Welcome to the Palace of Versailles Curiosity Did you know that Luis XIV had six legitimate children and many bastards ennobled children?
Louis XIV is depicted aged about 15 and dressed in a military parade uniform. The artist uses a theatrical effect, opening a curtain on the scene. He also uses allegory – Fame who crowns him with laurel and the putto handing him the olive branch. But he is also careful to show topographical realism below in the detailed description of the place Dauphine and the place du Pont-Neuf in Paris.
The first salon of the King’s Grand Apartment, the Hercules salon was actually the last to be created, at the end of Louis XIV’s reign. From 1682 onwards, the chapel of the palace occupied its location over two floors and served until 1710, when it was replaced by the present chapel. To decorate this new salon, in 1712 the monumental painting by Veronese, The Meal at the House of Simon, painted for the refectory of the Servite Convent in Venice in 1570, was placed here. In 1664, the Doge had presented it to Louis XIV so that the king would support him against the Turks. Interrupted due to the death of the Sun King for ten years, the works on the Hercules salon lasted until 1736, when François Lemoyne completed the painting of the vault depicting the Apotheosis of Hercules, which was supposed to show that "Virtue raises man above himself". Ana Luiza, Carolina, Emilie, Isabella Mansi, Roberta