Enfilade

As noted at Art History News, from the press materials for the exhibition:

Brenet: Un peintre du roi à Douai au 18e siècle

Musée de la Chartreuse, Douai, 19 March — 23 June 2025

Curated by Pierre Bonnaure and Marie Fournier

Le musée de la Chartreuse de Douai présente la première exposition jamais consacrée au peintre Nicolas-Guy Brenet (Paris, 1728–1792), l’un des rénovateurs de la peinture d’Histoire à la veille de la Révolution.

Formé auprès des plus grands maîtres de la première moitié du 18e siècle (Charles Antoine Coypel, François Boucher et Carle Vanloo), puis à l’Académie de France à Rome, Nicolas-Guy Brenet est reçu à l’Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture en 1769, l’année même où il exécute de grands décors pour Douai. Il conçoit un cycle de six peintures allégoriques toujours en place au sein de l’actuel palais de justice, l’ancien parlement de Flandre. Il travaille également au décor de la collégiale Saint-Pierre en peignant un spectaculaire Triomphe de la Vierge, encore visible à son emplacement d’origine, dans la chapelle du Dôme. À Paris, il honore tout au long de sa carrière de prestigieuses commandes destinées principalement à l’Église, ainsi qu’aux rois Louis XV et Louis XVI.

Cette première exposition consacrée à Nicolas-Guy Brenet permet de découvrir à travers une sélection de tableaux, d’esquisses et de dessins, un artiste emblématique du renouveau de la peinture d’Histoire de la seconde moitié du siècle des Lumières et d’apprécier la richesse de la vie artistique douaisienne au temps des parlementaires de Flandre.

• 42 œuvres exposées dans la salle capitulaire du musée de la Chartreuse
• 37 prêteurs (particuliers et institutions), dont le musée du Louvre et le château de Versailles, les musées de Compiègne, Quimper, Dunkerque, Orléans, Strasbourg, Blois etc.

Information about Marie Fournier’s 2023 monograph on Brenet is available here»

The full exhibition brochure is available here»

I’m sorry for not posting earlier news of the exhibition, which was on view in Washington at the National Museum of Asian Art from 16 March until 15 September 2024. Fortunately, the catalogue is still available. –CH

Frank Feltens, ed., with additional contributions by Paul Berry and Michiyo Morioka, Imagined Neighbors: Visions of China in Japanese Art, 1680–1980 (Munich: Hirmer Publishers, 2024), 304 pages, ISBN: ‎978-3777442662, $65.

Imagined Neighbors: Visions of China in Japanese Art examines Japanese artistic understanding of China from the late 1600s, Japan’s period of seclusion, to its age of modernization after the mid-nineteenth century. It focuses on ways Japanese painters from the late 1600s to the twentieth century pictured China, both as a real place and as an imagined promised land. It features three essays by renowned Japanese art historians in addition to more than fifty catalog entries highlighting unusual artworks revealing Japanese artists’ complex responses to Chinese art, history, and culture. In recent years, a handful of scholarly studies have tried to push against the established narrative of an exclusively Western-inspired modern Japan. Imagined Neighbors challenges the established narrative of an exclusively Western-inspired modern Japan by offering a more nuanced approach to understanding the country’s struggle with reconciling the old with the new as it reinvented itself into a modern nation-state.

Frank Feltens is curator of Japanese art at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art.
Paul Berry is an independent scholar of Japanese art and cinema who has taught at the University of Michigan, the University of Washington, and Kansai Gaidai University.
Michiyo Morioka is an independent scholar of Japanese art based in Seattle.

Ding Guanpeng (active 1726–1770), A Night Banquet at the Peach and Plum Garden, Qing dynasty (1644–1911), handscroll, ink, and colour on paper
(Beijing: The Palace Museum)

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From the press release and the general exhibition description:

A Movable Feast: The Culture of Food and Drink in China

Hong Kong Palace Museum, 19 March — 18 June 2025

A Movable Feast: The Culture of Food and Drink in China offers a fresh perspective centred on the concept of ‘mobility’, connecting significant aspects of Chinese food culture. Over 110 exquisite artefacts have been meticulously selected to explore the evolution of food vessels, eating practices, and related traditions, comprehensively illustrating the rich culinary culture and lifestyle throughout the history of China. Food culture encompasses the sourcing and utilisation of ingredients, the preparation and processing of food, and the consumption of food as well as the customs, etiquette, and ideologies developed around eating and drinking. It touches nearly every aspect of our material and spiritual life. According to anthropological archaeologist Kwang-chih Chang, “one of the best ways of getting to a culture’s heart would be through its stomach.”

