Time and distance in the Bourbon landscape: the strategic illogicality of thegardens of Versailles'

摘要

In the foreground of Israel Silvestre's drawing of the 'perspective laterele du rond d'Eau' of Vaux-le-Vicomte sit two women. Figure Fashionably dressed and seated together, the women are typical of the figures that populate Silvestre's depictions ofthe grand gardens of the French elites such as Nicholas Fouquet that would culminate with Louis XIV's Versailles. Apart from the occasional gardener raking, Silvestre's figures are shown, often in small groups, walking, talking, taking in the perspectives created by Le Notre for his patrons. In peopling the allees, gathering around the fountains, and reposing in the foreground, the figures model courtly behavior in the garden. They also function to frame the perspective for the viewer, and establish scale: the tiny figures accentuate—no, exaggerate—the vastness and immensity of the gardens, the impressive length of the allees, the distance of the vanishing point, the height of the trees and the water jetting from fountains. They do so oblivious to the viewer of the print, whose eyes are supposed to follow the allees to the vanishing point. Except for one of the women in the foreground of the view of the rond d'Eau: She looks back.