Versailles Effect

Mark Ledbury is Power Professor of Art History & Visual Culture and Director of the Power Institute at the University of Sydney, Australia. He is the author of James Northcote, History Painting, and the Fables (2014) and Sedaine, Greuze and the Boundaries of Genre (2000). He is also the editor of three books, including Fictions of Art History (2013).Robert Wellington is Senior Lecturer in Art History & Art Theory at the Australian National University, Australia. He is an art historian with a special interest in the role of material culture in history making and cross-cultural exchange at the Court of Louis XIV. Prior to receiving a PhD in Art History from the University of Sydney, he has ten years' experience in various roles in the contemporary arts sector. He is the Book Placement Editor for Early Modern Art History Studies (1500-1800) for H-France, and on the advisory board for Bloomsbury’s Material Culture of Art & Design book series. His monograph, Antiquarianism and the Visual Histories of Louis XIV: Artifacts for a Future Past, was published in 2015.

Versailles has come to connote not just a physical space but also the model of court society and an enduring cultural myth. This flexibility of associations is captured in the subtitle to this imaginative edited volume: ‘objects, lives, and afterlives’.

• Enduring VersaillesRobert Wellington, Australian National University, Australia and Mark Ledbury, University of Sydney, AustraliaPART ONE: MAKING THE PALACE1. The Other Palace: Versailles & the Louvre, Hannah Williams (Queen Mary University, UK)2. The grands décors of Charles Le Brun: between plan and serendipity, Bénédicte Gady (Musée des Arts Décoratifs, France)3. Artisans du roi: Collaboration at the Gobelins, Louvre and the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture under the Influence of the Petite Académie, Florian Knothe (The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong)4. Rough Surfaces: Etching Louis XIV’s Grotto at Versailles, Louis Marchesano (Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA)PART TWO: VERSAILLES LIFE5. Porcelain and Power: The Meaning of Sèvres Porcelain in ancien regime France, Matthew Martin (National Gallery of Victoria, Australia)6. Hair, Politics, and Power at the Court of Versailles, Kimberly Chrisman Campbell (Independent scholar, USA)7. The Politics of Attachment: Visualizing Young Louis XV and his Governess, Mimi Hellman (Skidmore College, USA)8. Courting favour: the apartments of the princesse de Lamballe at Versailles, 1767-1789, Sarah Grant (Victoria and Albert Museum, UK)PART THREE: OUTSIDERS9. Enslaved Muslims at the Sun King’s Court, Meredith Martin (New York University, USA) and Gillian Weiss (Case Western Reserve University, USA)10. A Turk in the Hall of Mirrors, David Maskill (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand)11. Cornelis Hop (1685-1762), Dutch Ambassador to the Court of Louis XV, Daniëlle Kisluk-Grosheide (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, USA)VERSAILLES NOW12. Melancholy, Nostalgia, Dreams: Adventures in the Grand Cimetière Magique, Mark Ledbury (University of Sydney, Australia)13. American Versailles: from the Gilded Age to Generation Wealth, Robert Wellington (Australian National University, Australia)BibliographyList of ContributorsIndex