This book was published on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of André Le Nôtre’s birth and of the exhibition presented at the Jeu de paume of the Domaine de Chantilly between April 12th and July 7th, 2013, with the support of the Caisse d’épargne de Picardie.
This book was published with the aid of : The Cercle des entreprises mécènes of the Domaine de Chantilly. The American Friends of Chantilly
The Domaine de Chantilly is grateful to the sponsors who made possible the restoration of the plans from the 17th and 18th centuries of Chantilly: The Fondation des Parcs et Jardins de France (nos. 14, 18 and 200)
The Amis du musée Condé (nos. 19, 20, 135, 140, 202, 204 and 205) who also restored the painting from Jean-Marie Nattier (no. 194)
Previous pages p. 1 – The Gardens and the Château de Chantilly, aerial view. © Jean-Louis Aubert p. 2-3 – The Château de Chantilly. © Béatrice Lécuyer-Bibal p. 3-4 – The Grand Degré, the Flowerbed by Le Nôtre et the Statue of Connétable Anne de Montmorency. © Béatrice Lécuyer-Bibal
This book was produced under the direction of Somogy Art Publishers Graphic Design: Marie Donzelli Production: Michel Brousset, Béatrice Bourgerie and Mélanie Le Gros Proofreading: Jeanne Cheynel Translation: Lisa Davidson and Barbara Mellor Editorial Coordination: Astrid Bargeton
© Somogy Art Publishers, Paris, 2013. ISBN 978-2-7572-0662-1 Legal registration of copyright: April 2013 Printed in Italy (European Union)
Andr茅 Le N么tre and the
Gardens at Chantilly in the 17th and 18th centuries
Nicole Garnier-Pelle With Astrid Grange
Prefaces by Gabriel de Broglie, Chancellor of the Institut de France, and His Highness the Aga Khan, President of the Fondation de Chantilly
Acknowledgements We are very grateful to all those who have made it possible to have this celebration of Le Nôtre at Chantilly: Marie-Bénédicte Astier-Dumarteau, Gérard Auguier, Jean-Pierre Babelon, Marc-Alexis Baranes, Roger Bechet, Philippe Bélaval, Élisabeth Belmas, Yves et Annabel Bienaimé, Olivier Bosc, Alison Botterill, Patricia Bouchenot-Déchin, Harry Bréjat, Serge Briffaud, André Bruneau, Hervé Brunon, Yves Buck, Luc Camino, Roland Cardot, Claude Charpentier, Géraldine Chopin, Olivier Damée, Maxime Dargaud-Fons, Georges Farhat, Léa Ferrez-Lenhard, Claire Fons, Jean-Louis Fraud, Sarah Gillois, Emmanuelle Heaulmé, Christine Kayser, Jérôme de La Gorce, Gabriela Lamy, Marie Lemaire, Stéphanie Letrain, Stéphanie Méséguer, Jérôme Millet, Monique Mosser, Candice Nancel, Frédéric Nancel, Nicolas Neumann, Patrick Offenstadt, Laurent Parain, Florent Picouleau, Cameron Rashti, Philippe-Georges Richard, Aurélia Rostaing, Marina Rouyer, Béatrix Saule, Peter Trowbridge, Didier Wirth. We are indebted to Claire Fons for reading the catalogue text, and particularly for her work on the English translation.
Graphic art restoration: Hélène Bartelloni, Laurence Caylux, Sophie Chavanne, Christelle Desclouds, Isabelle Drieu La Rochelle, Régis Fromaget, Anna Gabrielli, Laurence Lamaze, Sophie Lennuyeux-Comnène, Ève Menei, Marie-Christelle Poisbelaud. Paintings restoration: Florence Adam and Juliette Mertens. Golden-wood frame restoration: Marie Dubost. Scenography: Decoral (Patrick Bazanan and Valéry Sanglier).
Contents
Preface by Gabriel de Broglie, Chancellor of the Institut de France Preface by His Highness the Aga Khan, President, Fondation de Chantilly
10 11
I. THE CHANTILLY GARDENS IN THE 17TH CENTURY André Le Nôtre (1613–1700): A Self-Effacing Celebrity 14 The Art of Gardens at the Time of Le Nôtre 18 Le Nôtre and Chantilly 20 Le Nôtre’s Attachment to Chantilly 22 Le Nôtre’s Entourage and his Working Methods 23 Chantilly before Le Nôtre 28 Work Begins: The Creation of the Grand Parc (1662–63) 34 The Parterre de l’Orangerie (1663–64) 42 The Grand Parterre (1665–66) 51 The Grand Axes and the Château Entrance (1673–74) 55 The Cascade and the Head of the Canal 68 The Maison de Sylvie 70 The Western Park and its Fountains 77 The Cascades de Beauvais 78 The western fountains in the park 84 The Grandes Cascades 88 Trelliswork and Topiary 93 The Faisanderie 101 The Ménagerie (1683–89) 106 The Pavillon de Manse (1677–79) and the Hydraulic System within the Park 114
The Flower Garden Fêtes and Entertainments at Chantilly in the 17th Century Illuminations and Fireworks The Maze Other entertainments at Chantilly A 17th-Century Artistic Genre: Views of Gardens The Gardens at Chantilly and 17th-Century Literature
120 123 125 126 138 140 142
II. THE CHANTILLY GARDENS IN THE 18TH CENTURY The Duc de Bourbon (1692-1740) and the Chantilly Gardens in the 18th Century 148 Design of the Petit Parc by the Duc de Bourbon 154 Games and entertainments in the Chantilly Park in the 18th Century 168 The Île d’Amour and the Île des Jeux 188 Sleighs and Ice-skating 194 The Pavillon de l’Eau Minérale 196 Prince Louis-Joseph (1736-1818) and the gardens of Chantilly in the second half of the 18th Century 200 The Temple de Vénus 207 Anglo-Chinese garden and the Hameau (1774–75) 209
Chronology 218 Selected bibliography 220 Notes 221 Picture Credits 224
