Gérard Sabatier “Versailles is a world in search of representation”

Professor emeritus of universities, and member of the scientific committee of the Research Center of the Palace of Versailles, Gérard Sabatier notably published Versailles or the Figure of the King and was curator, with Béatrix Saule, of the exhibition “The King is Dead! ".

Comments collected by Mathieu da Vinha, scientific director of the Palace of Versailles Research Center

Could you tell us about your first memory of Versailles?

Gérard Sabatier: It dates from the 1980s. I remember walking through the Hall of Mirrors and the Grands Appartements because at that time I was living mainly through Italian models and in particular those from the Farnese. I was trying to see how Versailles could – in its way – bear witness to the use of images to express the power of the prince. These are the images that I was looking for in the Versailles of the 1980s which was then mainly the concern of art historians and very little that of historians who considered, with a sort of snobbery, that these aspects of the monarchy were playful subjects and without interest. However, it was as a historian that Versailles interested me in understanding the influence of the pictorial manifestations of the palaces, to say the prince at least, at best, more than the texts.

After working on the rurality of Puy-en-Velay in the 1960s, how did we become interested in the representation of power?

G.S.: My first work and my first loves, which remain, were rurality and the relationships between lords and peasants, not only the relationships of domination but also the relationships of seduction. From the outset, what attracted me to the story was the material aspect of things, how the representation of power could be articulated with more or less prestige or more or less tools for example the shape of buildings. I had been working for many years, like most people of my generation, on economic and social history on which I wrote a few works. The abandonment of this theme occurred for two reasons. First of all, I was stationed in Grenoble while my sources were in Haute-Loire, Lozère, and Ardèche. But the main reason was above all that the thesis director I had at the time and whom I liked – Pierre Léon – was someone who worked mainly in industry and banking; he did not know much about the rural world, even if he was an extremely endearing man and concerned about the future of his students.

What happened then?

G.S.: Unfortunately, Pierre Léon died too early. I then had Pierre Goubert as director with whom I got along very well. But, in truth, what made me abandon these stories was that I had the impression that by working in the world of rural economics I was only bringing, like demographers, a small percentage to things that are already very well known. I lost all enthusiasm after a certain time... I was there, in Grenoble in the 1980s, when there was a great ferment between the Institute of Political Studies and the historians. We all started working on politics, and particularly on television which was making a big breakthrough, and on the importance of images in leading people to believe and making people believe. Showing, and making people believe was a theme that fascinated us. At the same time, with the arrival of François Mitterrand in power, there was an emergence of politics and the power of images and this is where Gérard Labrot arrived in Grenoble, who had worked a lot on southern Italy. and Papal Italy from the images. I then turned away from the rural world, without abandoning it completely, to focus on reading images.

And new perspectives opened up…

G.S.: Perhaps it’s a little presumptuous, but I realized that the only way to approach images was to do so from Versailles. As much as in Italy, some little princes were extraordinary scenographers, in Versailles there was only one! I turned to the castle of the “Sun King” in a personal approach, completely solitary and which was relatively successful. Unlike many, at that time I had no boss, no guide, no mentor. My rather chaotic and slow career was affected.

But, at the same time, you also had the opportunity to participate in a major European project…

G.S.: While I deepened my study of Versailles, a very large European project on the genesis of the modern State allowed me to refine my questions and my perspectives. This program, directed by Jean-Philippe Genêt, brought together more than a hundred European researchers; working with Friedrich Polleroß and Fernando Checa Cremades was very enriching for me. I also had the opportunity to meet Louis Marin and Daniel Arasse, with whom I had important and very rich discussions. The research that was carried out in Spain, Italy, and Austria made me feel a gap in the reading of Versailles not so much as a subject of art history but as a political instrument. I began to identify much more clearly what interested me, namely the iconographic program of the king's apartment, the Ambassadors' staircase, and even the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles for example. This program precedes the installation in 1682 and marks the culmination of the first Versailles. Saying whether it is baroque is of no importance, but it is a Versailles of images, of persuasion which is no longer the one after 1682. This is how I did my doctoral thesis with Daniel Roche (1).

In a 2013 interview (2), you called for a global history of Versailles combining the study of its functioning, places, texts, rituals, characters, and images. Would the program that you are leading today on the myth of Versailles (3) be an outcome or at least a response?

G.S.: This program, initiated by the Research Center of the Palace of Versailles, took some time to set up and posed a real problem. We found an extremely relevant angle through the use of the memories and feelings of the various foreign visitors who visited Versailles in the 17th and especially 18th and even 19th centuries, compiled in the database made by Flavie Leroux. From there, Versailles became, for the team working on the project, something that went beyond images, architecture, and the art of gardens, to encompass an art of living, a sociability, a way of governing but also an aesthetic. It is therefore a much more global approach to the Versailles object, which until now had mainly been seen through the fine arts, monumental, and material aspects. Now, it is more the institutional aspect that is revealed through the study of the people who lived there. We now know the Court much better than we knew it around thirty years ago; we know the strategies that were developed there and how it was a fundamental element within the kingdom as within Europe, a “cluster” as we would say today [laughter] which did not convey Covid but the ambitions of the people who lived there. There was this idea of French preponderance which was the goal pursued since François I and even more so from Richelieu than Louis XIV.