Food culture is naturally an important element of the Chinese civilisation. This exhibition invites visitors to enjoy a multicourse feast spanning five thousand years of Chinese history. The first part, “Crossing from Life to Death”, features a ceremonial meal for the deceased. Showcasing ritual and burial objects related to food and drink dated from the Neolithic period (about 10000–2000 BCE) to the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), this section demonstrates the importance of transferring food and drink to the afterlife in Chinese beliefs. The second section “Crossing Cultures” presents a multicultural banquet, focusing on eating and drinking vessels from the Tang (618–907) to Song (960–1279) periods, such as platters and ewers introduced to China through the Silk Routes. It reveals how China and Central and West Asia embraced each other’s eating practices. The next section “Crossing Mountains and Lakes” exhibits famous scenes of literati gatherings and picnic sets produced in the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) dynasties, which demonstrates the important role food and drink played at elegant gatherings and excursions. Finally, at the “Crossing Time” multimedia table, visitors are encouraged to find out more about the past and present lives of modern eating and drinking vessels.

Accompanying the exhibition is the publication A Movable Feast: The Culture of Food and Drink in China, available in both Traditional Chinese and English. The book features six chapters written by a team of scholars and experts from the Hong Kong Palace Museum and around the world—addressing how people have traversed the culinary landscape with food and eating utensils for 5,000 years, examining preparations for the afterlife, adaptations to foreign culinary practices from other regions, and the enjoyment of outdoor picnics. The catalogue will be available at the Hong Kong Museum and later from major bookstores in Hong Kong.

Crossing from Life to Death: Feeding the Spirits

The first section features food and drink vessels used in rituals and burials from the Neolithic period to the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE). Key objects on display include the zun (wine vessel) for Father Ding and the jue (wine vessel) of Marquis of Lu from the Palace Museum’s collection, dating back to the Western Zhou dynasty (about 1100–771 BCE). These bronze ritual vessels were used for making offerings and served as a medium between people and spirits.

A dou (food vessel) with cord pattern from the Warring States period (475–221 BCE) was a container for pickles, preserved vegetables, meat sauce, gravy, and more. In a first-century Chinese dictionary, the character feng, meaning abundance, is explained by a pictograph of a dou filled with food, while some scholars further interpret it as depicting two skewers of meat on a dou. The Chinese character li, meaning ritual, also has a component of feng, a further indicator of the significance of food and food vessels in Chinese culture.

During the mid-to late Western Han dynasty (206 BCE–8 CE), earthenware burial objects in the shape of granaries, wells, stoves, pigsties, and chicken coops were prevalent, not only mirroring the way of life and the flourishing food culture of the time but also signifying people’s desire for an abundant afterlife. A model of a brazier with cicadas, from the Hong Kong Museum of Art, was fired using low-temperature lead glaze, resulting in striking colours. The roasting rack with two rows of cicadas illustrates the custom of eating cicadas during this period.

Crossing Cultures: Nomadic Eating Practices

The second section presents the intersection and integration of culinary customs between China and Central and West Asia during the Tang (618–907), Song (960–1279), and Yuan (1271–1368) dynasties, demonstrating how the richness and evolution of ‘tradition’ develops over time. The introduction of new ingredients, utensils, and tall furniture to the Central Plains via the Silk Routes significantly transformed the region’s food culture. Foods from Central Asia were given the prefix hu (roughly indicates regions beyond the Central Plains of China), as seen in terms like hujiao (black pepper), hutao (walnuts), and huma (sesame), which remain widely used today