Prefaces “Remember all the gardens you have seen in France – Versailles, Fontainebleau, Vaux-le-Vicomte and the Tuileries, and above all Chantilly”: with these words, written two years before his death in 1698, Le Nôtre showed his special attachment to the gardens at Chantilly, today owned by the Institut de France. He went on to explain with pride how all the work had been to his own design, “down to the last avenue and entrance”, and to expound on the improvements he had carried out there from 1662. For Le Nôtre, the gardens he made at Chantilly for Louis II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, were more important even than his creations at Versailles, Fontainebleau or Vaux-le-Vicomte. Yet initially the site had seemed far from auspicious: on his first visit to Chantilly in 1662 he had been greeted by the prospect of a marshy valley and an irregular hotchpotch of buildings, with a Renaissance chateau tacked on beneath a medieval castle. The overall impression could hardly have been further from the spirit of order, reason and symmetry that was so intrinsic to French classicism. But Le Nôtre saw straight away that Chantilly possessed one great advantage: it had water in abundance, including a river, moat and lakes, which his genius would tame and transform into magnificent water features. Of all Le Nôtre’s gardens, this “miracle des eaux”, as the historian Raymond Cazelles described Chantilly, boasts the greatest expanse of water. It was this considerable asset, combined with the wild extravagance of the Grand Condé’s rivalry with his cousin Louis XIV, which was to transform Chantilly into the outstanding site it remains to this day. Chantilly’s Grand Canal outstrips even its rival at Versailles in length, and – as Abbé Bossuet noted in his funeral sermon on the Grand Condé – its water features “murmur perpetually by day and by night”. During his enforced exile on his estates at Chantilly, the Grand Condé welcomed a constellation of distinguished guests including the greatest writers of the French classical age, from La Bruyère to La Fontaine, and from Mme de La Fayette to Mme de Sévigné and Molière. The gardens became the setting for sumptuous festivities and firework displays, all designed to entertain, amaze and impress. Visitors approaching the chateau through the main gates would ascend a majestic incline to the terrace, whence they would gaze out over the parterres à la française, the great ornamental pools and the Grand Canal, all revealed in a single flourish. It was a theatrical vision, and as in the theatre nothing was quite as it seemed. In these “gardens of illusion”, as F. Hamilton Hazlehurst described them, allées that appeared to run parallel however diverged progressively, so as to create an impression of infinity. Donated to the Institut de France by Henri d’Orléans, Duc d’Aumale, in 1886, the gardens were in need of extensive refurbishment. In 2006, the Aga Khan Foundation embarked on an admirable programme of restoration of the parterres, completed in 2009, and of the Fontaines de Beauvais, completed in 2012. In this restoration of Chantilly’s splendours, the Aga Khan has grasped to the full the importance of giving due priority to “its woods, lawns and water features”, in accordance with the wishes expressed by the Duc d’Aumale in his will; and, in this year of the 400th anniversary of his birth, of complementing Nicole Garnier-Pelle’s handsome book on Le Nôtre with this “livre des eaux de Chantilly”.
Gabriel de Broglie Chancellor of the Institut de France
It gives me great pleasure to offer a few words to accompany those of Monsieur de Broglie, Chancellor of the Institut de France, and of Madame Nicole Garnier-Pelle, Chief Curator of the Musée Condé. After many years devoted to the restoration of the Domaine de Chantilly, France’s celebration of the 400th anniversary of the birth of André le Nôtre now provides me with the opportunity to give full expression to my admiration for one of the fathers of European landscape architecture. As with virtually all those who are familiar with his work, I need no convincing of its immense importance, not only because it is so closely interwoven with the history of France, but also because it has given so much inspiration to the venerable and distinguished history of our great gardens. The traditions of both my family and my culture have endowed me with a particular attachment to gardens that respect and delight in the beauties of nature and of water. Because of this legacy, I am particularly drawn to gardens that combine the qualities of plants with those of water; this explains why I find the creations of Le Nôtre – and above all the gardens at Chantilly – so dazzling. The Academician Erik Orsenna has expressed this feeling more eloquently than I ever could, observing of Chantilly in his book on Le Nôtre, Portrait d’un homme heureux: “At last, a garden where the chateau is not the master!” The Fondation pour le Sauvegarde et le Développement du Domaine de Chantilly, of which it is my great honour to be president, has endeavoured in its work to respect the balance that this estate’s great designers – foremost among them Le Nôtre – sought to establish between its landscape and its architectural heritage, and to honour the indissoluble bonds they sought to forge between the creations of man and those of nature. No work is ever finished, and the generations who succeed us must continue the efforts of their forebears to watch over these great achievements of the past while also creating their own. To borrow the metaphor with which the great Voltaire ended Candide, we must cultivate our garden! I am most grateful to Madame Garnier-Pelle for showing us how Le Nôtre followed the same principles. Finally, I welcome this opportunity to commend her initiative to augment the original 2000 edition, with a new study of the development of the gardens and their amusements in the eighteenth century, which the Fondation was very glad to support.
