Drawing Versailles. Charles Le Brun (1619-1690). CaixaForum Barcelona
17.11.15
59 seconds readThree and a half centuries after they were produced, the great decorations made for the Palace of Versailles have lost none of their fascination. Drawing Versailles explores how these decorations were applied from the sketches and drawings created by the French painter Charles Le Brun (1619-1690) for the Staircase of the Ambassadors and the Hall of Mirrors.
The cartoons ? 1: 1 drawings ? reveal Le Brun’s virtuosity as a draftsman, his talent for composing scenes and the power he infuses into his work. These are studies of characters, allegorical figures, trophies and animals that were introduced into Le Brun’s compositions, which he conceived as great symbolic jigsaw puzzles. Unusually, the Louvre Museum conserves a large collection of these cartoons and, thanks to the cooperation provided by ”la Caixa” Foundation in the project, they have all now been restored.
The exhibition at CaixaForum Barcelona features 78 works, including 37 of these cartoons, many of them shown in public for the first time.
Drawing Versailles. Charles Le Brun (1619-1690). Dates: From 18 November 2015 to 14 February 2016. Place: CaixaForum Barcelona (Av. de Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia, 6-8).