Among the exhibits in this section is a quatrefoil cup from the Tang Dynasty (877), which traces its origins back to the Sassanian Empire (present-day Iran). Scholars believe it is associated with the term ‘poluo’, a foreign term that frequently appeared in Tang and Song poetry, referring to a drinking vessel for alcoholic drinks. The renowned poet Li Bai (701–762) wrote about it, saying “Grape wine, gold poluo, a hu girl aged 15 years was carried by a fine horse.” To this day, the term ‘gold poluo’ is used in Cantonese to describe a greatly cherished child. Another key exhibit, a phoenix-head ewer, which features a handle and spout. This vessel exemplifies how the nomadic drinking custom of pouring wine from ewers gradually replaced the tradition of spooning wine from a jar with a ladle in the Central Plains.

With the introduction of hu foods to the Central Plains, large platters emerged during the Tang dynasty to accommodate nomadic foods such as hubing (hu flatbread) and sushan (shaved ice-like dessert). By the Yuan and Ming (1368–1644) periods, large platters produced in China had become important export commodities, enjoying popularity in the Middle East. Historical records from the Ottoman Empire indicate that porcelain was frequently used for banquet serving ware during significant ceremonies, such as the sultan’s accession, birthdays, and weddings. One of the exhibits, a dish with chrysanthemum and lotus scrolls from the Ming dynasty closely resembles a 15th-century blue-and-white platter in the collection of the Ardabil Shrine in Iran, exemplifying the multidirectional nature of cultural exchange.

Crossing Mountains and Lakes: Packing the Perfect Picnic

The third section showcases the mobility of food and drink across different landscapes by presenting artworks and picnic sets of the Ming and Qing dynasties. Historically significant excursions and picnics have become a source of inspiration for numerous calligraphies, paintings, and other works of art. For example, A Night Banquet at the Peach and Plum Garden by the renowned Qing court painter, Ding Guanpeng (active 1726–1770), portrays the famous Tang poet Li Bai (701–762) and his cousins enjoying a banquet amidst a garden filled with peach blossoms.

During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the custom of dining on pleasure boats became a particularly popular activity along the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. Late Ming literati considered that an elegant pleasure boat should accommodate “six hosts and guests and four attendants” and allow them to brew tea during the excursion. A notable exhibit, an ivory boat from the British Museum’s Qing dynasty collection, vividly captures a leisurely outing on the water: two bearded men enjoy a chat over tea under the canopy of the boat, while others carry a food container and net freshwater fish from the lake.

The design of the paraphernalia used for these excursions was intended to keep objects organised, preventing them from colliding, and ensuring that the objects remained safe and accessible during travel. The Qing imperial court later adopted these organisational boxes to manage and store cultural artefacts accumulated in the palaces. The exhibition features a box of curiosities assembled during the Qing dynasty, intricately designed to hold a variety of antiques crafted from different materials, transforming it into a curated collection of treasures.

Crossing Time: The Heritage

The final section features multimedia interactive installations that blend ancient and modern scenes and artefacts, inviting the audience to enjoy a virtual feast that transcends time and space. Visitors can simulate ordering food at a virtual dining table while observing the cooking processes of various dishes, allowing them to discover diverse cooking techniques associated with these utensils.

The exhibition is jointly organised by the Hong Kong Palace Museum and The Palace Museum. The exhibits mainly come from The Palace Museum and the Hong Kong Palace Museum. The British Museum, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Hong Kong Museum of Art, and the Hong Kong Flagstaff House Museum of Tea Ware have also provided a number of loans. The Robert Chang Art Education Charitable Foundation is the exhibition’s Supporting Sponsor.

Hendrick Goltzius, Study of a Right Hand, 1588
(Haarlem: Teylers Museum, N058)

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Recently opened at the AIC:

Lines of Connection: Drawing and Printmaking

Art Institute of Chicago, 15 March — 1 June 2025
Getty Center, Los Angeles, 1 July — 14 September 2025

Curated by Jamie Gabbarelli and Edina Adam

The first exhibition ever to focus on the multiple connections between drawing and printmaking, this presentation brings together around 90 works on paper by some of the greatest artists in the Western tradition to uncover the inner workings of their creative process and offer new ways to think about the links between the two mediums.