His Highness the Aga Khan President, Fondation de Chantilly
The Chantilly Gardens in the 17th century
André Le Nôtre (1613–1700): A Self-Effacing Celebrity Born at the Tuileries in 1613, André Le Nôtre grew up in a family of gardeners and designers to the king. Originally from the Blois region, his family had arrived in Paris with Catherine de’ Medici. André’s grandfather Pierre Le Nôtre (ca. 1540–1601), successively master gardener, royal gardener and foreman of the corporation of master gardeners, had just one son, Jean (ca. 1575– 1655), who succeeded him at the Tuileries and became designer of the royal gardens. It was as a burgher of Paris, resident in the parish of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, that Jean Le Nôtre married Jeanne-Marie Jacquelin, from a family of Paris master gardeners; together they had three daughters, Françoise, Elisabeth and Marie, and one son, André. In 1620, Françoise married Simon Bouchard, who was in charge of the orange trees at the Tuileries – a responsibility that on his death in 1638 was inherited by his children. In 1625, Elisabeth married Pierre Desgots (ca. 1600–75), also a gardener at the Tuileries, who was to work closely with his brother-in-law André Le Nôtre. Their son, Pierre II Desgots (ca. 1630–88), was responsible for the plans put into effect at Chantilly around 1673, and – as testified by an autograph letter in the Condé archives at Chantilly – was to oversee most of the works at Chantilly on his uncle’s behalf. After his return from the Académie de France in Rome, Pierre II’s son Claude Desgots (1658–1732) also worked for his great uncle.1 In 1640, meanwhile, André married Françoise Langlois. Among the witnesses at the wedding were François de Montigny, lord of Congis and captain and governor of the palace and park of the Tuileries; André’s brother-in-law Pierre Desgots, gardener at the Tuileries; and Michel Le Bouteux, gardener to the Duc de Vendôme, who was to work at Chantilly in 1689–90. Of André Le Nôtre’s three children none were to survive him; to be able to work with his nephews and other members of his family was therefore a source of pleasure to him. Le Nôtre started his training in the studio of Simon Vouet, first painter to King Louis XIII. There he met the painter Charles Le Brun and the sculptor Louis Lerambert, with whom he was later to work at Vaux-le-Vicomte and Versailles. In 1635, he became head gardener to Monsieur, the king’s brother, at the Palais du Luxembourg, where he encountered François Mansart. In 1637, at the age of twenty-four, he inherited his father’s responsibilities and began work at the Tuileries. He was to remain there to his death, completely transforming the gardens. Through the works on the orangery at Fontainebleau, he attracted the attention of Nicolas Fouquet, Superintendent of Finances, who engaged his services at Vaux-le-Vicomte from 1656 to 1661. There, Le Nôtre found himself working alongside his friend Charles Le Brun and the architect Louis Le Vau. The splendours of Vaux were to prove Fouquet’s downfall, however: twenty days after its grand opening in 1661, the jealous young Louis XIV had him arrested for misappropriation of funds.
14 – André Le Nôtre and the Gardens at Chantilly in the 17h and 18th centuries
Henceforth, the careers of Le Nôtre and the other artists who had worked at Vaux were to unfold largely in the service of the king – at Versailles, naturally, but also at Trianon, Marly, Saint-Germain, Fontainebleau and the Tuileries, as well as at Madame de Montespan’s Château de Clagny, for which Le Nôtre is believed to have recommended the architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart (1646– 1708) to the king. He also worked at Meudon for Louvois and afterwards for the Grand Dauphin; at Saint-Cloud for Monsieur, Duc d’Orléans; at Sceaux for Colbert; and of course at Chantilly for the Grand Condé. In 1679, Le Nôtre was granted royal permission to travel to Italy, where the king had charged him with examining Bernini’s equestrian statue of the royal person and assessing whether or not he should accept it. He was also mandated to select the works of art to be copied for the royal palaces by Prix de Rome scholars at the Académie de France in Rome. Contemporary sources relate that he found Italian gardens a disappointment, but that he admired the piazzas, fountains, churches, palazzos and paintings that he saw. Granted an audience with Pope Innocent XI, he embraced the prelate with his customary warm-hearted bonhomie. The Pope was enchanted by him, and is reputed to have asked him to draw up new designs for the Vatican gardens, with
1
Antoine Masson (1636–1700) after Carlo Maratta (1625–1713) Portrait of André Le Nostre (1613–1700), 1692 Engraving, first proof before letters, the words Parisiis 1692 and the title Chevalier de l’ordre de Saint-Michel being an addition of 1693 (R. Dumesnil 55). H: 0.445 m; W: 0.348 m Chantilly, Musée Condé, galerie de peinture XVI, P-1377
This portrait of Le Nôtre was engraved in 1692 after the painting by the Italian artist Carlo Maratta, in the collections of the Palace of Versailles.
1
The Chantilly Gardens in the 17th century – 15
2
Edme-Antony-Paul Noël called Tony-Noël (1845–1909) André Le Nôtre (1613–1700), between 1877 and 1882 Marble. H: 1.98 m; W: 1.83 m; D. 0.945 m; H: plinth 1.44 m Inscription: CHANTILLY, LE NOTRE, 1684 Chantilly, parc du château, OA 4301
This statue, commissioned by the Duc d’Aumale in 1877 and completed in 1882, stands on Le Nôtre’s parterre to the north of the château. It has been restored thanks to the American Friends of Chantilly.
