Paris Day
Trip : Chantilly Palace
Chantilly Chateau
The Chantilly
estate used to belong to two of the most powerful clans in france :
first to the Montmorencys, then, through marriage, to the Condes. The
present Chateau was put up in the late nineteenth century , replacing
an earlier palace destroyed in the Revolution. The original had been
built for the Grand Condé, the general who crushed spanish
military power for Louis XIV in 1643. The current building is a
graceful and romantic structure, surrounded by water and looking out
over a formal arrangement of pools and pathways.
The chateau's chief attraction in the Galeries de
peinture, an outstanding collection of paintings and drawings. If there
seems to be a little logic to the order in which the paintings are
displayed it's because their donor, Henri d'Orléans, stipulated
that they remain as he had organized them. Consequently, good, bad and
indifferent works are displayed alongside each other, as if of equal
value. Highlights of the collection included Piero di Cosimo's
Simonetta Vespucci and Raphael's Madone de Lorette, both in the Rotunda
of the picture gallery. Raphael is also well represented, with
his Three Graces displayed alongside Filippo Lippi's Esther and
Assuerius, and forty miniatures from a fifteenth-century Book of Hours
attributed to the french artist Jean Fouquet. Pass through the
Galerie de Psyche with its series of sepia-stained glass illustrating
Apuleius'Golden Ass, to the room known as the Tribune, where italian
art, including Botticelli's autumn, takes up two walls; works by Ingres
and Delacroix fill the other walls.
The rest of the chateau can be visited on a
guided tour only, included in the entry fee. The most interesting port
call is the well-stocked library, where the museum's single greatest
treasure is kept : Les Tres riches heures du Duc de Berry, the most
celebrated of all the Books of Hour. Unfortunately, the original is too
fragile to go on display, but there are excellent facsimiles. The
illuminated pages illustrations the months of the year with scenes from
early fifteenth-century rural life, such as harvesting and ploughing,
sheep-shearing and pruning, are richly coloured and drawn with a
delicate naturalism.
