The Petit Trianon (French pronunciation: [pəti tʁijanɔ̃]; French for 'small Trianon') is a Neoclassical style château located on the grounds of the Palace of Versailles in Versailles, France. It was built between 1762 and 1768 during the reign of King Louis XV. The Petit Trianon was constructed within the gardens of a larger royal retreat known as the Grand Trianon.
Design and construction
The Petit Trianon was built on the site of a botanical garden developed about a decade earlier by Louis XV, within the grounds of the Grand Trianon, Louis XIV's retreat. It was designed by Ange-Jacques Gabriel by order of Louis XV for his mistress, Madame de Pompadour, and was constructed between 1762 and 1768. Madame de Pompadour died four years before its completion, and the Petit Trianon was subsequently occupied by her successor, Madame du Barry. Upon his accession to the throne in 1774, the 20-year-old Louis XVI gave the château and its surrounding park to his 19-year-old wife, Marie Antoinette, for her exclusive use.
The Petit Trianon is an example of the transition from the Rococo style of the earlier part of the 18th century to the Neoclassical style of the 1760s and onward. It attracts interest in its four façades, each designed according to that part of the estate it would face. The Corinthian order predominates, with two freestanding and two engaged columns on the side of the formal French garden, and pilasters facing both the courtyard and the area once occupied by Louis XV's greenhouses. Overlooking the former botanical garden of the King, the remaining façade was left bare.
Marie Antoinette would visit the Petit Trianon to escape the formality of court life and to rest from her royal responsibilities. Since it was her private property, no one was permitted to enter the property without the Queen's permission. Only the Queen's inner circle (including the princesse de Lamballe and the duchesse de Polignac) were invited, which alienated the court nobility. In the spring of 1779, Marie Antoinette retired to the Petit Trianon to recover from illness after the birth of her daughter Marie-Thérèse. Her entire household came with her, as well as four male friends to attend her: the duc de Coigny, the duc de Guînes, the comte d'Esterházy, and the baron de Besenval. This innocent activity was in violation of court etiquette and caused gossip to circulate. This was just one of the 'malicious insinuations against her which became so common later on.'
The building was designed to require as little interaction between guests and servants as possible. To that end, the table in the salle à manger (dining room) was conceived to be mobile, mechanically lowered and raised through the floorboards so that the servants below could set it while remaining unseen. These tables were never built as Louis XV found them too expensive, but the delineation for the mechanical apparatus can still be seen from the foundation.
In the attic, a suite was constructed for Louis XV by Ange-Jacques Gabriel, consisting of antechamber, bedroom, and a private chamber. A staircase led from his private chamber down to the mezzanine where Madame du Barry resided. In Marie Antoinette's time, the attic apartment remained reserved for her husband, Louis XVI. The private staircase of Louis XV was removed, allowing a library to be constructed by Richard Mique. The mezzanine, which is above the Queen's apartment, was reserved for Marie Antoinette's lady-in-waiting and first lady-in-waiting.
Within the Queen's apartment, the décor of her boudoir features mirrored panels that, by the turning of a crank, can be raised or lowered to obscure the windows and reflect the candlelight. Her bedroom was provided with furniture from Georges Jacob and Jean Henri Riesener. Jacob designed a set of furniture for the room known as the mobilier aux épis, elaborately carved with flowers, which Marie Antoinette was greatly fond of, and garlands. It was upholstered in embroidered Lyon silk. The wallpaper was painted by Jean-Baptiste Pillement.
French Revolution and Republic
On 5 October 1789, Marie Antoinette was sitting in the grotto, located in the gardens, alone, as most of her friends had left France following the storming of the Bastille. Suddenly, a page appeared, bringing news of the imminent arrival of an armed mob from Paris. With the forced departure of the royal family the next day, the Petit Trianon was almost abandoned, except for the gardeners and other staff who continued to live there. Renovations that had been underway were interrupted, leaving large sums owed to builders. The former Queen's gardener, Antoine Richard, was appointed as curator of the gardens and plant nursery in 1792 by the Minister of the Interior. After the overthrow of the monarchy in September 1792, all of the furniture, artworks, and other priceless objects of the Petit Trianon, carefully curated over the years, were removed, sold, and scattered under a decree of the National Convention dated 10 June 1793. The auction began on Sunday, 25 August 1793, and continued until 11 August 1794. Silverware, lead, and brass fixtures were requisitioned for use in the arsenals. The sculptor Amable Boichard was appointed in April 1794 to remove the 'emblems of royalty and feudalism' from the property.