2
a number of Roman princes following in his wake. Although Charles II summoned Le Nôtre to England in 1662, and his work was carried out at Greenwich Palace through the intermediary of Queen Henrietta, sister of Louis XIV and Duchesse d’Orléans, it is uncertain whether he ever made this journey. Anecdotes surrounding the comptroller of the king’s buildings paint a picture of “le bonhomme Le Nôtre” as a modest, good-hearted fellow that is doubtless an over-simplification. But it is certainly true that Louis XIV held him in special affection, and that over the years he became a member of the king’s close circle. Treating Le Nôtre as a friend, the king tolerated all kinds of familiarities from him, such as allowing him to embrace the royal person when he left for the country and on his return to Paris. In 1675 he ennobled him, and wished to grant him a coat of arms. Le Nôtre modestly replied that he already had his emblem – three snails and a cabbage – and that he could never give up his spade. Taking him at his word, the king granted him a coat of arms boasting three silver snails crowned with a splendid cabbage. Louis XIV could not do without him. In 1677, for instance, the king had him brought to his camp outside Cambrai purely as a friend, along with the royal painters of battle scenes Le Brun and Van der Meulen, who came to paint his portrait. He ordered a horse to be brought from the stables so that Le Nôtre could ride round the besieged town, and after the surrender kept him at his side as the defeated garrison filed past. On his departure, the king hugged and kissed him and told him “to look after himself”, in a display of affection for this senior servant of the state that was almost filial, a recognition not only of his genius but also of his integrity and disinterestedness, which were above all suspicion. In 1693, the king made him a knight of the royal order of Saint-Michel, reserved for writers and artists. In July 1700, a month before Le Nôtre’s death, Louis XIV wanted to show him his new gardens at Marly, and had a sedan chair prepared for him alongside his own. Touched by this attention, Le Nôtre cried: “Ah, if my poor dead father could only see his son, a mere gardener, being carried in a sedan chair beside the greatest sovereign in the world, my happiness would be complete!”
16 – André Le Nôtre and the Gardens at Chantilly in the 17h and 18th centuries
According to his earliest biographers, he had decided to retire from his responsibilities in 1693, prompted by the king’s over-enthusiastic involvement in the management of his garden works. “He found,” wrote his brother-in-law Pierre Desgots, “that the greatest King in the world was not as perfectly acquainted with the art of gardens as he was himself, and he did not hesitate to say so; for a while he protested, then, wishing to put some distance between life and death, he resolved to retire and sought the King’s permission to do so.” The king accepted his resignation only on condition that he might see him often, and granted him lodgings in the Grand Commun in addition to his room at Trianon and a house at Versailles; his principal residence, meanwhile, remained at the Tuileries. Le Nôtre was a great collector. In September 1693, he gave Louis XIV thirty-one paintings, twenty statues in bronze and nine in marble, two vases, six plinths and eight busts. Among the paintings were three by Poussin (Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery, St John Baptising the People and The Baby Moses Saved from the River), one each by Domenichino and Jan ‘Velvet’ Breughel the Elder, six by Albani and two by Claude Lorrain, which were placed in the king’s bedchamber at Versailles. André Le Nôtre died at home at the Tuileries on 15 September 1700. That month, the Mercure galant reported his death in the following terms: “The King has lost a rare man, zealous in his service and most remarkable in his art, & who did him great honour. This is Mr Le Nostre, Comptroller General of the Royal Buildings, and of the Gardens, Arts and Manufactories of France. The King had honoured him with the Order of Saint-Michel, to mark the esteem & distinction in which he held him. Never was there a man who knew better than he how to contribute to the beauty of gardens, as even Italy acknowledges. To be convinced of his great skill in this art, it is sufficient merely to cast an eye over the Gardens at Versailles & the Tuileries, & it will prove impossible to deny his works the admiration that is due to them. He left less cover in the Gardens he laid out than some would have desired, but he could not tolerate restricted views, & did not believe that handsome Gardens should wholly resemble Forests. He was esteemed by all the Sovereigns of Europe, & there are few who have not asked him to make designs for their Gardens.”2 He was interred in the Chapelle Saint-André in the church of Saint-Roch in Paris, in a tomb adorned with a portrait bust that he had commissioned from Coysevox.3 One of the few known confirmed portraits of him is the painting by Carlo Maratta that now hangs in the Palace of Versailles. As Maratta never visited France, it appears that he must have painted this portrait in Rome in 1679, when Le Nôtre came to visit his great-nephew, a Prix de Rome scholar at the Académie de France in Rome. It may have been completed in France by another hand after 1679, as Le Nôtre is depicted wearing a decoration: he was made a knight of Mont-Carmel and Saint-Lazare only in 1681, and a knight of the Order of Saint-Michel in 1693. In 1692, Antoine Masson made an engraving (fig. 1) after this portrait. In 1877, the Duc d’Aumale (1822–97), who donated Chantilly to the Institut de France, commissioned the sculptor Tony-Noël to create a statue of the gardener at work (fig. 2) for the large parterre à la française, with a pendant depicting Molière, another regular visitor to Chantilly in the late 17th century. He depicted Le Nôtre seated and unrolling the plan of the gardens, opposite the statue of the Grand Condé by Coysevox. On 24 October 1878, the Duke visited Tony-Noël in his studio in order to view “Molière et Le Nôtre.”4 The statues were finished in 1882, when the sculptor was paid the sum of 46,000 francs for the pair. The Chantilly Gardens in the 17th century – 17
