Louis XIV Research Articles

Prince Dmitry Golitsyn’s Program Speech “On Drawing” (1769): The Origin of the Text and Its Historical and Aesthetic Significance

The article is dedicated to the speech “On Drawing” by the honorary member of the Imperial Academy of Arts, Prince Dmitry Alekseevich Golitsyn (1734–1803), which he delivered in July 1769 at a solemn public meeting of the Academy. Its text was discovered in the Russian State Historical Archive in the middle of the 20th century and was long considered his original work, written first in French and then translated into Russian. The main outcome of the research conducted by the authors of this article was the discovery of the original source of this text by Golitsyn, namely the beginning of the dialogue of the same title from the French edition of the book by the English traveler and writer Daniel Webb “Recherches sur les beautésde la peinture” (1765). Since the Englishman’s book was the result of his tour to Rome, where he has met the scholar J. J. Winckelmann and the painter A. R. Mengs, an amateur art historian, Webb, retelling in his essay the thoughts of German theorists about imitation of ancient artists, unwittingly became a transmission link in the arrival of neoclassical ideas to Russia. Denis Diderot got acquainted with the French translation of Webb’s book before Golitsyn, wrote an essay about it for F. M. Grimm’s “La Correspondance littéraire” and, apparently, recommended it to the prince. However, Golitsyn did not copy word-for-word Webb’s text, but adapted it for his purpose — to compose a program speech to the high assembly of Russia’s main educational institution in the field of fine arts, which is gaining strength. Unlike Wincklemann and Webb, who appealed exclusively to the past, the Russian aristocrat, following Diderot, saw the future progress of modern art not in blind imitation of ancient masters, but in the revival of the emotional and intellectual power of ancient art through the efforts of free artists. The political conditions of the Russian Empire during the reign of Catherine II predetermined the laudatory tone of his speech in the spirit of the absolute monarchy of Louis XIV.

학생들의 출신지를 통해 본 생시르 - Fleury Vindry의 Les Demoiselles de Saint-Cyr(1686-1793)를 중심으로

Saint-Cyr lies at the intersection of the Catholic Reformation and the aristocratic policies of Louis XIV in the late 17th century. As evidenced by the fact that it was founded with the administrative and economic support of the absolute monarch Louis XIV, Saint-Cyr was an expression of the political will of the monarch to ultimately hold sociocultural hegemony by fundamentally cultivating subjects who would obey to the national authority through women education which is both pious and compliant to the patriarchal order. In this sense, Saint-Cyr illustrates the correlation of politics and education during the French absolute monarchy. Based on Fleury Vindry’s Les Demoiselles de Saint-Cyr(1686-1793), this paper analyzes the origins of the students who enrolled at Saint-Cyr from its opening in 1686 to its closure in 1793. This analysis shows that, while there was a regional bias in the origins of Saint-Cyr’s students in the early days of Saint-Cyr, over time “fragmentation of recruitment” or, an even nationwide distribution from the most central to the most remote parts was shown. This suggests that Saint-Cyr was not a school to educate some girls of interested local noble families into cultured women, but rather functioned to nationally propagate the political goals of the absolute monarchy through women who would become “first teachers” for their children and virtuous wives for their husbands.

The Perception of the French Policy of «Reunions» in the Second Half
 of the 17th Century by the Imperial Estates of the Holy Roman Empire

This article discusses the political position and perception of the Estates of the Holy Roman Empire regarding the French policy of «Reunions» of 1667–1697. The position of Brandenburg, Bavaria, Saxony, Braunschweig-Luneburg, Hesse-Kassel, Munster, Cologne, Trier, Mainz, Palatinate, Baden-Baden, BadenDurlach and Württemberg has been analyzed to varying degrees by the author.
 Some attention is paid to attempts to create an alliance among some of the Imperial Estates to resist the expansionist policy of the French king Louis XIV. However, the effectiveness of such alliances was insignificant as an attempt to create
 a combat-ready army. 
 As a result of the study, the author can state that the policy of «Reunions» was generally perceived negatively by the Imperial Estates. A number of officials of the Empire – Brandenburg, Brunswick-Luneburg, Bavaria, Hesse-Kassel and some others had significant financial resources and sufficiently combat-ready
 military contingents. This gave them the opportunity not only to fear a French invasion of the Empire, but also to effectively resist it.
 Some of them could only temporarily use France to weaken the influence of the emperor. There was an understanding among the German princes that France was a strong absolutist state and being in its zone of influence meant the loss of territorial independence.