Under the Republic, the Petit Trianon underwent a number of changes. Declared national property, the land was divided into ten lots, the gardens narrowly saved from being destroyed. The city of Versailles proposed that a botanical garden be established, but this plan was never adopted. In 1796, the land was leased to a tavern. By 1801, the use of the grounds for dances and festivals led to neglect and vandalism. The buildings of the hamlet were reported to be dilapidated. Some improvements in the layout of the gardens were subsequently made, and a school located in part of the complex.
Empire
After years of neglect, Napoleon Bonaparte gave the building to his sister Pauline and later his second wife Marie Louise. Extensive refurbishing of roofs, piping, floors, and chimneys was carried out. The main rooms were repainted, and mirrors were installed to replace those sold or vandalised. Finally, paintings were hung and a bridge de la Réunion constructed to link open areas across a hollow road.
Château du Petit Trianon
The château du Petit Trianon is a building located on the grounds of Marie Antoinette's estate in the parc de Versailles, in the French department of Yvelines in the Île-de-France region.
Built by King Louis XV's architect, Ange-Jacques Gabriel, between 1762 and 1768, it is considered a masterpiece of Neoclassicism, combining the most modern taste with integration into the surrounding natural environment.
Built for Madame de Pompadour, who died before it was completed, it was inaugurated by Madame du Barry in 1768, almost twenty years after the first gardens were laid out in the King's new garden. Although it was the most imposing building on the Petit Trianon estate, it was not the first, but rather the continuation of a project spanning four decades. On his accession to the throne, Louis XVI gave it to his young wife Marie Antoinette, who gave it her stamp; forever associating the building with her.
With a square floor plan measuring twenty-three metres on each side, the building owes its distinctiveness to its four façades comprising five high windows punctuated by Corinthian columns or pilasters. Due to the sloping ground, the ground floor of the château is only accessible from the south and east sides; this floor is reserved for service areas. The 'noble' floor, entered via a grand staircase in a vestibule designed as an inner courtyard, contains the reception rooms and the Queen's rooms. A mezzanine with three rooms houses Marie Antoinette's library. On the attic floor, several apartments that once belonged to Louis XV and his entourage now evoke the 'ladies of Trianon', aka the other women who once used it.
The decoration, entrusted by the architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel to Honoré Guibert, is entirely based on nature and a taste for antiquity. A true architectural extension of the neighbouring gardens, the château is adorned with sculptures of flowers and fruit, the paintings are allegories of the seasons or flowers, and the furniture is embellished with rural motifs.
A symbol of the new monarchy, which aspired for more intimacy and tranquillity than the permanent representation imposed by Louis XIV, the Petit Trianon also reflected the fragility of the system condemned by the Revolution of 1789. Nevertheless, the 'women's palace' remained spared by the years, benefiting in the 19th century from the infatuation of Marie Louise, Hélène de Mecklembourg-Schwerin, and Eugénie de Montijo. The restoration campaigns carried out at the beginning of the 21st century have restored most of the grounds to the look as they had on the day Marie Antoinette left it for the last time.
Together with the château de Versailles and its outbuildings, it was listed as a historic monument in 1862 and by decree of 31 October 1906; and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979. It is now open to the public as part of the musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, within the Domaine de Marie-Antoinette.
