La galerie des Glaces : un modèle emblématique ?

Abstract

Mirror cabinets and galleries, pier mirrors, and cheminées à la royale emerged as the features to follow in Europe at the end of the 17th century. Drawing on the ARCHITRAVE project’s critical edition of travel accounts, this article analyses how German travellers perceived and reacted to the decorative use of mirrors in the Grande Galerie at Versailles and, more generally, to this decorative fashion in French interiors at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries. Louis XIV’s gallery was an iconic example of this type of architectural decoration in Europe, but did it evoke unanimous delight among contemporary foreign travellers and did it serve as a model? Ranging across absorption, adaptation, copy or rejection, it also examines the influence and circulation of French decorative schemes with mirrors, highlighting the major links and shifts that emerged with the typology of the Spiegelkabinette and the Spiegelgalerien in the Empire’s courts.

Keywords

• Galerie des Glaces
• Versailles
• Paris
• travelogue
• mirror
• pier mirror