Joseph Wright of Derby, Self-Portrait in a Fur Cap, 1765–68, monochrome pastel (grisaille) on blue-gray laid paper, 42.5 × 29.5 cm (Art Institute of Chicago, Clarence Buckingham Collection, 1990.141).

Featuring fascinating drawings and exceptional prints from the late 15th century though the mid-19th century by artists such as Albrecht Dürer, Parmigianino, Rembrandt, Peter Paul Rubens, Maria Sibylla Merian, Francisco Goya, and William Blake, the exhibition explores the creative exchange between the two practices by showcasing preparatory drawings for prints, printed imitations of drawings, and drawn copies of prints. A selection of hybrid works also questions traditional definitions, strict boundaries, and outdated hierarchical distinctions between media.

Among the many remarkable loans enriching the exhibition are two astonishing drawings of a right hand by Hendrick Goltzius, which will be shown alongside each other for the first time in over a generation. Additionally an impressive drawing by Rembrandt of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper makes its Chicago debut. With a wealth of exceptionally beautiful works, Lines of Connection offers fresh perspectives on two intertwined mediums and lifts the curtain on the rarely foregrounded subjects of artistic training, workshop practices, and the afterlife and collecting of works on paper.

Lines of Connection: Drawing and Printmaking is co-organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and the J. Paul Getty Museum. The exhibition is curated by Jamie Gabbarelli, Prince Trust Associate Curator, Prints and Drawings, Art Institute of Chicago, and Edina Adam, assistant curator of drawings, The J. Paul Getty Museum.

Jamie Gabbarelli and Edina Adam, Lines of Connection: Drawing and Printmaking, 1400–1850 (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2025), 230 pages, ISBN 978-1606069653, $40.

Josef Abel, Klopstock’s Arrival in Elysium / Klopstocks Ankunft im Elysium, 1805
(National Gallery Prague)

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Now on view at Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts:

Wild Apollo’s Arrows: Klopstock Cult & Ossian Fever

Die Pfeile des wilden Apollo: Klopstockkult & Ossianfieber

Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien, 7 March — 25 May 2025

Curated by Alexander Roob

The exhibition Wild Apollo’s Arrows: Klopstock Cult & Ossian Fever presents significant artistic works that exemplify the epochal shift from the Enlightenment to the irrationalism of the Storm and Stress movement and Romanticism, exploring for the first time the immense influence of the poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724–1803) on the fine arts and music of his own age.

Decades before the French Revolution, the Age of Enlightenment saw a sudden outbreak of irrational sentiment, expressed in exuberant emotions, notions of spiritualistic gender switching, and a fragmented, heroic, and introspective view of art. This was the onset of an epochal shift with consequences for pictorial art: reliance on the actual appearance of things gave way to the mystical and diffuse, accompanied by a greater interest in the realm of acoustics. Nothing seems to better define this ‘acoustic turn’ than the trope of the blind prophet and lyrical poet, which functioned as a literary model for this new epoch, as seen in the figures of Homer, Ossian, and John Milton. Milton’s grand inner images were proclaimed to be the perfection of the romantic sublime, and the myth of the lost and regained paradise to which he had given literary form was associated with Mesmer’s notion of lucid dreaming. In the early 1750s, German poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock positioned himself as an heir to Milton, with his pietistic epic The Messiah: A Heroic Poem, and in this he issued a challenge to the self-proclaimed English national bard William Blake.

Motif combining works by Johann Peter Pichler after Heinrich Friedrich Füger, Homer Reciting, 1803 (Graphic Collection of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna), and Carl Wilhelm Kolbe the Elder, Ice-skating Bard (‘Braga’), 1793–94 (Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett / bpk, photo by Julia Bau), design composite motif: Beton.

For cultural philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder, ‘wild Apollo’s arrows’ were the rousing sounds of an early folk movement and the Nordic dronescapes of a budding nationalist mysticism, which was all heralded in the pseudo-Celtic poem cycle Ossian. In the visions of the superstar poet Klopstock ‘wild Apollo’ appeared in a Celtic-Germanic mix, and the bard’s song and cosmic ice-dance put the world into creative turmoil. Klopstock, a keen ice-skater, who was nowhere more popular than in Austria, became a role-model for a sentimental skating trend that saw motion as a way to transcend limitations.