Construction
In 1749, King Louis XV decided to regain possession of Trianon, which he had 'loved so much' as a child, but from which the pain he had felt in this refuge on the occasion of several bereavements had distanced him. Encouraged by his favourite, Madame de Pompadour, he had several buildings constructed on new plots of land to the north-east of the marble château, reviving the idea of a small country fantasy that had once prevailed at his grandfather's porcelain Trianon. A ménagerie was devoted to farm and barnyard animals, and two small pavilions were built within a new formal garden.
This garden space, the King's new garden, which allowed the King to develop his taste for botany and horticulture, was soon no longer sufficient. In 1758 thought began to be given to the construction of a small country château to close off the perspective of the French parterres. The first sketches were inspired by the prince de Croÿ's brand-new Château de l'Hermitage, designed according to a centred plan.
The project was delayed by the Seven Years' War, but these events allowed more time for reflection and fixed the hesitations of the first plans. The 1761 plan included only three windows per façade. Only the façade overlooking the botanical gardens has four transoms without a projection, but it is poorly adapted to the levelling. A circular pediment tops each central crossing, the whole being richly decorated, even overloaded. The proportions are poorly balanced and the staircases are too modest. It was not convincing and failed to overcome the indecision to which the King was often subjected.
The idea, later described as 'brilliant', was to increase the number of crossbeams per façade to five, giving the building more majesty than the first drafts and satisfying the demands of the site. The principle of four pilasters or columns, depending on the cardinal orientation, which regularly punctuate the high windows, was retained. In the end, stereotomy was preferred, characterised by purely geometric ornamental decoration. The building had a square plan and its dimensions, twelve toises per sideé, were determined by the width of the French garden. This choice of colossal order gave the building, despite its modest dimensions, a monumental character while preserving the harmony of its proportions.
The final decision was taken on 20 May 1762, and 700.000 livres were allocated to the construction as soon as the Treaty of Paris ending the Seven Years' War was signed. Louis Le Dreux de La Châtre, one of the best architects in Ange-Jacques Gabriel's team, was commissioned to build what is still known as the 'King's Pavilion'. Seventy-five stonemasons and one hundred and twenty masons were mobilised. The foundations were laid at the end of 1762. The structural work was carried out over the next two years, and the building was roofed in 1764. During the campaigns of 1765 to 1768, the sculptures, joinery, metalwork, and painting were completed. To give the decoration a fresh look, the King's traditional sculptors, Jacques Verbeckt and Jules-Antoine Rousseau, were replaced by a new artist, Honoré Guibert, who worked 'in the Grec style'.
Although the building was described as a masterpiece, it was not for its innovation or originality. Quite simply, the architect was able to assimilate various references, draw inspiration from the inventions and trends of the day, and assemble the best models from the most admired houses. This almost self-evident balance between the ancient and the modern–two seemingly incompatible genres–is concealed behind an apparent simplicity: in his novelty, Gabriel adds the elegance of the 18th century to the strength and nobility of the classicism inherited from Mansart.
The 'women's château'
From Pompadour to du Barry
The château was not completed until 1768, four years after the death of Madame de Pompadour. It was therefore used by Madame du Barry, Louis XV's new favourite. While the Grand Trianon remained the venue for parties and receptions, the Petit Trianon quickly became a place of intimacy. Pompadour had marked the project with avant-garde refinement in terms of art and decoration. The château was dedicated to flowers, the main ornament, but it belonged to the King: beyond the symbolism of the royal mistresses, the notion of harmony between the decoration and the surrounding gardens was omnipresent.
In a departure from his status as King, Louis XV gave up his inner chambers, the best situated in the château, to Madame du Barry, who made them her bedroom, while he took up residence in the attic. She was the first to stay regularly at the Petit Trianon, far from the hostility of the King's daughters and the Dauphin. It was in this château that the King, who came in the company of his favourite on 26 April 1774, felt the first symptoms of the illness that took his life two weeks later. The royal mistress, who had already been away from Versailles for five days, did not return, having received a missive from the new King, transmitted by the duc de la Vallière, instructing her to go to the convent of Pont-aux-Dames.