Meredith Martin and Gillian Weiss. The Sun King at Sea: Maritime Art and Galley Slavery in Louis XIV’s France.

Meredith Martin and Gillian Weiss. <i>The Sun King at Sea: Maritime Art and Galley Slavery in Louis XIV’s France</i>.

Fabricating enchantment: Antoine Benoist’s wax courtiers in Louis XIV’s Paris

Antoine Benoist’s Cercle royal was an exhibition of life-size wax figures on display in Louis XIV’s Paris. In the absence of extant objects from the exhibition itself, this article focuses on the corpus of sources that attest to its reception. It concentrates on the Cercle royal’s initial recognition, beginning in the 1660s, when the exhibition centred on French royalty’s courtly entourage. Alternately celebrated as vivid miracles or derided as deceitful trivialities, Benoist’s wax figures provide an informatively problematic case for considering questions of sculptural craft and the decorum of its display in this era. In tracing the discord of wax portraiture’s reception, this article demonstrates that vexed questions of artisanal stature were embedded within aesthetic debates about illusionistic verisimilitude.

Analysing Western Classical Ballet with Bourdieu's Field Theory How to use it as a social stratification tool

Known as one of the representatives of elegant art，western classical ballet holds a certain status and influence in Western society, During the reign of Louis XIV in France, with his vigorous promotion, ballet gradually flourished, even serving as a tool for the king's prestige to achieve French national independence [1]. Through analyzing the phenomena of ballet in the western society, it can be found that classical ballet has become a social stratification tool in Western society. The learning threshold for Western classical ballet is relatively high, and students from upper-class society have more opportunities to receive high-level classical ballet education, while students from lower-class society often lack the corresponding capital and other issues to gain equal opportunities. However, ballet in China, through the combination of localisation and orientalisation, ballet has become a popular dance form for the Chinese public. This paper will analyze how Western classical ballet serves as a social stratification tool in Western society using Bourdieu's field theory, comparing with the social function of ballet in China.

Louis XIV’s “The City of the Sun”

The Versailles Park is a synthesis of the utopian fantasies of Tommaso Campanella and the urban baroque transformations of Rome, expressed through landscape architecture. Imbued with Campanella’s “mystical imperialism,” Louis XIV relegates the care of the palace to the background, building first and foremost a man-made landscape as a metaphor for the representation of absolute power. If the Baroque transformations of Rome are projections of private manorial spatial structures onto the layout of the city, the Park of Versailles is the opposite phase of this process initiated by the Roman pontiffs, that is, the projection of Roman Baroque urban structures onto the only truly private property in France at the time. The layouts of Versailles are an essence of Baroque, which could not be obtained either in Rome itself or in Paris with their dense buildings. Louis XIV contrasts Versailles with the capital of the Catholic world and the restless capital of his own kingdom. The park is saturated with didactic symbolism, expressing his concern for the education of worthy successors. The king himself draws up guidebooks and orders the publication of plans of Versailles in which the south is at the top, so that no one dares to look at his residence from the side of the sun he has appropriated. The appearance and semantics of the bosquets and fountains allegorically represent the spheres of interest without which power can be neither enlightened nor universal. However, the grandiose planning structures are only the skeleton; the flesh of the Versailles Park is the walls of trembling foliage, the marble and gilding of statues and decorations, the sparkling and hissing of fountain jets, bursts of sunlight in shadow, the contrasts of cosmic and obscure spaces that are playfully comfortable. The Park of Versailles is a center of sensual pleasures, reaching the peak of ingenuity in the extravagant day-and-night revelries. Through a sophisticated and unconventional stage direction, earth, air, fire and water — all four elements — stir the imagination, memory and thought in the Baroque Gesamtkunstwerk, which glorifies the Sun King.