The exhibition presents art works that exemplify this epochal shift from the Enlightenment to the irrationalism of the Storm and Stress (Sturm und Drang) movement and Romanticism. For the first time, Klopstock‘s immense influence on the fine arts and music of his own age is explored. With interpretations of his work in art and music by Angelika Kauffmann, Heinrich Friedrich Füger, Josef Abel, and Franz Schubert, the republican poet Klopstock was surprisingly still very present in the Habsburg Empire at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. The exhibition blends works of Austrian classicism, evidence of international early romanticism, and the narcotic imagery of the Nazarenes to the accompaniment of music by Joseph Haydn, Christoph Willibald Gluck, and Franz Schubert.

Alongside works from the Paintings Gallery and numerous loans, this exhibition draws widely on works from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna Graphic Collection. The project also integrates works by students from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and it will be presented in the Exhibit Galerie and three rooms at the Paintings Gallery. A comprehensive publication with essays and illustrations will accompany the exhibition.

With works by Josef Abel, Edmund Aigner, Johann Wilhelm Baur, Thomas Blackwell, William Blake, Filippo Caporali, Thomas Chatterton, Daniel Chodowiecki, Edward ‘Celtic’ Davies, Josef Dorffmeister, Bonaventura Emler, Heinrich Friedrich Füger, Johann Heinrich Füssli, Hendrick Goltzius, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Johann Valentin Haidt, Joseph Haydn, Anton Herzinger, William Hogarth, Bartholomäus Hübner, Anne Hunter, Archduchess Maria Clementina of Austria, Johann Evangelist Scheffer von Leonhardshoff, Friedrich John, Owen Jones, Angelika Kauffmann, John Kay, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, Joseph Anton Koch, Carl Wilhelm Kolbe the Elder, Simon Petrus Klotz, Leopold Kupelwieser, Johann Caspar Lavater, Johann Friedrich Leybold, William James Linton, Johann Heinrich Lips, Johann Hieronymus Löschenkohl, Josef Löwy, James Macpherson, Charles-François-Adrien Macret, Jacob Wilhelm Mechau, Heinrich Merz, Isaac Mills, Jean-Michel Moreau, Wilhelm Müller, Friedrich Olivier, Carl Hermann Pfeiffer, Johann Peter Pichler, Albert Christoph Reindel, Johan Christian Reinhart, Ferdinand Ruscheweyh, Luigi Schiavonetti, Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Ludwig Ferdinand Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Franz Schubert, Moritz von Schwind, William Bell Scott, Franz Xaver Stöber, Joseph Sutter, Johanna Dorothea Sysang, Giambattista Vico, Marianne von Watteville, Josef Wintergerst, Franz Wolf, Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, Felice Zuliani, and others.

Works after William Blake, Asmus Jakob Carstens, Johann Nepomuk Ender, Heinrich Friedrich Füger, Bonaventura Genelli, Gerdt Hardorff, G. W. Hoffmann, William Hogarth, Angelika Kauffmann, Nicaise de Keyser, Giuseppe Longhi, Johann Friedrich Overbeck, Raffaello Santi, genannt Raffael, Bertel Thorvaldsen, Angiolo Tramontini, Richard Westall.

Contemporary works by students of the Academy such as Christian Azzouni, Ina Ebenberger, Hicran Ergen, Eginhartz Kanter, Julia Kronberger, Prima Mathawabhan, Amar Priganica, Liese Schmidt, Pia Wilma Wurzer, and Ancient Britons Team (ABK Stuttgart).

Alexander Roob, with Sabine Folie, Die Pfeile des wilden Apollo: Klopstockkult & Ossianfieber (Hamburg: Textem Verlag), 248 pages, ISBN: 978-3864853340, €32.

