Grand appartement du roi

[1] The original arrangement of the enfilade of rooms was thus: The configuration of the grand appartement du roi conformed to contemporary conventions in palace design.

The quadratura style of the ceilings evoke Cortona’s sale dei planeti at the Pitti, but Le Brun’s decorative scheme is more complex.

For example, in the salon d’Apollon, the cove painting “Augustus building the port of Misenum”[7] alludes to the construction of the port at La Rochelle; or, depicted in the south cove of the salon de Mercure is “Ptolemy II Philadelphus in his Library”, which alludes to Ptolemy’s construction of the Great Library of Alexandria and which accordingly serves as an allegory to Louis XIV’s expansion of the Bibliothèque du roi.

With the inauguration of the third building campaign (1678–1684), which suppressed the terrace linking the king and queen’s apartments and the salons of Jupiter, Saturn and Venus for the construction of the Hall of Mirrors, the configuration of the grand appartement du roi was altered.

For these parties, the rooms assumed specific functions: In the 18th century during the reign of Louis XV, the grand appartement du roi was expanded to include the salon de l’Abondance — formerly the entry vestibule of the petit appartement du roi — and the salon d’Hercule — occupying the tribune level of the former chapel of the château.