The stones of a wall are part of the story of the water games of the Dragon and Neptune

Nowadays, the walker wishing to go to Trianon via the Queen's gate follows a shaded and discreet wall. However, if he slows down, intrigued by a slight offset on the sidewalk of Boulevard de la Reine, he notices its face is different from that of the nearby walls due to several vertical stonework. Thus, over around fifty meters, at the corners and from third to third, these stones reproduce, according to the old terminology of master masons in the 16th century, “stone legs”. These “legs” could be those of a giant who, in three strides from one corner to the other, would accompany this walker, holding the reader in another time – that of the 17th century – and in another space – that of the Versailles park.

By Ève Golomer, the doctor in the neuroscience of cognition and spatial arts and theoretician in garden art

The name “James de Pierre” appears on March 3, 1545, in the central minute book of Paris notaries (1). The text of a contract indicates that Guillaume Marchant I, master mason, bourgeois of Paris, promises to carry out the work declared in the estimate and “to erect eight legs of campaign stone on the two large sections of walls”.

Men and hewn stones

William Marchant I had also participated, in the first half of the 16th century, in the construction of notable architectural works as master of the king's masonry works (2). He had, in particular, worked on Philibert Delorme's plans for the construction of the Château d'Anet between 1547 and 1555. The general masonry mastery of the King's Buildings was made up of members who passed on knowledge to each other -from father to son. This family link, direct or acquired through marriage, leads us to the Versailles projects.

In the archives of the first works planned at Versailles by Louis XIII in 1623 for the courtyard of the new buildings of his hunting lodge, it is noted that it is for the enclosure walls close to the entrance that most materials were reserved. expensive and solid, with an interesting detail: “A coping of Saint-Leu stone will be placed on the wall to prevent rot. »

The Saint-Leu dessert stone, from a quarry located in the Oise valley, is a limestone dating from the Lutecian period. It has been used to build the great monuments of Paris and Île-de-France since the end of the 15th century. Robust, easy to extract and work, it has beautiful aesthetic qualities of golden yellow color.

The journey, through time and space, of the construction of the wall which is the subject of this article is that of the history of part of the northeastern fence of the Garden of Versailles, known as the “Little Park”. What landscape perspective does this wall hide?

Architectural construction site and spatial cognition

To reach us, these cut stones, in addition to their solidity and their location in the North, sheltered from the blazing sun and the prevailing westerly winds, have benefited from the constancy of high human values among the builders who succeeded one another over several centuries. These values, in particular respect for the work of predecessors, were shared by the members of the masonry sites of this wall. In terms of cognitive sciences, the current presence of these stones is the culmination of the implementation of the highest cognitive functions in each of these artisans. From the beginning to the end of the 17th century, the actions of the builders of Versailles were driven by two kings – Louis XIII and then Louis XIV – with the soul of artist-builders. Power gave them the means to realize their creative ideas, even if the financial situation of the kingdom sometimes forced them to postpone their realization.

Spatial cognition sheds light on the different cerebral processes involved in setting up and carrying out a masonry project. These processes occur at two levels of complexity, which have in common exchanges between team members through language and visuospatial qualities. The tasks to be carried out are either rather intellectual – developing a program with a mental representation of the goal to be achieved, organizing with strategy, anticipating a situation, and coordinating the stages of the construction site and its teams – or rather technical, and then bringing into play the expertise a fine perception of space requiring learning, memorization, attention, manual execution skills (constructive practices).

At each of the developments in the Versailles park, the different players intervene within a hierarchical team. The operation of Louis XIV's construction site was described in detail by Frédéric Tiberghien. The king makes the decision, then the superintendent of Buildings plans the tasks and designates the main stakeholders: the architect designs the plans with a draftsman and the master general in masonry of the King's Buildings takes care of their execution. The latter organizes with master masons the distribution of manual tasks on the site. Finally, the dexterity developed by stonecutters and masons allows the installation of the wall.

The first enclosure walls under Louis XIII

In 1623, having the habit of coming to hunt in the forests located south of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Louis XIII needed to build a small hunting lodge. He then chose a hill overlooking the village of Versailles and purchased the surrounding lands which belonged to the lordship of the priory of Saint-Julien de Versailles. His interest in this secluded place grew over time and his spirit as a builder led him to expand it, in several stages.

The first enclosure of the Versailles domain of Louis XIII was built in 1626. To acquire other lands, the king bought his entire domain, the second lordship of this rural location, in 1632 from Jean-François Gondi.

