Tag Archives: Artist – Jean Le Pautre (1618-1682)

The Fireworks of Versailles: a public display of the world’s most advanced pyrotechnics has lighted up the French King’s palace and its spectacular waterworks and gardens since the 17th century.

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Feature image: 18 août 1674: feu d’artifice sur le Canal, 1676, by French Academy designer and engraver Jean Le Pautre (1618-1682). Flamboyant ephemeral architectures were erected at Versailles for a 17th century summer evening on the Canal that forms the base of elaborate pyrotechnics. Public Domain.

When the French Sun King, Louis XIV (reign, 1638-1715) made his decision to build a palace complex at Versailles, surrounded by the greatest gardens and waterworks the world had ever seen, fireworks (feux d’artifices), were an essential part of the grand entertainments which the king put on for the French court and the thousands of visitors who assembled to celebrate for various special occasions.

King Louis XIV of France (1638-1715), the Sun King, whose sense of monarchial grandeur and power was linked to the 17th century concept of light. The young king settled in Versailles, not because the site itself was especially reflective of his intentions for transporting his court to a place outside of Paris for entertainments but because the memory of his father, Louis XIII (1601-1643) remained attached to this marshy valley, to this original hunting manse, and its modest garden. The Versailles palace, waterworks and gardens are not adapted to the site, but the site, despite shortcomings of its natural setting, adapted to the grandiose scale of the royal project. PHOTO credit: “King Louis XIV, 1638-1715 / Roi Louis XIV, 1638-1715” by BiblioArchives / LibraryArchives is marked with CC BY 2.0.

For the next 100 years major productions were mounted at Versailles of fireworks and illuminations. While fireworks originated in China, it was Rome that embraced them first in the 14th century and began Europe’s courtly and popular tradition of shooting off rockets to entertain and celebrate the public. Not to be outdone, the French had soon imported Italian artists, architects – and fireworks experts whose displays in France became Europe’s grandest. A major reason Louis XIV moved the court to the suburbs was to escape cramped Paris in the Louvre and so afford these large and majestic lawn and garden entertainments fit for a king. These “divertissements du Roi” involved not just fireworks and illuminations but festivals of music, dance and theater plays.

Décoration du feu d’artifice et de l’illumination de la place de Louis XV, à l’occasion de la paix, et la dédicace de la statue équestre du Roi, le 22 juin 1763. Chez Louis-Joseph Mondhare (1734-1799), rue S. Jacques à l’hotel Saumur. Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie. Public Domain. See – https://www.europeana.eu/en/item/9200518/ark__12148_btv1b8409645h?q=paix%20paris%201763 – retrieved July 14, 2024.

One of the greatest of these entertainments occurred in 1770 with the arrival of 14-year-old Marie Antoinette (1755-1793) from Austria who was to marry the heir to the throne. Louis XV’s (1710-1774) largesse included a guest list of thousands for festivities that lasted for many days. These displays included the participation of the French Academy of Science who studied and advised the king’s staff (“bureau de Menus-plaisirs“) on how to launch 20,000 rockets into the sky at the same time followed by the simultaneous lighting of 15,000 lanterns in the gardens.

Portrait of Archduchess Marie Antoinette, by Swedish-Austrian Martin van Meylens the Younger (1698-1770), c. 1768, Schönbrunn Palace, Vienna. Public Domain.
Even today, crowds of visitors flock to Versailles just to the west of Paris, where they gather to see the most advanced pyrotechnics that are reflected in and enhance the palace’s grandiose and expansive waterworks and gardens.

SOURCES:

Les Jardins de Versailles, Pierre-André Lablaude, Editions Scala, 1998, pp. 38-39.

https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/leading-lights-why-sydneys-nye-fireworks-pale-in-comparison-to-the-pyrotechnics-of-versailles-20161130-gt0dyj.html – retrieved July 11, 2024.