Royal Companies, Risk Management and Sovereignty in Old Regime France

Abstract Shortly after William of Orange arrived in Devon at the outset of the Glorious Revolution in 1688, Dutch troops stationed in Dartmouth seized the Amitié, a ship laden with marble purchased for the French court at Versailles. This seizure precipitated an extraordinary insurance dispute in Paris between two little-known royal companies: the Royal Insurance Company and the Royal Marble Company. This article analyses the fractious dispute and the companies at its heart. In so doing, it reflects on the dispute as a product of the French state’s broader exploitation of companies as tools of risk management: the state leveraged private capital in order to spread the risks of its virulently anti-Dutch commercial policy. Yet the dispute also exposed the ambiguities of war and peace in seventeenth-century thought and practice. In justifying their refusal to pay out on the insurance policy they had signed on the Amitié, the Royal Insurance Company’s directors suggested that an insurer could decide unilaterally that France was in a state of war, thereby triggering a contractual clause that would shift the onus back onto the policyholder. Although Louis XIV himself stepped in to defuse the dispute at its most contentious moment, the state proved unable to respond to the challenge posed to its sovereignty, with significant consequences for the French insurance industry and maritime commerce up to the end of the Old Regime.

‘El Ajuar de Ana de Austria, Infanta de Espana, Reina de Francia’: An Introduction to Anne of Austria's Trousseau

In October 1615, the fourteen-year-old Infanta Anne of Austria began a journey that brought her from her native Spain to the court of France where she would become the wife of the French King Louis XIII and later the mother of Louis XIV, the Sun King. According to royal tradition, Anne's father, King Philip III of Spain, bestowed her with a wedding trousseau which included magnificent garments, jewellery, furniture, silverware and perfumes. The transcription of the trousseau was published in Spanish in 1949 and translated into English by this author. This article looks at the gowns, accessories, and linens listed in the royal inventory and refers to portraits of the young princess and other members of the Spanish Royal family. It examines an understudied archival source and contributes to the existing studies of dress as a marker of royal identity and as a tool in the political alliances through royal marriages.

Xiqu 2.0

Xiqu 2.0 designates an experimental approach to adapting and updating the classical theaters of the Sinophone region (xiqu) and a form of expanded Chinese opera in digital times. It highlights strategies of versioning and serialization of classical texts and tropes in (post-)modern performance environments and foregrounds media and textual interactivity, networking, and participatory contexts of production, reception, and circulation—including the production, reception, and circulation of cultural memory in the contemporary Sinosphere. The stage practice of Hong Kong–based multi-genre artist Danny Yung of Zuni Icosahedron and his long-term work with Tang Xianzu's Peony Pavilion (1598) illustrate the multiple dimensions of xiqu 2.0. Representative productions include the digital Kun opera Sigmund Freud in Search of Chinese Matter and Mind (2002, 2016) and the series The Interrupted Dream, launched in 2018. The latter links Tang's oneiric imaginary to the postcolonial critique of orientalism through references to seventeenth-century chinoiserie at the court of Louis XIV. Updated for livestreaming during the COVID-19 pandemic, the series served as a virtual channel of mediated memory across the digital Sinosphere in the aftermath of the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests and as a commentary on ancien and modern regimes, past and present revolutions, old and new Chinese dreams.

Transmission of Flower Traits and Fertility in Black Rose x Hybrid Tea Rose Cross Combination

Breeding studies of scented cut roses have gained significance recently. The Black rose, a naturalized old garden rose in Türkiye, is a valuable genetic resource for breeding programs due to its pleasant scent. This study investigated the fertility of the Black rose (Rosa odorata cv. Louis XIV, Halfeti rose) as a seed parent and its ability to transmit flower traits to offspring. Four commercial cut rose varieties with known pollen germination rates were used as pollen parents. Each combination underwent at least 33 pollinations, and the fruit set rate, the average seed number per fruit, and the seed germination rate were examined. Both parents and one-year-old F1 progeny were evaluated for petal number, scent, and flower color traits during two flowering periods. Cross-pollination resulted in fruit set rates ranging from 70.21% to 100.0%, average seed numbers per fruit ranging from 5.0 to 10.0, and seed germination rates ranging from 4.42% to 21.69%. Morphological characterization revealed that 5.05% of the progeny exhibited moderate to intense scent, 42.42% had sour cherry-colored petals, and petal numbers ranged from 9 to 54. Considering the overall efficiency of rose breeding programs, the findings demonstrate the promising fertility of the Black rose and its relative success in forming efficient combinations with hybrid tea roses. However, it also suggests that the Black rose is not as successful in transmitting the scent to its offspring as in transmitting the flower color.

