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The Gardens Of Le Nôtre At VersaillesEditions
Review
This beautiful volume of plans by Jean Chaufourier and engravings by Jacques Rigaud gives us some insight into the unrivalled genius of Le Nôtre as he turned an unlikely marshy site into a 200 acres wonderland: a formal garden below the palace with parterres, clipped trees and over 300 sculptures giving way to an extended area where ‘allées’ and ‘bosquets’ of greenery contrasted with a shimmering system of canals and elaborate fountains, or as Voltaire described it ‘no less than the grooming of the wild’. The original folio on which this handsome facsimile edition is based is now in the museum at Versailles. It was commissioned by the Marquis (later Duc) d’Antin, son of Madame de Montespan who became the King’s mistress in 1667. While other books, mainly in the Bibliothèque Nationale, provide precise information on the plantings, in this album the scope and scale is breathtakingly caught in Chaufourier’s plans, while Rigaud’s engravings capture the extravagance and the magical atmosphere of one of the horticultural wonders of the world. - review by Stewart Grimshaw |
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John Sandoe [Books] Ltd |
The twenty-year renovation of the gardens at Versailles is currently at its half-way stage and already we have some idea of the outstanding standards which are being exercised on the systematic restoration of the great plan by Le Nôtre for Louis XIV. Under the exalted surveillance of Hubert de Givenchy (who seems to have succeeded Henri Samuel as official taste-bud to the French nation) the 22 acre King’s Vegetable Garden, designed in fact not by Le Nôtre, but by La Quintinie (the subject of an engaging novel, 
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