The first phase of work to expand the hunting lodge began in 1626 with the plans of the king's superintendent of buildings, Henri de Fourcy, successor to his father Jean de Fourcy. Then the second stage of the transformation of the small castle into a royal residence was carried out by the architect Philibert le Roy from 1630 until 1636. When he died in 1638, the architect François Sublet de Noyers took over until 1645.

The third phase of the expansion of the Versailles estate under Louis XIII took place in 1631: seven acres of land were acquired under the north wing (equivalent to 2.4 ha). They were added to the 7.25 acres (3 ha) acquired in 1621. The park wall was then built in July 1631, with a wall 10 feet high or 3 m.

At that time, the general master of the masonry works of the King's Buildings was René Fleury. Around 1618, he had succeeded François Sauvat, son-in-law of Louis Marchant son of William II, himself a former master general of the masonry works of the King's Buildings. The latter had received teaching from his father Guillaume Marchant I, a masonry expert who had worked on the construction site of the Château d'Anet.

To understand what the walls and grounds of the Palace of Versailles looked like at the end of the reign of Louis XIII in 1643, Jean-Claude Le Guillou reconstructed a topographical map and demarcated all of the territories that the king had united all around his new occasional home. There we find the northern part of the wall that is the subject of this article. At this period, the first north-east wall was designed, bordered by the new Trianon road. This wall enclosed the royal lands divided into four large parterres (in total 6 ha, or 17 acres). Under Louis XIV, they were to accommodate, with an extension at their north-eastern end, twenty-one years later, the Dragon Basin then, fourteen years later, that of Neptune.

To examine this wall in the same direction of the cardinal points as that of the aerial view showing the exterior facing of the wall facing true north, the details of each of the old maps that follow are oriented north down.

Transformations of the wall under Louis XIV

Each new water feature at Versailles expresses Louis XIV’s passion and positive emotions for gardens and water features. Under the orders of successive superintendents of the King's Buildings, Antoine de Ratabon (from 1656 to the end of 1663), then Jean-Baptiste Colbert (from January 1, 1664 to September 6, 1683), André Le Nôtre (general controller of the King's Buildings from 1657 to 1700) skillfully integrated gushing water features into the landscape through his mastery of garden architecture, surveying and hydraulic engineering. Thus, the north-eastern part of the garden wall was moved for the first time during the digging of the Dragon Basin, at the start of the reign of Louis XIV.

The master masons were André Mazière and Antoine Bergeron, son-in-law of Michel Villedo. The latter, born in 1598, had arrived very young from the province of La Marche (present-day Creuse) because the superintendent recruited the best workers nationally. This peasant mason then goes through all the stages within the team of expert masons of the king.

There is continuity in the construction by the architects: “The important element, seen from the outside, was the enclosure wall that Louis Le Vau, the king's architect, treated with care, but reproduced almost identically the one he had just built at the entrance to Vaux-le-Vicomte for Fouquet. »

This respect for architectural elements by reproducing them “identically” could be explained by the fact that Louis Le Vau I (father) was a stonemason. He probably knew the successors of William Marchant II, master general of the masonry works of the King's Buildings, who was to be a school for teaching the technique of these famous "stone legs" of the 16th century. At the time of the birth of Louis Le Vau II (son) in 1612, we can assume that his father had acquired his knowledge at the school of Louis Marchant, son of William II.

Furthermore, René Fleury was succeeded by Michel Villedo in 1635 (3), who had teamed up with Louis Le Vau II at Vaux-le-Vicomte in 1656. He therefore continued, at Versailles, to build with him and use his techniques for fitting cut stones.

Dating Research

There are few written documents on the history of the Dragon Basin. According to maps in the archives of the National Library of France, the basin would have been dug between 1662 and 1664. It was thus part of the first parties given at Versailles in May 1664.

In 1678, the wall that surrounded the Dragon basin to the north having been destroyed, the digging of the Neptune basin began. Its development lasted until 1684, a year after the death of Superintendent Jean-Baptiste Colbert. The first impoundment of the Neptune basin took place in 1685. This large body of water completes the north-south perspective. At the rear, a new boundary with rounded contours was then built: this is where the wall that concerns us completes its journey of around fifty years through the gardens of Versailles.

To clarify the mystery of the dating of the cut stones of the wall, other research is underway.

This wall, dedicated to a dynamic destiny, is a fine example of the characteristics of the art of construction: building and demolishing in the noblest sense of the term. Thus, it deserves that we are interested in each of its stages, from its construction to its deconstruction then its reconstruction, to enlarge the park of the Palace of Versailles and create, one after the other, two large pieces of 'water. By its location and the care given to it by the men of the sector of excellence who made it advance through the space of the gardens and participated in the conservation of the main elements of its initial structure in quality cut stones, it occupies a special place in the history of the Versailles estate.