The Art of Gardens at the Time of Le Nôtre The name André Le Nôtre remains indissolubly linked with the style of gardens known as à la française. Yet Louis XIV’s gardener was neither the inventor of this type of garden nor the only practitioner to create such designs at the time. One of the earliest theoretical writers on ornamental gardens in 17th-century France was Jacques Boyceau de La Barauderie (ca. 1560-1633), gentilhomme ordinaire de la chambre du roi (gentlemanin-ordinary to the king’s bedchamber) and superintendent of royal gardens under Louis XIII. His Traité du jardinage selon les raisons de la nature et de l’art (Treatise on Gardening according to the Principles of Nature and Art, fig. 3) was published in 1638, five months after his death, by his nephew Jacques de Menours. Among the many models for “broderie” parterres it included were designs created under Louis XIII for the gardens of the first château at Versailles, on which Jacques de Menours worked, as well as for the Queen’s garden at the Palais du Luxembourg, the Tuileries and Saint-Germain-en-Laye. These parterres heralded the large-scale decorative compositions in clipped box, set off against sand and other coloured stones, including gravel and crushed marble or brick, sometimes framed by plates-bandes, or flower beds, which were to form some of the most characteristic and enduring components of the style described as “à la française.” These beds retain elements of the compartments developed in Renaissance gardens, along with a lack of symmetry in their motifs, central water features that were small in scale, narrow walks or allées, and tight grid plans. But Boyceau also introduced elements that were more innovative, such as spaces laid out in terraces, open to the horizon, not hemmed in by walls and with small diagonal allées radiating from the corners to create a star effect. The astonishing complexity of the designs, with their elaborately interlaced scrolls and arabesques, owes more to the vocabulary of the applied arts – of gold and silverware, embroidery, lace and bookbinding – than to the world of plants, where they represent seemingly impossible feats.5 Claude Mollet (1557–1647) and his son André (ca. 1600–65) belonged to a family of royal gardeners who worked in the service of the kings of France from Henri II to Louis XV. André Mollet travelled throughout Europe, designing gardens for the English queen, and for members of the Orange dynasty outside The Hague, before returning to France to take up the post of first gardener to the king at the Tuileries.6 He subsequently went to Sweden for five years, before moving on to England. In 1651 he published his own book Le Jardin de plaisir (The Pleasure Garden), followed the next year by his father’s, Théâtre des plans et jardinages (Theatre of Plans and Gardens). After discussing land and soil, nurseries, fruit trees, grafts, vines, vegetables, orange and lemon groves, myrtles and jasmines, Mollet described gardens laid out on extensive perspectives, with allées lines with palisaded trees. He treated the kitchen garden separately, and above all he emphasised an essential feature of the baroque garden: the gradations by which the eye passed 18 – André Le Nôtre and the Gardens at Chantilly in the 17h and 18th centuries
from the highly wrought broderie parterre, on to the more natural grass parterres, and thence to the surrounding copses and woods, where art finally surrendered to nature.7 Antoine-Joseph Dezallier d’Argenville (1680–1765), born into a family of wealthy burghers, devoted himself to the study of the arts and sciences in parallel with his career as a king’s councillor. In 1742 he published his Histoire naturelle éclairée dans deux de ses parties principales, la lithologie et la conchyliologie (Natural History enlightened in Two of its Principal Parts, Lithology and Conchology), and in 1750 he was made a member of the Royal Society. La Théorie et la pratique du jardinage (The Theory and Practice of Gardening), which he published in 1709 (fig. 4), proved a great success and was printed in a second edition in 1742, its enduring popularity being an indication of the extent and duration of the French loyalty to the baroque garden. In the absence of writings on the subject by Le Nôtre himself, it is these two theorists, Boyceau and Dezallier d’Argenville, who – one before him and the other in his wake – respectively laid the ground for and described and codified his contribution to the art of garden design.8
3
Jacques Boyceau de La Barauderie (ca. 1560–1633) Traité du jardinage selon les raisons de la nature et de l’art, Paris, Michel Vanlochom, 1638 Chantilly, bibliothèque, XXI A III 11
This treatise on gardening published a generation before Le Nôtre takes into account the Renaissance contribution to the art of gardens. It contains numerous models for the clipped box “broderie” parterres that were to be one of the major components of gardens à la française, such as Le Nôtre was to create at Versailles and Chantilly.
3
4
Antoine-Joseph Dezallier d’Argenville (1680–1765) La Théorie et la pratique du jardinage où l’on traite à fond des beaux jardins apellés [sic] communément les jardins de propreté, Paris, Mariette, 1709 Chantilly, bibliothèque, B II B 10
Le Nôtre published no works on the theory of the art of gardens. This work, published in 1709 by the intellectually curious connoisseur Dezallier d’Argenville, is a sort of summary of the idea of gardens à la française as they would have been at the end of Le Nôtre’s life.
4
The Chantilly Gardens in the 17th century – 19
Le Nôtre and Chantilly
Le Nôtre was an unassuming presence at Chantilly. The exact date that the Prince de Condé called on his services remains unknown, but it was doubtless around 1662. Regular mentions of his name in the Condé accounts – of which only those after 1676 have survived – attest to his presence there: the Grand Condé hired horses to take him from Louvres to Paris, for instance, in the company of the Comte de Lussan, Morin, Gittard and Desgots;9 on 18 July 1677 he came to Chantilly by carriage with Desgots,10 returning on 18 and 21 September of the following year;11 in 1677 and 1679, the Prince de Condé presented him with the sum of 2,200 livres [currency used in France in the 17th and 18th centuries],12 while the architect Gittard received 550 livres.13 But it is above all through the correspondence of the prince’s numerous secretaries and stewards, keeping their master up to date with progress of the works at Chantilly from day to day and in minute detail, that we may glean a fuller picture of the part played by Le Nôtre at Chantilly. Hence the importance of the research carried out in the archives of the Musée Condé by CEPAGE, a research group from the Ecole du Paysage in Bordeaux, thanks to support from the gardens section of the architecture and heritage department (Direction de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine) of the French Ministry of Culture, the initial results of which were presented at the international symposium on Le Nôtre organized by ICOMOS in October 2000.14 As previously mentioned, Le Nôtre published no theoretical works, and very few authentic plans by his hand have survived.15 Documentary evidence offering insights into his personality and his philosophy is sparse, furthermore. The Chantilly archives contain only two letters signed by him, both of them addressed to the Grand Condé. The first, written in August 1682 (fig. 5), is a letter thanking the prince for granting the position of prior to Le Nôtre’s young relative EustacheGeorge Le Prince. The second, written in 1683 (fig. 6), concerns the completion of the decoration of the Grand Degré, the sculpture for which was to be entrusted to Jean Hardy. Sadly the design that accompanied this letter has been lost.