Lyrische Deutungshoheit im Neunjährigen Krieg

Abstract A hitherto neglected battle of the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes was fought out in two lyrical poems celebrating the feats of Louis XIV. Boileau’s ode on the successful siege of Namur in 1692 calls upon the spirit of Pindar to stage the city’s capture in such a sublime way that the poem looses sight of the sun king. Perrault responds a year later with a rhetorically regularized ode that deploys a Horatian model in order to reassert royal authority as a continual triumph of victory and peace. Thus, the ancien chooses the subversive Pindar while the moderne prefers the (ostensibly) more imperial Horace. When William III retakes Namur in 1695 another, now British, response to Boileau conjures up both ancient odists. First Congreve lets his sovereign drown in the triumphant battlecries of soldiers that he amplifies in his ‘Pindarick’ verse and then, by means of a Horatian recusatio, rejects all responsibility for this drowning.

‘Triumph, victorious Love’: Le Triomphe de l’Amour (1681) and English dramatic opera

Abstract The French entertainment Le Triomphe de l’Amour was premiered at Louis XIV’s court in January 1681. A revised version was staged at the Paris Opéra in May 1681 with additional music and new scenic effects. Thomas Betterton modelled the final masque from his dramatic opera The Prophetess (1690) on the Paris version of the work, borrowing its theme and spectacular multi-stage machine effects, and some lyrics. Roger Savage has shown that the sleep scene from The Fairy Queen (1692) has ideas and text in common with Le Triomphe de l’Amour. A scenic effect in The Fairy Queen is also derived from the work. Given the literary and scenic borrowings from Le Triomphe de l’Amour in both dramatic operas, and Betterton’s role in adapting The Prophetess, he was almost certainly responsible for the Fairy Queen adaptation too. Some of Purcell’s music for The Fairy Queen emulates Lully’s music for the French work. Purcell borrows instrumental effects, stylistic features, and melodic and harmonic material. He may also have taken inspiration from the work in his treatment of the instruments in The Prophetess, though the influence of Grabu is more strongly apparent in this work. These borrowings provide further evidence that aemulatio remained core to both musical and literary composition—and was also applicable to theatrical staging—in late 17th-century London. Le Triomphe de l’Amour is an important work in the history of French musical theatre. Part of its legacy, in addition, is its substantial influence on English dramatic opera.

Determination of Breeding Performance on Halfeti Rose (R. odorata Louis XIV) In Crossbreeding

One of the factors influencing rose crossbreeding success is parental selection. The success rate of a breeder is influenced by factors such as ploidy level, pollen quality, seed number per fruit, and seed germination rate, which indicate parental productivity. This study was conducted to determine the productivity of Halfeti Rose (Rosa odorata Louis XIV) as a seed parent and its compatibility with the commercial rose varieties in terms of combination. Six commercial-cut roses (Inferno, Moonlight, Tineke, Black Baccara, Lady Rose, Speelwark) were used as pollen parents. Fruit set rate, seed number per fruit, seed and fruit weight, seed germination rate, and pollen germination rate were recorded. Among the commercial-cut roses, the pollen germination rate ranged from 7.82% to 23.55%. The highest pollen germination rate was observed in the Tineke and Black Baccara varieties, respectively. The fruit set rate of combinations where Halfeti Rose was used as the seed parent was determined as 63.75%, the number of seeds per fruit was 5.05, and the seed germination rate was 31.21%. Based on PCA and Heatmap analysis, Halfeti x Speelwark, Halfeti x Black Baccara, and Halfeti, x Lady Rose were found to be the most successful combinations. Halfeti Rose exhibited values close to the overall average in terms of fruit set rate and seed germination rate among rose breeding studies. The parameters mentioned in studies on rose breeding show that the Halfeti rose has the potential to be used as a seed parent.

Swift’s War and Peace

Abstract This article considers some of the military and diplomatic contexts which have been neglected in the study of eighteenth-century mock-heroic literature, with a particular focus on the early satires of Swift. Typically, mock-heroic literature is seen as a skilful exercise in a particular kind of literary style, and individual mock-heroic satires are usually contextualized by setting them alongside the military epics (e.g., the Iliad or Aeneid) which they seem to parody. This article takes a slightly different approach by setting Swift’s mock-heroic satires against the background of the Grand Alliance wars against Louis XIV (1688–1714), and by taking another look at his relationship with the retired diplomat and ambassador Sir William Temple. As will be discussed, Temple’s essay ‘Of Heroic Virtue’ offered Swift a model of civil heroism which could be defended or advocated in satire, and it is the influence on Swift of the period’s diplomatic, political, and legal writings which will occupy the core of this discussion.