Opening this month at AIC:

Myth and Marble: Ancient Roman Sculpture from the Torlonia Collection

Art Institute of Chicago, 15 March — 29 June 2025
Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, 14 September 2025 — 25 January 2026
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 14 March — 19 July 2026

Curated by Lisa Ayla Çakmak and Katharine Raff

From large-scale figures of gods and goddesses to portraits of emperors and magnificent funerary monuments, this exhibition brings to North America, for the first time, a selection of 58 rarely seen ancient Roman sculptures from Italy’s storied Torlonia Collection. Nearly half of these sculptures, which range in date from the 5th century BCE to the early 4th century CE, have not been publicly displayed in more than 70 years and have been newly cleaned, conserved, and studied specifically for this exhibition, making for a spectacular opportunity to experience their first public presentation in decades.

The Torlonia Collection is not only the largest private collection of Roman marble sculptures in Italy, but it is also arguably the most important of such private collections in the world. Comprising 622 works and a wide range of sculptural types and subjects, its holdings rival those of major institutions in Europe, including the Capitoline and Vatican Museums.

This veritable ‘collection of collections’ was formed in the 19th century by Prince Giovanni Torlonia (1754–1829) and his son Prince Alessandro (1800–1886), primarily through the purchase of several groups of ancient sculpture assembled in early modern Rome, as well as through extensive archaeological excavations on Torlonia estates in Italy. The taste at this time was for complete works of art, and restorations and other interventions carried out across the decades—in some instances by famed sculptors of the day—have impacted the sculptures’ current appearances while also enriching their histories.

By the 1870s, the collection was placed on view in a private museum in Rome, and a number of its masterworks became world-famous—among them the lovely portrait of a young woman known as the ‘Maiden of Vulci’ as well as the ‘Torlonia Girl’. In the wake of the Second World War, Alessandro Torlonia’s museum closed, and the collection went unseen for generations. During this closure, the Torlonia Foundation was created at the behest of Prince Alessandro Torlonia (1925–2017) to continue to both study and conserve the collection and the Villa Albani Torlonia.

Beginning in 2020, a series of exhibitions across Europe have brought selected highlights of the Torlonia Collection to public display once more. Myth and Marble debuts these masterpieces to a North American audience, presenting a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience these exceptional ancient sculptures and explore the fascinating stories they reveal about both their ancient pasts and their modern afterlives.

Myth and Marble: Ancient Roman Sculpture from the Torlonia Collection is co-organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and The Torlonia Foundation, in collaboration with the Kimbell Art Museum, Musée des beaux-arts Montréal, and The Museum Box. The exhibition is curated by Lisa Ayla Çakmak, Mary and Michael Jaharis Chair and Curator, Arts of Greece, Rome, and Byzantium, and Katharine A. Raff, Elizabeth McIlvaine Curator, Arts of Greece, Rome, and Byzantium.

Lisa Ayla Cakmak and Katharine A Raff, eds., with contributions by Silvia Beltrametti and Salvatore Settis, Myth and Marble: Ancient Roman Sculpture from the Torlonia Collection (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2025), 160 pages, ISBN: 978-0300279658, $40.

From the press release for the exhibition, a reworking of Sciences et curiosités de Versailles, which was on view at the palace in 2010–11.

Versailles: Science and Splendour
Science Museum, London, 12 December 2024 — 21 April 2025

Curated by Anna Ferrari

A significant new exhibition unveils the fascinating stories of science at Versailles, exploring how scientific knowledge became widespread, fashionable, and a tool of power to enhance France’s prestige. Versailles: Science and Splendour invites visitors to discover the unexpected, yet vitally important, role of science at the French royal court through spectacular scientific objects and artworks. Many items will be on display for the first time in the UK, including Louis XV’s rhinoceros and a splendid sculptural clock representing the creation of the world. The sumptuous exhibition also sheds light on the contribution of women to physics, medicine, and botany in 18th-century France.

