Hall of Mirrors
The grandiose ensemble of the hall and its adjoining salons was intended to illustrate the power of the absolutist monarch Louis XIV.
[1][2] The Hall of Mirrors has been the scene of events of great historic significance, including the Proclamation of the German Empire and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.
In 1623, King Louis XIII ordered the construction of a modest two-story hunting lodge at Versailles, which he soon enlarged to a château from 1631 to 1634.
The palace was to provide ideal settings for rest and retreat but it also had to attain a new quality of representation as the future seat of Europe's greatest absolutist royal court and government of supreme authority, residence of choice for the aristocratic society and arena for elaborate state festivals and ceremonies, Europe's centre of culture, art and entertainment.
Eventually it was decided to demolish it and architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart was tasked with the design development and the construction of the Mirror Hall Gallery and artist Charles Le Brun received the honor to create the interior decorative apparatus.
The exterior walls of the salons date from the time of Le Vau's encasings of the old château and were given their current appearance after the installation of the Hall of Mirrors by Hardouin-Mansart.
Charles Le Brun, "the greatest French artist of all time" according to King Louis XIV,[citation needed] directed the ceiling paintings.
According to a contemporary anecdote, the decoration of the eastern wall with mirrors was a ploy by architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart to prevent Le Brun from having even more opportunities to impress Louis with his work.
The full list is a compendium of key propaganda themes of the early 1680s, with titles provided by poets Boileau and Racine in their capacity as the regime's official historians: Many of the same themes would be illustrated again a few years later, albeit with a different iconography, in the Louis XIV Victory Monument on Place des Victoires in the center of Paris.
During the 17th century, the hall's main purpose was to serve as a kind of covered promenade for Louis XIV's visit to the chapel.
Courtiers assembled to meet the King and members of the royal family and might make a particular request by intoning: "Sire, Marly?".
This was the manner in which nobles were able to obtain a much sought-after invitation to one of the king's house parties at the Château de Marly, a villa Louis XIV had built north of Versailles on the route to Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
In February 1715, Louis XIV held his last embassy in the hall when he received Mohammad Reza Beg, ambassador of the Shah of Persia, Sultan Husayn.
[19] A few decades later French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau consciously chose the Hall of Mirrors as the site to sign the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June 1919, that officially ended World War I.
