du costé de l'entrée - INHA (adjusted).jpg|caption1=Engraving of the entrance front|image2=L'Architecture française (Marot) BnF RES-V-371 038r-f83 Vaux-le-Vicomte, Plan (adjusted).jpgGardens
File:VauxC17engraving.jpg|thumb|17th-century engraving of the parterreparterreThe château rises on an elevated platform in the middle of the woods and marks the border between unequal spaces, each treated in a different way. This effect is more distinctive today, as the woodlands are more mature, than it was in the seventeenth century when the site had been farmland, and the plantations were new.Le Nôtre's garden was the dominant structure of the great complex, stretching nearly a mile and a half (3 km), with a balanced composition of water basins and canals contained in stone curbs, fountains, gravel walks, and patterned parterres that remains more coherent than the vast display Le Nôtre was to create at Versailles.Beatrix Jones, Le Notre and his Gardens, Scribner's Magazine, v.38 (1905), pp. 43â55The site was naturally well-watered, with two small rivers that met in the park; the canalized bed of one forms the Grand Canal, which leads to a square basin.Le Nôtre created a magnificent scene to be viewed from the house, using the laws of perspective. Le Nôtre used the natural terrain to his advantage. He placed the canal at the lowest part of the complex, thus hiding it from the main perspectival point of view.Leonard Benevolo, The Architecture of the Renaissance, pp. 714â723 Past the canal, the garden ascends a large open lawn and ends with the Hercules column added in the 19th century. Shrubberies provided a picture frame to the garden that also served as a stage for royal fêtes.Anamorphosis abscondita in the garden
(File:Kasteel van Vaux-le-Vicomte - Maincy 06.jpg|thumb|View of the gardens)Le Nôtre employed an optical illusion called anamorphosis abscondita (which might be roughly translated as 'hidden distortion') in his garden design in order to establish decelerated perspective. The most apparent change in this manner is of the reflecting pools. They are narrower at the closest point to the viewer (standing at the rear of the château) than at their farthest point; this makes them appear closer to the viewer. From a certain designed viewing point, the distortion designed into the landscape elements produces a particular forced perspective and the eye perceives the elements to be closer than they actually are. That point, for Vaux-le-Vicomte, is at the top of the stairs at the rear of the château. Standing atop the grand staircase, one begins to experience the garden with a magnificent perspectival view.Allen S. Weiss, Mirrors of Infinity:The French Formal Garden and 17th-Century Metaphysics, Princeton Architectural Press: New York, 1995, p. 33-51 The anamorphosis abscondita creates visual effects, which are not encountered in nature, making the spectacle of gardens designed in this way extremely unusual to the viewer (who experiences a tension between the natural perspective cues in his peripheral vision and the forced perspective of the formal garden). The perspective effects are not readily apparent in photographs, either, making viewing the gardens in person the only way of truly experiencing them.From the top of the grand staircase, this gives the impression that the entire garden is revealed in one single glance. Initially, the view consists of symmetrical rows of shrubbery, avenues, fountains, statues, flowers and other pieces developed to imitate nature: the elements exemplify the Baroque desire to mold nature to fit its wishes, thus using nature to imitate nature. The centrepiece is a large reflecting pool flanked by grottos holding statues in their many niches. The grand sloping lawn is not visible until one begins to explore the garden, when the viewer is made aware of the optical elements involved and discovers that the garden is much larger than it looks. Next, a circular pool, previously seen as ovular due to foreshortening, is passed and a canal that bisects the site is revealed, as well as a lower level path. As the viewer continues on, the second pool shows itself to be square and the grottos and their niched statues become clearer. However, when one walks towards the grottos, the relationship between the pool and the grottos appears awry. The grottos are actually on a much lower level than the rest of the garden and separated by a wide canal that is over half a mile (almost a kilometre) long. According to Allen Weiss, in Mirrors of Infinity, this optical effect is a result of the use of the tenth theorem