20 – André Le Nôtre and the Gardens at Chantilly in the 17h and 18th centuries
5
André Le Nôtre (1613–1700) Letter to the Prince de Condé, ca. 10 August 1682 Chantilly archives, Condé papers, set P, vol. LXXXVII, AugustNovember 1682, letter no. 36
In this letter of 1682, Le Nôtre thanks the Grand Condé for granting the position of prior to one of his young relations: “My Lord, Never has the honour I received in embracing our Holy Father the Pope and kissing his slipper vouchsafed me such satisfaction and joy as that of which I am sensible through the goodness shown to me by Your Lordship in granting me the privilege denied to so many crowned heads for my gratification with a gift for which I shall be most respectfully obliged to Your Lordship for the rest of my days and the young prior will forever pray to God for Your Lordship’s prosperity and health while I shall continue to devote my thoughts to the embellishment of Your Lordship’s parterres, fountains and cascades in the great garden at Chantilly with the respects of Your Highness’s Most humble and obedient servant. Le Nostre.” 5
6
André Le Nôtre (1613–1700) Letter to the Prince de Condé, 21 September 1683 Chantilly archives, Condé papers, set P, vol. XCII, September– November 1683, letter no. 184
This letter from Le Nôtre to the Grand Condé in September 1683 accompanied the design he had drawn up for the Grand Degré, a monumental staircase linking the Terrasse du Connétable with the park: “My Lord, Here is all I can do for the decoration of the lower part of your great staircase. I hope that it may please you as much as it does me. The River will be of stucco, the rest of the same. Bertier will install the vault, of solid rock. As much water as you wish will flow from the urn, as also from the base of the figures. Only three jets are needed, as marked. The work can be carried out with little time and expense. The sculptor desires earnestly to do it, and I to assure Your Highness of the respects, My Lord, of Your most humble and obedient servant, Le Nostre 21 September 1683.” 6
The Chantilly Gardens in the 17th century – 21
Le Nôtre’s Attachment to Chantilly In addition to these two letters, another concerning Chantilly underlines the importance Le Nôtre attached to the estate. Among the many gardens that he designed during his long life, his preference for Chantilly emerges from his correspondence with the Dutchman William Bentinck (1649–1709), Earl of Portland, superintendent of the English royal gardens and English ambassador to France from January to June 1698. While in France, Bentinck was in contact with Le Nôtre’s great-nephew Claude Desgots, and visited most of the country’s finest gardens, including Chantilly, before returning to England. Le Nôtre would have liked to show him round the gardens at Chantilly personally. On 21 June 1698, probably during one of his last visits to the Prince de Condé, he wrote to Bentinck: “I looked for you everywhere as far as Chantilly.” And on 11 July, he wrote to thank him: “My Lord the Prince has assured me of the esteem in which he holds your visit and your praise for the beauty of all at Chantilly; thus you were received there like royalty; if my great youthfulness had permitted me to go there, I know what pleasure I should have given to His Highness and I should have had the honour of pointing out the beautiful spots to you and of having you concede the natural beauty of the sight of a river tumbling down a wondrous waterfall to enter an endless canal. Do not ask where the water for this canal comes from. Forgive me, I should have been carried away by many things, having designed everything down to the last avenue and entrance from the forest on to the terrace that may be glimpsed beside the Great Staircase. … Remember all the gardens you have seen in France, Versailles, Fontainebleau, Vaux-le-Vicomte and the Tuileries, and above all Chantilly.”16 From these last words, it becomes clear just how special Chantilly was to the venerable gardener, who placed it above the most illustrious sites where he had worked, notably for the king. The letter also indicates that Le Nôtre designed everything there, “down to the last avenue,” and that he can also take credit for the design of the allées of the forest.
22 – André Le Nôtre and the Gardens at Chantilly in the 17h and 18th centuries
Le Nôtre’s Entourage and his Working Methods When Le Nôtre was summoned to Chantilly, in around 1662, he did not arrive alone, but rather was accompanied by an entire team of relations, friends and collaborators. But just as we have very few authentic plans by his hand or autograph documents, so we have little information concerning his working methods and the ways in which he collaborated with this close circle.17 These therefore remain largely a matter of conjecture. Among Le Nôtre’s most important collaborators were his brother-in-law Pierre Desgots, his nephew Pierre II Desgots and, from 1690 on, his great-nephew and pupil Claude Desgots. In 1675, Claude had been a Prix de Rome scholar at the Académie de France in Rome, where his great-uncle had visited him during his Italian trip of 1679; in 1717 he became a member of the Academy of Architecture. Pierre the elder and his son both make more frequent appearances in the Prince de Condé’s accounts and correspondence than does Le Nôtre himself: “To M. Desgots, the sum of 186 livres for his journeys to Chantilly from 16 September 1678 to 8 July 1679.”18 There are occasional references in the accounts that reveal eloquent information with regard to the attention to detail that was such a feature of the working methods of Le Nôtre and his team. In that same year, for instance, the Prince de Condé reimbursed “M. Desgotz 18 livres for six pairs of scissors purchased to cut up the caterpillars to be found on the trees at Chantilly.”19 During the construction of the great water pumping machinery – the Machine des Grandes Eaux – in the Pavillon de Manse, Desgots made frequent trips to Chantilly with the engineer Jacques de Manse, notably on 1 November 1678, 1 April 1679 and 28-9 October and 1 November 1680.20 On Le Nôtre’s death in September 1700, the Mercure galant wrote: “Mr D’Egos, his Nephew, succeeds him in the position of Comptroller General of Buildings, of which the King granted him the inheritance before the death of Mr Le Nôtre. He is also Designer of His Majesty’s Gardens, which gives him a pension of two thousand livres. He is highly skilled and respected. Not long ago he visited England, where he worked in the Gardens of His Britannic Majesty, who granted him many praises & gifts on his return.” Michel Le Bouteux the younger was another of Le Nôtre’s colleagues and relations who worked at Chantilly. His father had been an assistant gardener in the creation of the garden at the Trianon de Porcelaine at Versailles. The presence of both father and son at Trianon is attested by the legend on a plan of 1680: “General plan of Trianon faithfully gauged, plumbed and invented for the King, by Sr Bouteux père, drawn up and designed by Sr Bouteux fils 1680.” The younger Le Bouteux also worked with Le Nôtre on the château of Louvois, near Rheims, where he designed and engraved the plans. Strandberg21 maintains that he worked principally as a draughtsman, while also citing various references that make it clear that within the Le Nôtre team it was Le Bouteux père who was the flower specialist. In 1674, for example, Colbert issued directions to Comptroller Lefebvre for the upkeep of the gardens: “Make frequent visits to Trianon, see that Bouteux has flowers for the King throughout the winter.” It was in the area of flowers that he The Chantilly Gardens in the 17th century – 23
7 Jean-Baptiste de La Quintinie (1626–88)
Letter from Versailles to the Prince de Condé, 28 August 1684 Chantilly archives, Condé papers, set P, vol. XCVI, June-September 1684, letter no. 184-185
“Versailles 28 August 1684, My Lord, So sensible am I of the honour Your Serene Highness does me in writing to command me to go to Chantilly, that I shall hold myself in readiness to undertake this short journey as soon as the King leaves this place, and thus I hope to have the honour of coming to pay my duties to Your Serene Highness on the 20th of this month, remaining, with all possible respect and zeal My Lord’s most humble and obedient servant, De La Quintinye.”
