The glory of France, restored to Louis XIV's glittering ideal

by Alan Riding

For much of the last three years visitors to the ChÆ’teau de Versailles have had good reason to feel disappointed: The Hall of Mirrors, the palace's most glittering jewel, has been undergoing extensive restoration, with only about half of its 220-foot-long gallery visible at any one time.

After a $16 million makeover, the full spectacle finally resumed, with the hall looking, as closely as possible, the way it first appeared to Louis XIV in 1684. With its 357 mirrors, 17 glass doors, marble walls, chandeliers and ceiling paintings, it remains - as was the Sun King's intent - a sight breathtaking in its majesty.

Yet the hall is not as good as new. Time has left its marks, and while these are not evident to most visitors, experts know where the nips and tucks are hidden. Describing the gallery as "a dazzling old lady," Fr‚d‚ric Didier, the chief architect overseeing France's historical monuments, said, "All the wrinkles in her face tell a story."

Still, while repairs to the hall were ordered within 15 years of its opening, this is the first time in more than three centuries that it has been cleaned and restored from top to bottom: from the 30 paintings by Charles Le Brun that decorate the length of the vaulted ceiling to the 84,000 square feet of parquet flooring.

The project was financed and managed by the French construction company BTP Vinci, in what is described as the single largest example of corporate cultural sponsorship in France to date.

It was also a complex enterprise, requiring coordination of restoration work by experts in many different fields, from those gilding and repairing sculptures to others filling in cracks in the marble. Even electricians, whose trade was definitely unknown in the 17th century, were hired, to rewire the chandeliers.

Vincent Guerre, an artisan from southern France, was called on to restore the mirrors that line one wall of the gallery and reflect the splendid gardens of the palace. And he took pride that he replaced only 48 of the 357 mirrors, in many cases using old so-called mercury mirrors found at the French Senate.

"Some mirrors were replaced in the early 19th century, but 60 percent of these mirrors were there under Louis XIV," he said at Monday's reopening of the hall. "This is a magical place, a testimony to an era."Most mirrors reflect their age with a smoky appearance and occasional distortions. Two have even been scratched with names: "Ren‚" and "Emma 1842."

"They are old mirrors, so we had to choose between replacing them and preserving the past," Mr. Guerre said. "We kept them, hoping they don't give ideas to anyone else."

The most challenging restoration involved the paintings, which represent a monumental homage to Louis XIV's military victories in the Dutch Wars of the 1660s and 1670s and for the first time portray him as a person rather than as a mythological figure. They are displayed as a narrative, moving from war to peace.

"They were all designed by Le Brun using hundreds of drawings," V‚ronique Sorano of the restoration team explained. "They were then painted on canvas and attached to the vault. Le Brun worked with a team, but we have no knowledge of whether he painted any himself."

Each oil is accompanied by a description, which traditionally would be in Latin. But in this case, also for the first time, they were written in French, by none other than the playwright Racine and the poet Nicolas Boileau.

Each oil is accompanied by the date of the event portrayed, like "Crossing the Rhine in the Presence of Enemies 1672."The central painting, "The King Governs for Himself 1661," records the moment when, after having assumed the throne in 1643 at the age of 4, Louis finally assumed direct power. He died in 1715, four days short of his 77th birthday.

This canvas, like many others, required refixing to the ceiling, removing varnish and paint from earlier restorations, repainting permanently damaged areas and finally applying a new protective layer.

"The idea was to remove what hides the original," Ms. Sorano said. "But if the original is lost, then we left any later repainting as part of the oil's history. With some paintings we had to do extensive retouching, but others were in a good condition. The idea was to preserve the works' present state of aging."

That done, the Hall of Mirrors is once again ready to receive the chateau's three million annual visitors. But restoration of the palace itself goes on, and will go on until at least 2020, when a $455 million Grand Versailles project is scheduled to be completed. Already some facades have been cleaned and new roofing installed.

It is safe to say that maintenance work never ends when a property has 700 rooms, 2,153 windows, 352 chimneys and 28 acres of roof. But this was evidently not a problem that worried Louis XIV when he decided to impress the world with Versailles.

The New York Times