Marie Antoinette
For the first time, a Queen of France became the owner of a château: in June 1774, Marie Antoinette received the Petit Trianon as a gift from her husband, the new King Louis XVI. The place suited her aspirations perfectly, and she felt at home in the floral atmosphere that she had wanted but had not decided on: The bowls of fruit carved into the paneling by Guibert, the metamorphoses of divinities into flowers according to the wishes of Cochin and the brushes of Lépicié or Jollain, the country scenes composed by Lagrenée or Vien, the flower gardens and botanical gardens beneath her windows designed by Richard or Jussieu, the floral motifs on the furniture by Foliot or Joubert, everything was designed to satisfy the Queen's aspiration to escape the constraints of the court of Versailles to a world devoted to nature.
During the first few years, she made very few alterations. Her attempt to remove two paintings in the main dining room that offended her modesty was in vain. She inscribed her monogram on the banister of the staircase and removed the northeast staircase. It was only later, after completing her major garden landscaping project, that she undertook some renovations to her apartments.
In defiance of protocol, the Queen got into the habit of staying at 'her' château, with the King only coming to dine as a guest. Rules were made 'in the name of the Queen', not of the King; Marie Antoinette behaved like a simple lady of the manor, breaking away from royal ceremony and dress: 'At Trianon, I have no court, I live there as a private person'. She entertained her intimates: they played, sang, danced, played music, and strolled through the gardens. Men were invited, but neither they nor the King slept in the château. The women were the mistresses of the house, and several of them stayed in the Queen's suite: Madame Élisabeth, who looked after Madame Royale, Madame de Polignac, the princesse de Chimay, the comtesse d'Ossun, and Madame Campan. In ten years, she spent 116 days in her château.
This lifestyle was worthy of a calm youth with apparent simplicity, luxury, and pleasure. This story of a sovereign dreaming only of privacy was quickly turned into the most terrible rumours against Marie Antoinette.
Pauline Bonaparte and Marie Louise
The Petit Trianon, abandoned following the departure of the royal family in 1789, stripped of all its furniture at the auctions of 1793, and even temporarily transformed into a hotel, was made available to Pauline Borghese, favourite sister of Napoleon Bonaparte, in keeping with the tradition of this residence, which remained the 'women's château'. In 1805 all the rooms were repainted in various shades of grey. Carpenter Benoît-François Boulard was commissioned to refurnish the rooms similar to those of the ancien régime. Empress Joséphine, who would never use the Petit Trianon, was involved in the choice of fabrics and furniture, which were intended to be richer and more elegant than those of the ancien régime. Although the architect Trepsat ordered the return of the paintings deposited at the musée de Versailles during the Revolution, most of the frames remained empty during the Empire were replaced by wallpapers depicting landscapes or plain green. The work costed over 150.000 francs. The princess, who was very fond of the château, stayed there for almost two months in June and July 1805, then one last time in December 1809, when Napoleon returned to Trianon to prepare the estate for his new wife.The Empress, Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria, was the great-niece of the late Queen. Her marriage to Napoleon, whom she had been taught to hate, was a consequence of the 'Treaty of Schönbrunn', named after the palace where Marie Antoinette grew up. But she freed herself from these symbols and the difficult memories associated with the château, probably without thinking about it or out of inconsistency, and enjoyed Trianon. From the Grand, she escaped to the Petit, which, like Marie Antoinette, reminded her of the château de Laxenburg of her childhood. She stayed in her great-aunt's room, which had been completely redecorated, under a dome of silk embroidered in gold that concealed the original woodwork. She resumed the pre-1789 lifestyle: a ring game was reconstituted near the château, the small theatre was restored, and sumptuous parties were held in the gardens.