of Euclid's Optics, which asserts that "the most distant parts of planes situated below the eye appear to be the most elevated".In Fouquet's time, interested parties could cross the canal in a boat, but walking around the canal provides a view of the woods that mark what is no longer the garden and shows the distortion of the grottos previously seen as sculptural. Once the canal and grottos have been passed, the large sloping lawn is reached and the garden is viewed from the initial viewpoint's vanishing point, thus completing the circuit as intended by Le Nôtre. From this point, the distortions create the illusion that the gardens are much longer than they actually are. The many discoveries{{examples|date=February 2018}} made as one{{who|date=February 2018}} travels through the dynamic garden contrast with the static view of the garden from the château.Use in film, television and popular culture
The château buildings and grounds have been used in at least 13 productions,WEB,weblink Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, Vaux-le-Vicomte, Seine-et-Marne, France, IMDb, 25 December 2018, a full 70, in fact, according to the owners.WEB,weblink Vaux-le-Vicomte takes you behind the scenes of film shootings, Sortir a Paris, 25 December 2015, For example, the property was used as the California home of the main villain Hugo Drax (played by Michael Lonsdale) in the 1979 James Bond film Moonraker.WEB,weblink Moonraker (1979), IMDb, 14 December 2015, It can also be seen in the background in the 1998 film The Man in the Iron Mask. In addition, the château appeared in several episodes of The Revolution, which is a documentary television series about the American Revolutionary War that was broadcast by History Channel in 2006. Australia's Next Top Model had a fashion shoot at the château for its 7th Cycle (Episode 02), televised in August 2011. A confused retelling of the Vaux-le-Vicomte story was given by character Little Carmine Lupertazzi in season 4 of HBOs The Sopranos. More recently, it featured as the Palace of Versailles for BBC/Canal+ production of the TV drama series Versailles.The château is one of the settings of Alexandre Dumas' novel (The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later).BOOK, Alexandre, Dumas, 1858, Chapter LXXVIII. The Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte,weblink The vicomte de Bragelonne; or, Ten years later, Volume 2, 361â364, 25 December 2015, The second most expensive wedding was held at the palace in 2004. Vanisha Mittal, daughter of British-Indian steel industrialist billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, held her wedding to Amit Bhatia, a British-Indian economist and businessman, at the château following their engagement ceremony at the Palace of Versailles. Kylie Minogue was paid $330,000 to sing at the wedding and the ceremony was followed by fireworks launched from the Eiffel Tower. According to a report in India Today,"over 35 craftsmen were flown in from Mumbai to erect a mandap on a pond in the sprawling gardens of the estate. Elephants made of fiberglass, minarets and a huge reception hall done up in pink were also put up. A lotus was designed in the pond and petals of all colour and shape scattered over it. Craftsmen were jetted in from India and florists from the Netherlands".NEWS,weblink 10 at Rs 240 crore, Lakshmi Mittal's daughter wedding was a statement of wealth, indiatoday.in, 2018-12-25, en-US, The Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte is the setting of Victoria's Secret first short film, Victoriaâs Secret Holiday 2016: A Very Private Affair., featuring Stella Maxwell, Elsa Hosk, Taylor Hill, Romee Strijd, Sara Sampaio, Josephine Skriver and Jasmine Tookes.WEB,weblink WATCH VICTORIA'S SECRET HOLIDAY 2016 AD, i4u, 14 February 2020,See also
- List of Baroque residences
- History of early modern period domes
- List of tourist attractions in Paris
References
- Notes
- Sources
- Ayers, Andrew (2004). The Architecture of Paris. Stuttgart; London: Edition Axel Menges. {{ISBN|978-3-930698-96-7}}.
- Hanser, David A. (2006). Architecture of France. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. {{ISBN|978-0-313-31902-0}}.
External links
{{Commons category multi|Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte|Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, jardins}} {{Coord|48.564851|N|2.714|E|type:landmark_region:FR|display=title}}{{Visitor attractions in Paris}}{{Authority control}}- content above as imported from Wikipedia
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