The Conquest of Piemont. The War of the Spanish Succession, 1701-1714

The purpose of this article is to identify the features of military art as an integral part of Western European culture in the period of late feudalism using the example of a separate campaign of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714). The focus of the study is the military operations in Piedmont in 1704 and their reflection in the military documentation, memoirs as well as in the correspondence of Louis XIV, the French minister of war Chamillard with the French command in Piedmont and Savoy. The article examines an episode of Western European military history that has not yet been reflected in Russian historiography. It presents an interest in terms of the prospects for a comparative military-historical analysis of the era of Peter the Great and Europe on the eve of the Modern Age. The article reflects the conditionality of Western European wars by intra-dynastic conflicts and contest between the ruling monarchical houses as well as the typical features of Western European military art namely the decision-making mechanism within the framework of the so-called “cabinet” command and control, the limitation of operational goals, the positional nature of the strategy, the rejection of determinateness in favor of passive methodism, commitment to siege warfare and maneuver tactics, the growing role of military engineering and logistical support.

Mars as the broker of peace: Louis XIV, the House of Savoy, and the Republic of Genoa, 1672-1673

Attraverso questo saggio si cercherà di indagare l'incapacità di Casa Savoia, sotto il governo del duca Carlo Emanuele II, di ottenere una rapida vittoria sulla Repubblica di Genova, pur avendo sferrato un at-tacco a sorpresa, nei pressi del mar Ligure, nell'estate del 1672. L'umiliazione della guerra contro Genova del 1672 lasciò un vulnus psicologico, tanto che il figlio di Carlo Emanuele, Vittorio Amedeo II, fu abbastanza prudente da evitare un inutile conflitto con altri stati ita-liani, specialmente quelli che, come Genova, disponevano di una po-tenza navale superiore a quella dei duchi di Savoia. L'intervento di Luigi XIV per giungere alla firma di un trattato di pace tra i belligeranti - il trattato di St-Germain-en-Laye (1673) - determinò un ulteriore imbarazzo per Carlo Emanuele, i cui sogni di gloria militare dovettero infrangersi dinnanzi alla scarsa efficienza bellica.

Collaborative Artisanship: Medals at Louis XIV’s Royal Mint

During Louis XIV’s reign, royal medals were fabricated in a workshop called the Monnaie des Médailles, situated at the heart of artisanal production at the Louvre. Medals were produced by a series of men appointed by the king, but the Monnaie des Médailles achieved administrative perfection under master goldsmith Nicholas Delaunay, who transformed the workshop into a space of performative display, where the king’s most important visitors could marvel at the quality of medalmaking equipment and witness the process of medal striking. Although scholars of medals tend to attribute specific medals to individual artists, struck medals do not correspond to contemporary ideas about the work of art’s authorship. Here, we reconstruct six stages of making – design, modelling, production of punches, dies and flans, followed by striking – to elucidate the artisanal process and place these objects back into the hands of their producers.

In the Dungeons of the Château d'If: French Protestant Galley Slaves under the Reign of Louis XIV

In the Dungeons of the Château d'If: French Protestant Galley Slaves under the Reign of Louis XIV

Between the Public and Private in Visions of the Court of Versailles: Reports of Travellers from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

Many noblemen from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth travelled across Europe in the eighteenth century. One of the obligatory places in their itinerary was Paris, especially Versailles — a symbol of court created by Louis XIV. During any stay in Versailles, the most important point on the agenda would be to see the court. There was no particular problem with attending the public audience, but travellers wanted to see the court up close. Depending on several factors (date of the source, age of the writer, purpose of the journey, degree of intimacy with the court, etc.), the accounts of the court of Versailles vary from descriptions of royal apartments and ceremonies (both secular and religious), through to detailed reports of political events, and accounts of private conversations with the royal family and the French elite during meals. This article presents different depictions of the private and public spheres at the court of Versailles observed by travellers from Poland and Lithuania and attempts to show the various perspectives on privacy at the court of Versailles.