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seems to have worked for the Prince de Condé at Chantilly, furthermore, as “M. Le Bouteulx” is cited in the accounts of 168922 as having supplied flowers for Chantilly. In 1690, he supplied more thyme and marjoram plants, as well as tulip bulbs, and received a bonus of 300 livres “for all the journeys he has made to Chantilly to visit the orange trees.”23 Another of Le Nôtre’s close collaborators was Jean-Baptiste de La Quintinie (1626–88), designer of the royal kitchen garden at Versailles and author of numerous works on plants. La Quintinie had originally studied law and philosophy at Poitiers, before being engaged by a senior magistrate, M. Tambonneau, as tutor to his son, whom he accompanied to Italy. On his return to Paris, La Quintinie oversaw the creation of a garden for Tambonneau, and became known for his interest in agriculture. Soon he was summoned to work for Fouquet at Vaux-le-Vicomte. Like other members of the team at Vaux, he was later to be found working in parallel at Versailles – where he became gardener to the king in 1665 and superintendent of the royal fruit gardens in 1673 – and at Chantilly, where Bourdelot described him to the Prince de Condé in a letter of 1665 as “a skilled tree-grower”; and he also worked for Colbert at Sceaux, and for the Duc de Montausier at Rambouillet. On his death, in 1688, he left a manuscript entitled Instructions pour les jardins fruitiers (Instructions for Fruit Gardens), which his son published in 1690. La Quintinie makes frequent appearances in the accounts of the Condé princes. From 18 to 21 September 1678 he was at Chantilly with Le Nôtre and Jacques de Manse24, and again on 23 September 1679.25 That 24 – André Le Nôtre and the Gardens at Chantilly in the 17h and 18th centuries
same year, the Prince de Condé paid him 33 livres “for sixty-six pear trees ordered by him from Orléans for the kitchen gardens of His Serene Highness at Chantilly.”26 In 1686, the Prince paid Sieur Brunel 17 livres “for some trees sent by him to Chantilly by order of Mr de La Quintinie for the late H.S.H.”27 The correspondence of the Condé princes also contains a letter from La Quintinie to the Grand Condé (fig. 7). Another member of the Chantilly team was the architect Daniel Guittard (1625–86), originally from Blandy, near Vaux-le-Vicomte. The son of a carpenter, he had a carpenter brother who also worked at Vaux-le-Vicomte. After studying under Le Vau, in 1655 he built the novitiate of the Oratory on Rue d’Enfer in Paris. The following year he became architect and engineer to the king, at a salary of 500 livres. In 1658, still in Paris, he built the Benedictine convent and church of the Saint-Sacrement, on Rue Cassette. He was to work at Chantilly until his death. Jacques de Manse (1625–1703) gave his name to the Pavillon de Manse, the building housing the machinery designed to raise river water from the valley up to the reservoirs of La Pelouse, thence to supply the fountains in the gardens. There was also another reservoir to the east, supplying “the jets of the parterre and the Orangery with water from the River Senlis, channelled through a tunnel.”28 Thanks to the research of Eric Soullard and Yves Buck,29 we have more information about de Manse. He came from an old Montpellier family in which the office of treasurer general of France was handed down from father to son; he held the office himself from 1642, and owned an hôtel particulier that is still known as the Hôtel de Manse. Superintendent of the gabelle (salt tax) and city surveyor of Montpellier, he was one of the wealthiest and most influential figures in the city.30 His younger brother, also called Jacques (1628–99), was a lawyer who was also appointed Treasurer General of France in 1663.31 Jacques (the Elder ?) first appears in the Chantilly accounts in April–May 1676,32 and again in 1678 alongside Le Nôtre and La Quintinie.33 It was between 1678 and 1681, above all, during the construction of the hydraulic machinery to which he was to give his name, that Jacques de Manse came most frequently to Chantilly, on 1 November 1678;34 on 1 April,35 in May36 and on 4 November 1679;37 on 5 July,38 6 October,39 28–9 October and 1 November 1680;40 on 10, 14 and 18 September 1681;41 and in April 1684.42 Finally, among Le Nôtre’s occasional collaborators, mention should be made of the great engineer Vauban, who was consulted over the “weigh bridges” of the forecourt. More modest figures working alongside these designers were the princely gardeners, whose names crop up here and there in the correspondence and accounts. First among these was Antoine Forest, who also worked for the king. It was Forest who supplied and planted the trees of all species that lined the allées. For this task, the prince also engaged the elderly priest of Hénouville, Le Gendre, who was also a royal gardener and who had worked in the orchards of Richelieu’s château from 1633. On Le Gendre’s death in May 1665, Le Nôtre employed La Quintinie in his place. The gardener at the Hôtel de Condé, Robert de La Saussaye, also worked at Chantilly from time to time. Gardener to the prince from 1674, he was godfather to the son of one of the members of his bodyguard, who was baptized on 28 January of that year in the château chapel (the godmother was the daughter of Claude Richard, the château steward). He was still “gardener at the Hôtel de Condé” in 1683. Also brought in occasionally was Boivinet, gardener at Saint-Maur, another of the prince’s estates, who received a bonus of 275 livres “for all the journeys he has made to Chantilly for the maze commissioned by H.S.H.”;43 in 1690 he bought plants for Chantilly.44 Then there were Nicolas Dubuisson, “flower gardener to H.S.H.” from 1662 to 1670; Louis Marcon or Marquant, “flower gardener in the Orangery of H.S.H.” from 1674 until his death on 28 May 1679, The Chantilly Gardens in the 17th century – 25