The duchesse d'Orléans
With the so-called July Monarchy, the Orléans family moved to the Grand Trianon in 1837. The Petit Trianon was given to the young couple then destined to succeed Louis Philippe: the duc and duchesse d'Orléans. They occupied the former Queen's bedroom and an attic apartment, largely retaining the Empire furniture, which was nonetheless rearranged and redone. Very quickly, with two new cabinetmakers, Alphonse Jacob-Desmalter and Louis-Édouard Lemarchand, providing additional new furniture, the château was refurbished to provide a different level of comfort. It was also adapted to modern conveniences, with the creation of two small bathrooms in the centre of the building and a private spiral staircase allowing better communication between the spouses' apartments. The residence was no longer a royal palace but a country home, adapted to the tastes of the time. The duchess, who continued to stay at Trianon after her husband's accidental death, was no longer fond of the château, which she found sad, considering herself to be 'in exile'. The place fell into oblivion after the departure of this last princess.
Under Eugénie de Montijo
Eugénie de Montijo felt a sympathy for Marie Antoinette that verged on devotion and created a veritable cult to her, so much so that this need for identification, pushed to the point of syncretism, can be seen in paintings by Franz Xaver Winterhalter depicting her in an evocation of the gardens of the Petit Trianon or in a late 18th-century style dress. On the occasion of the Universal Exhibition of 1867, the Empress wanted to organise a retrospective homage to the sovereign, welcoming the fact that 'her soul, after more than a century of wandering, was finally returning to its haven at Trianon'. Eudore Soulié, the first true curator of the château de Versailles, was responsible for assembling the works. On the instructions of Louis-Joseph Napoléon Lepic, aide-de-camp to Napoleon III and supervisor of the worksite, the small château was emptied of its Empire furniture, the façades cleaned, the paintings repainted, the damaged floors replaced and the doors repaired. In the absence of historical accuracy, the first floor was entirely furnished with 144 objects 'having been or presumed to have been for the Queen's use'. The restoration cost 5.000 francs. Following this event, the Petit Trianon became a museum dedicated to Marie Antoinette, the Queen whose myth was gradually beginning to take hold.
20th and 21st centuries
For more than a century, little attention was paid to the château, despite the efforts of curators, architects, and historians to bring the presentation more in line with what the archives reveal. However, the resurgence in Marie Antoinette's popularity at the end of the 20th century, accompanied by the release of blockbuster films devoted to her which helped to propagate the myth, has once again shed light on this small country château of a Queen of France who was alternately adored and reviled.
Description
The Neoclassical style is in contrast to the rocaille style of the Pavillon français, built by the same architect in 1750. Inspired by neo-Palladian architecture and possibly by drawings by Jean-François Chalgrin, the building, with its square plan and balustrade, rises over three levels and has a total surface area of 1.458 square metres. Surrounded by gardens, it can be seen from all sides, a form that was to be very popular until the end of the 18th century. Its four comparable façades, however, conceal subtle differences, dictated by the slope of the land, among other reasons. The façade facing west, the French Garden, is the richest: it is adorned with a forecourt of four isolated columns in the Corinthian style surmounted by capitals. On the south courtyard side, the ground floor is embossed horizontally, while the main floor and attic are punctuated with Corinthian pilasters. The north-facing façade has the same composition, but with only the two upper storeys, it opens onto the English garden via two ramps similar to those on the west side. The eastern façade overlooking the former botanical garden has a ground floor entrance, also with horizontal bosses creating a continuous base is devoid of columns or pilasters, the main decoration being intended for the pleasure gardens, to the detriment of the glasshouses and flowerbeds reserved for study. The sculptures adorning the cornices, architraves and window frames are nevertheless identical on all four sides, indicating a certain severity in this return to antiquity. The Italian-style flat roof is concealed by a balustrade.The decoration is marked by a subtle evolution in art and not by an absolute victory for modernity; while certain old habits remain, such as the shell or trophies of Love, they rub shoulders with new forms, in the sculpture or woodwork, whose motifs are directly inspired by the gardens of Trianon, such as the garlands of leaves or the profusion of fruit.