Versailles—the seat of royal power in France in the 17th and 18th centuries—was renowned for its opulent palace and gardens, but it was also a cradle of scientific spirit. Developed with support from the Palace of Versailles, the exhibition reveals the meeting of art and science in the court as it showcases more than 100 fascinating objects, from the extravagant to the everyday. The exhibition explores how Louis XIV, Louis XV, and Louis XVI encouraged scientific pursuit and readily drew on technological advances of their times, enhancing France’s prestige and extending its influence. The exhibition highlights significant figures, including stories of women in science, such as the pioneering midwife Madame du Coudray who trained thousands of midwives in rural France and Emilie du Châtelet, the eminent physicist and mathematician who translated Isaac Newton’s Principia.

Anna Ferrari, lead curator of Versailles: Science and Splendor, said: “We are delighted to bring Versailles to London in this new exhibition, which invites visitors to discover an unusual but crucial side of the palace’s history and grandeur. This exhibition will reveal fascinating stories of science at Versailles through more than a hundred treasures, bringing new attention to the relationship between science and power.”

Christophe Leribault, President of the Palace of Versailles, said: “The Sciences and Curiosities at the Court of Versailles exhibition, held in 2010 at the Palace of Versailles, made a lasting impression. It unveiled a lesser-known aspect of life at the former royal residence: the interest in sciences and the spirit of curiosity and innovation that animated the sovereigns and the entire court. Through this revisited version of the exhibition, we take pride in the fact that our collections and expertise can now cross the Channel to meet visitors at the Science Museum, inspiring them to visit or revisit the Palace of Versailles.”

Sir Ian Blatchford, Director and Chief Executive of the Science Museum Group, said: “Science was at the heart of the French royal court, from the engineering innovations needed to build the regal seat of power to the lavish scientific demonstrations staged for the kings. We are able to share these remarkable stories with Science Museum visitors for the first time thanks to a close partnership with the Palace of Versailles. In strengthening such cultural connections with European partners, we will continue to inspire people with incredible stories of science and culture around the world.”

Versailles: Science and Splendour as installed in London’s Science Museum.

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Harnessing Science

Versailles: Science and Splendour takes visitors on a 120-year journey through the evolution of science at Versailles, from the creation of the Academy of Sciences by Louis XIV in 1666, to Louis XV’s passion for exquisite scientific instruments, and Louis XVI’s ordering of the La Pérouse expedition to the Pacific in 1785.

Measuring time and space was one of the key tasks of the Academy of Sciences, reflecting the challenges of the time in Europe. Members of the Academy mapped the Earth and the skies as visitors can observe in a 1679 map of the Moon by Cassini, the precision of which remained unrivalled for over 200 years. The promotion of France’s power through scientific developments also served political purposes, with exquisite instruments given as diplomatic gifts across the world.

The exhibition also gives visitors the opportunity to see the magnificent gardens of Versailles in a new light. Recruited by Louis XIV, Academicians and experts used mathematics and engineering to transform the site into a statement of power and prestige. Of particular importance for Louis XIV was the creation of spectacular fountains and water features in the grounds, which required hydraulic engineering projects of unprecedented scale. A painting of the monumental Marly Machine, which supplied Versailles’ fountains with water from the river Seine, will impress upon visitors the magnitude of Louis XIV’s grand ambitions.

Understanding Nature

Louis XV’s Rhinoceros (Paris: Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle).

France’s imperial reach enabled Versailles to become a centre for the scientific study of plants and animals from around the world. The exhibition will display this growing interest in zoology and the kings’ luxurious taste, which pushed for inventive botanic engineering to allow exotic fruits, like pineapples, to grow at Versailles.

Visitors will also be able to learn the surprising story of Louis XV’s rhinoceros, on display in the UK for the very first time. Gifted by a French governor in India, this rhinoceros was perhaps the Versailles menagerie’s most pampered and famous resident. Acquired by the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle in Paris during the revolution, it was dissected after its death in 1793, and has been held there for over two hundred years.

Versailles will also feature the medical advances supported by the kings. The royal family made precious contributions to these developments by submitting their own bodies to procedures. On display will be a scalpel designed specifically to operate on the Sun King, while the exhibition will cover the inoculation against smallpox which Louis XVI and his family underwent as soon as he ascended the throne.