at the age of forty-one; Pierre Bordier, “gardener to H.S.H.” in 1674, then “flower gardener in the Orangery” in 1683; and Claude Perrier, “flower gardener,” in 1675. Intermarriage was the norm in what we may only imagine was a very closed circle. Thus on 30 July 1679, Didier Renault, “gardener in the Orangery and flower gardener to H.S.H.” was betrothed to the daughter of Pierre Bordier, “also a gardener to H.S.H.” – but the engagement was broken off, and the young lady eventually married the gardener at Villarceaux.45 Adrien Bordier, another gardener cited in the accounts of 1695,46 was probably related to her. Finally, François Poirée, “gardener to My Lord the Duke at Sylvie,” is recorded as dying at the age of thirty-three in 1683.47 All the Prince de Condé’s gardeners at Chantilly had their own areas of responsibility: the Orangery, the Grand Parterre, the allées on the far side of the canal, the gardens at Sylvie, or the woods and parterres between the château and La Canardière. Sometimes they were paid bonuses, like Pierre, gardener at Chantilly in 1681;48 Milon, “gardener at Sylvie at Chantilly,” who was given 440 livres for fifty-five orange trees, eight pomegranate trees, fifty-two jasmines and six oleanders that he had supplied to the prince;49 or Jean Milloy, gardener, who received 450 livres “for maintenance work on the gardens, roads and pall-mall at Sylvie during the last six months of the year 1687.”50 Sometimes manpower was short and had to be brought in from further afield: the accounts mention the “hire of three horses for three gardeners who had been sent to Chantilly,”51 for instance. The works at Chantilly do not appear to have exacted such a heavy toll in human life as those at Versailles: there are no records of any tragic accidents, nor of the savage epidemics such as the one that raged through the ranks of the Swiss Guards as they dug out the great lake that was afterwards named in their memory. Nevertheless, the Prince de Condé employed a surgeon, Sieur Lejeune, who in 1686 was paid 192 livres “for dressing the wounds of workers injured during the works at Chantilly from 29 August 1684 to last October of 1686”52 – an eloquent comment on the rate of industrial accidents, although this may concern the building works rather then work on the gardens. Sometimes there were evident tensions among the workforce, caused on occasion by lack of funds: the stewards frequently complained about not being able to pay the workers, especially the builders from the Limousin, fearing that when July came they would disappear off to do harvesting work, which was better paid. The role of the prince’s stewards of works was thus of crucial importance. Chief among these was Dom Louis Loppin, Prior of Mouchy and later Abbot General of Cîteaux, who oversaw the work at Chantilly from 1662 until his death in 1670. He was succeeded by Hérault de Gourville, then Richard, steward of Chantilly. A constant presence on site, the stewards kept their master informed and monitored standards of work as the designs of Le Nôtre and his collaborators were put into effect. The latter could pay only flying visits to the estate, as they were generally busy working for the king at Versailles. The two sites emulated each other so closely that they might be considered rivals. The level of similarity was quite surprising: each had its Bois-Vert, Menagerie, Faisanderie (pheasantry) and Labyrinthe (maze), as well as an immensely long Grand Canal. Both of these continued to grow until the canal at Chantilly eventually overtook its rival at Versailles, reaching 2.5 kilometres as opposed to a mere 1.67. But there were also frequent exchanges between the two sites: Versailles supplied the services of its hydraulic engineers, sent plants, and lent rare species of stag for breeding; Chantilly meanwhile sent linden trees, the estate’s most popular tree, still present in the town’s coat of arms, and perhaps the origin of its name. 26 – André Le Nôtre and the Gardens at Chantilly in the 17h and 18th centuries
8
8
Jacques I Androuet du Cerceau (ca.1510–ca.1585) CHANTILLI. / PLAN OF ALL IT CONTAINS. PLANUM TOTIUS LOCI, plate from Les plus excellens bastimens de France, 1579 Engraving on copper. H: 0.268 m; W: 0.393 m (plate mark); H: 0.36 m; W: 0.43 m Chantilly, Musée Condé, gift of Le Maresquier 1200, inv. 1971.3.1
Du Cerceau’s work remains the most valuable set of documents on the gardens of France between 1560 and 1575. He devoted seven plates to Chantilly in the late 16th century, under the Montmorencys. This plate shows an overall plan of the site after the building of the small château for the Connétable Anne de Montmorency by Jean Bullant. The Paris road, leading to Picardy, skirts the terrace.
The Chantilly Gardens in the 17th century – 27