Flavie Leroux points out in her article the difficulty of differentiating “the French art of living” from “the Versailles art of living”. What would be the characteristics of Versailles for you?

G.S.: I have the impression that what characterizes Versailles is that it is a world in search of representation. We were at Versailles to be seen, under the gaze of power, even if secret negotiations existed. On the contrary, when the courtiers were in Paris, there was an air of freedom, even if we were still observed. Versailles was a permanent battlefield, unlike the Parisian salons where an aesthetic, a pleasure, an enjoyment flourished. The Court had a staid appearance, as shown in Leonhard Horrowski's book (4), but that did not last long. A dichotomy appeared during the reign of Louis XIV since he had several rooms and places of retreat. This phenomenon exploded under what Louis had to hold. This game of differences was reduced under Louis XVI who tried to reunify these two Versailles and simply play the role of king to the detriment of his role as a man. It was the queen who then played the role of the delicious, aesthetic, personal, etc. Versailles. This duality of the monarchy between the king and the queen during the reign of Louis XVI, Louis XV personally assumed...

Which leads to new perspectives…

G.S.: What we are trying to look for are all these lineaments that built the complex image of Versailles in the 17th, but especially in the 18th and 19th centuries, with all the games of adoption and repulsion that we could have had in a more complex 18th century.

Versailles therefore had the initial vocation of embodying the omnipotence of the sovereign’s power…

G.S.: Unquestionably under Louis XIV. First, there is this construction of images in the years 1670-1680. With the paintings, the statues, and the rooms, it was a matter of permanently creating a sort of mirror of the prince with the king in the middle and these images around him. Then, we focused less on these aspects of figuration or external figures but rather on aspects of figuration experienced and acted upon.

The ceremonial with getting up, going to bed, taking off your shoes, etc., replaces at that moment what seems to me the force of the images. The king no longer needs images, he has become that image.

But to represent what?

G.S.: The expression “absolute” power, the concept of which has now been worked on and studied accurately, is not necessarily adequate. Let us say the will of a king is superior to any other which originated in the Renaissance and reached its peak at the time of Louis XIV, then which was imitated in the 18th century by lesser sovereigns. At that moment, the image of Versailles will split.

Hugh Murray Baillie was the first to speak of Versailles as more of an exception than a model, what do you think?

G.S.: I don't think Versailles is an exception. I would say that the research shows what we, the French, had for a long time posed as "the" model, for reasons which had to do with nationalist ideologies during the interwar period when it came to show that we were still as we were in the 18th century, no longer holds today because we no longer have the same motivations. But, conversely, it is not a question of turning our backs either because the Versailles model, which we have studied and which we will study again in our conference in January 2022 (5), has continued to appeal. It was not thrown in the trash, far from it... We simply took from Versailles what we wanted to look for there and we found what we wanted to look for there! This imperialism, which had certainly been that of the court of the 17th and 18th centuries, was glorified in the interwar period and no longer holds today. All the texts exhumed by Flavie Leroux show that there was a kind of seduction of foreigners, and when some people were choosy there was always something that seduced them. I think of those English ambassadors who said to themselves that they had to be French to worship a prince in this way, but they were in adoration before the King of France! They only asked to have the same gardens, the same stairs, the same statues, etc. in their home. there was a sort of schizophrenia between fascination and the desire to point out what was wrong.

What remains of the influence of Versailles today?

G.S.: I think: only part of the reign of kings. To put it in a caricatured way, Versailles has become one of the meccas of world tourism and what remains of it is only the fantasy of omnipotence. It materializes through aesthetic means such as the Grandes Eaux for example and this way of “making” a Versailles of Louis XIV, as Peter Burke would have said, is denounced by some, in particular because of the reconstruction of the grid, the gilding, refurnishing, etc. Without criticizing this bias, we created an international cultural object to meet a demand. Where is Louis XIV’s Versailles in this? Of course, it is there in the buildings, in the paintings that we have restored but which perhaps should be better explained now. It seems to me that it has nevertheless become an international consumer item. In better terms, it is a place where you can walk and see. I don't want to say that it's a fantastic phantasmagoria either: in the time of kings, Versailles was a tool of government, a residence, all to impress visitors and express the power of the sovereign and therefore of France. Today it remains an object of power, but limited to France, and no longer an object of political power. It is a consumer product like one found all over the world, like the Angkor temple.

What is your favorite place in Versailles?

I would say that it is the house of the gardener Antoine Richard, which today is called the Jussieu pavilion in the Trianon area and where the Research Center was located until 2015. I have nostalgic memories of meetings at the Palace of Versailles Research Center between us, in this small house but in the great Versailles. I also remember the leisurely walk back through the park with my colleague, Professor Mark Hengerer. It was a haven of peace where flowers bloomed in spring and, just like Talleyrand, I think of the pleasure of living under the Ancien Régime!