Louis XV supported the training of midwives across France to reduce infant mortality and grow a populous and strong kingdom. Born outside the nobility, to a family of doctors, Madame du Coudray rose to prominence through her pioneering practical training of midwives. She employed sophisticated life-sized mannequins to demonstrate the mechanics of birth—part of the only surviving mannequin will be showcased in the exhibition. Madame du Coudray ultimately trained over 5,000 women, as well as physicians, across France.

Versailles: Science and Splendour as installed in London’s Science Museum.

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Embracing Knowledge

Scientific culture became widespread and fashionable at the courts of Louis XV and Louis XVI, with members of the royal family and of the aristocracy educated in physics, mathematics, and chemistry. Examples of Louis XV’s magnificent collection of instruments will be on display. Visitors will see a sophisticated and rare optical microscope made by the king’s brilliant engineer, Claude-Siméon Passemant, which is also a work of art with its gilt bronze rococo stand by the Caffieri sculptors.

Jean-Antoine Nollet, tutor of physics and natural history to the royal children during Louis XV’s reign, demonstrated principles of physics in sensational presentations at court. His air-pump, used to ‘make the invisible visible’, will be on display in the exhibition. Visitors will also learn about Emilie du Châtelet, an exceptional physicist and mathematician. Her translation of Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica into French, with her own additional commentary, remains in use today.

From the heart of government at Versailles, science was used strategically to assert imperial power on the world stage. The exhibition highlights technological developments in warfare and defence engineering, as well as the 1785 expedition of La Pérouse. Commissioned by Louis XVI, the expedition had a dual aim. It sought to establish trade connections around the Pacific as well as further scientific knowledge: mapping coastlines as yet uncharted by Europeans and collecting scientific data.

The exhibition also interrogates the surprising role of science in Versailles’ taste for spectacle. The palace provided an influential platform for scientific figures to present their work, as well as for the kings to display their power through extraordinary demonstrations, such as the flight of Etienne Montgolfier’s hot-air balloon at Versailles in 1783. One of the most complex pieces of engineering of its time, Pendule de la Création du Monde, presented to Louis XV in 1754, will also be on display. This exquisite astronomical clock exemplifies the intersection of scientific interest and royal opulence, boasting Versailles’ splendour through mechanical wonder.

Anna Ferrari, ed., Versailles: Science and Splendour (Milan: Scala, 2025), 128 pages, ISBN: 978-1785515828, £30.

Published to accompany the exhibition at London’s Science Museum, this richly illustrated book breaks new ground in exploring the relationship between science and power at the French court of Versailles. It features sixteen short chapters by experts from Britain, France, and America.

Anna Ferrari is Curator of Art and Visual Culture at the Science Museum and lead curator of the exhibition Versailles: Science and Splendour. Trained as an art historian, she has previously curated and co-curated exhibitions at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Royal Academy of Arts and the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts.

The exhibition was on view last year at Vienna’s Gartenpalais Liechtenstein. The catalogue is distributed by The University of Chicago Press:

Stephan Koja, ed., Hercules of the Arts: Johann Adam Andreas I von Liechtenstein and Vienna around 1700 (Munich: Hirmer Verlag, 2024), 240 pages, ISBN: 978-3777443638, $45. With contributions by Thomas Baumgartner, Reinhold Baumstark, Alexandra Hanzl, Claudia Lehner-Jobst, Katharina Leithner, Gernot Mayer, Cecilia Mazzetti di Pietralata, Andreas Nierhaus, Peter Stephan, Arthur Stögmann, and Silvia Tammaro.

The life of one of Vienna’s foremost patrons of art.

This book focuses on Prince Johann Adam Andreas I of Liechtenstein (1657–1712). His skillful economic policies enabled him to increase his fortune, with which he purchased important artworks, invested in building projects and their artistic design, founded a city district, and developed Italian art and architecture in Vienna in around 1700. The prince was an important individual in his dynasty and a great patron and builder. He reorganized administrative structures and invested in businesses and innovative production techniques. He thus created the financial basis for the expansion of the art collection and the construction and furnishing of imposing buildings. To this day, the Gartenpalais and Stadtpalais in Vienna bear witness to the activities of this prince known as a Hercules of the arts.