The ground floor, which is only accessible from the south and east sides due to the sloping ground, essentially houses the outbuildings. The terraces make it possible to conceal the passageways needed to service the Petit Trianon and in particular the connections with the ancillary buildings, such as the theatre and chapel. The first floor contains the reception rooms and the Queen's apartments. The King's chambers and the guests' rooms were located in the attic. The 'noble floor' is accessed directly from the porch. Seemingly open onto the gardens, the drawing room floor is located above a ground floor that overlooks, on the Versailles side, the small rectangular cour d'honneur rounded at the corners, redesigned in Marie Antoinette's time, framed by a small wall and a hedge of hornbeams and closed by a soft green gate flanked by two sentry boxes. Opposite is the avenue du Petit Trianon, which leads to the château de Versailles.
Ground floor
The ground floor, known in the 18th century as 'the underground passageways', is accessed via a vestibule with two doors opening onto a modest porch in the entrance courtyard to the south of the château. To the left is the guards' room and to the right is the billiard room, with the rest reserved for household use. Before the restoration work was completed in 2008, this floor was used to receive the public and provide services, and has now been returned to its original purpose; the entrance is via the Swiss house, as it was in the old days.
Lobby
The vestibule leads to the château's main staircase, which has two straight flights, is built of Saint-Leu limestone and adorned with gilded bronze and wrought iron railing, the work of locksmiths Louis Gamain and François Brochois. It has a broad design punctuated by oval medallions with rooster heads, originally bearing the figure of Louis XV, later replaced by that of Marie-Antoinette, and the letters M and A interlaced. The walls are simply decorated in ashlar, forming an ornamental transition between the interior and exterior. The floor is tiled in white veined marble and Campan green, a color reminiscent of the greenery in the gardens.
Set back under the flights of stairs, a door gives access to the low-vaulted warming room. On the half-landing of the staircase at the seventh step, another small door on the left leads to the former Chinese ring gallery via a long corridor created in 1781 – Marie-Antoinette's most important transformation of the château – and located under the terrace facing the French Garden.
Guards' room
An initial project in 1763 provided for a botanical library in this large room on the ground floor, but this was never built and, until the mid-19th century, it housed the bodyguards. For this reason, the décor was simple: the walls were decorated with a false stone panel and the parquet floor was made of thick planks. A few beds with mattresses and blankets had been installed, along with some storage units.
Following the restoration work in 2006–2008, the room now serves as an entrance for visitors to the estate, via a formerly closed corridor that links it to the chapel garden. The two paintings on display, by Austrian painter Johann Georg Weikert, were commissioned to be placed in the large dining room on the first floor and both depict the show given on 24 January 1765 at Schönbrunn on the honor of Joseph II's second marriage to the Princess of Bavaria. Marie-Antoinette had asked her mother Marie-Thérèse to make copies of these two paintings that she loved; in one of them, she appears at the age of ten dancing with her brothers a ballet-pantomime by Gluck, while the other depicts her older sisters performing the four Muses in an opera. On 18 March 1778 she received these works, of which she said: "They will increase the pleasure I get when I am in Trianon".
Billiards room
This corner room on the ground floor originally housed Louis XV's billiard table, which has now disappeared. The one commissioned by Louis XVI in 1776 from Antoine-Henry Masson, paumier-billardier of the Roi, measuring 414 by 219 cm, was made of solid oak and ivory, with fifteen turned legs. It was accompanied by twenty iron plates for the candles, twelve ivory balls for the Guerre or Carambole and around thirty tails, at a total cost of 3,000 livres. In 1784, Marie-Antoinette had it transferred to the first floor and it was replaced by another billiard table, of lesser elegance, for the officers of the guard. It was sold for 600 livres to a second-hand dealer called Rouger in 1794 during the revolutionary sales.
As the original billiard table had not been found, a restoration was undertaken in 2005 as part of a 50,000 euro skills sponsorship with the Chevillotte company, respecting the original materials and colors. After being displayed in the château's Petits appartements du Roi, it was returned to its original position in 2008.
The walls are fully paneled and the herringbone parquet flooring has also been restored according to the original plans. On the mantelpiece is a plaster bust of Marie-Antoinette based on the marble work by Louis-Simon Boizot, commissioned in 1781 by the Comte de Vergennes, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Two paintings hang on the wall: one by Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun depicts the Queen and the other, the royal family.