Second Room of the Apartments at Versailles by Antoine Trouvain

Second Room of the Apartments at Versailles 1694 - 1698

0:00

print, engraving

baroque

print

group-portraits

france

portrait drawing

genre-painting

history-painting

engraving

Dimensions 13 x 16 3/4 in. (33.02 x 42.55 cm) (plate)

Antoine Trouvain created this print of the Second Room of the Apartments at Versailles using engraving. Notice how Trouvain uses a structured composition to depict a scene of courtly leisure. The symmetrical arrangement of figures around a central table is striking, as are the dense, linear patterns achieved through engraving, which create a rich textural surface. Trouvain uses a semiotic system of signs to convey the social codes and power dynamics of the French court, with the subjects’ clothing and posture communicating status. The careful attention to detail in the interior and the figures' attire reflects the values of representation and display in courtly society. It reveals an acute awareness of the gaze, both within the scene and from the viewer, emphasizing the performative aspects of aristocratic life. The formal elements—the texture, the play of light and shadow, and the compositional balance—invite us to decode the symbolic meanings embedded within the artwork.

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minneapolisinstituteofart over 1 year ago

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Versailles was known as a gambling den ("ce tripot"), and fortunes were won and lost in an evening of gaming in the Appartements. While Louis XIV was said to prefer billiards, cards were most popular among the courtiers, with games like Reversi and 21, along with roulette, which was forbidden by the Pope and banned in the city of Paris. By the late 1690s, the king spent less and less time at the evening entertainments, and Antoine Trouvain's engravings, not surprisingly, portray the younger generation of the court at play. Sitting at this card table with "Monseigneur," the Grand Dauphin or heir to the throne, are two of Versailles most fashionable ladies, Louise-Françoise, "Madame la Duchesse" (no. 4) and Marie Anne de Conti, "Madame la Princesse" (no. 2), both of whom were the illegitimate daughters of the king, by different mistresses, and thus half-sisters of the Dauphin. Their tenuous birth was rectified by the prestigious marriages arranged for them with two princes of blood.