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Château De Choisy
The Château de Choisy was a royal French residence in the commune of Choisy-le-Roi in the Val-de-Marne department, not far from Paris. The commune was given its present name by Louis XV, when he purchased the manor of Choisy and its château in October 1739. The Château of La Grande Mademoiselle The site had been purchased well before 1680 by Louis XIV's first cousin Anne-Marie-Louise d'Orléans, duchesse de Montpensier, "La Grande Mademoiselle". She laid out 40,000 ''livres'' for the property, and swept away an existing ''corps de logis'', according to her ''Mémoires'', and had a new house built to plans of Jacques Gabriel—"who made ''my'' house to ''my'' fashion" Mlle Montpensier noted, "without any ornament or 'architecture'" an assertion that overlooked sculptural enrichments in the pediment, by Étienne Le Hongre. The Château de Choisy was set in an elaborate series of gardens laid out by André Le Nôtre. He was called in before the few existing buildings were sw ...
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Louis, Dauphin Of France (1661-1711)
Louis, Dauphin of France (1 November 1661 – 14 April 1711), commonly known as Grand Dauphin, was the eldest son and heir apparent of King Louis XIV and his spouse, Maria Theresa of Spain. He became known as the Grand Dauphin after the birth of his own son, Louis, Duke of Burgundy, the Petit Dauphin. As he and his son died before his father, they never became king. His grandson instead became King Louis XV at the death of Louis XIV, while his second son inherited the Spanish throne as Philip V through his grandmother. Biography Louis was born on 1 November 1661 at the Château de Fontainebleau, the eldest son of Louis XIV of France and Maria Theresa of Austria (who were double first-cousins to each other). As a '' Fils de France'' ("Son of France") he was entitled to the style of ''Royal Highness.'' He was baptised on 24 March 1662 at the chapel of the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye and given his father's name of Louis. At the ceremony, the Cardinal de Vendôme and the Princ ...
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Fiske Kimball
Sidney Fiske Kimball (1888 – 1955) was an American architect, architectural historian and museum director. A pioneer in the field of historic preservation, architectural preservation in the United States, he played a leading part in the restoration of Monticello and Stratford Hall Plantation in Virginia. Over his nearly-30-year tenure as director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, he moved the museum into its current building and greatly expanded its collections. Biography Kimball was born in Newton, Massachusetts on December 8, 1888. He was educated at Harvard University, where he took both his bachelor's and master's degrees in architecture. Kimball was awarded a Sheldon Fellowship for travel to Europe in 1911 and passed his assistantship in the library to his sister Theodora Kimball Hubbard during his absence. This opportunity propelled his sister's career as the first Landscape Architecture Librarian at Harvard University. He then taught at the University of Illinoi ...
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Madame De Pompadour
Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour (, ; 29 December 1721 – 15 April 1764), commonly known as Madame de Pompadour, was a member of the French court. She was the official chief mistress of King Louis XV from 1745 to 1751, and remained influential as court favourite until her death. Pompadour took charge of the king's schedule and was a valued aide and advisor, despite her frail health and many political enemies. She secured titles of nobility for herself and her relatives, and built a network of clients and supporters. She was particularly careful not to alienate the Queen, Marie Leszczyńska. On 8 February 1756, the Marquise de Pompadour was named as the thirteenth lady-in-waiting to the queen, a position considered the most prestigious at the court, which accorded her with honors. Pompadour was a major patron of architecture and decorative arts, especially porcelain. She was a patron of the ''philosophes'' of the Enlightenment, including Voltaire. Hostile crit ...
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Château De Versailles
The Palace of Versailles ( ; french: Château de Versailles ) is a former royal residence built by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, about west of Paris, France. The palace is owned by the French Republic and since 1995 has been managed, under the direction of the French Ministry of Culture, by the Public Establishment of the Palace, Museum and National Estate of Versailles. Some 15,000,000 people visit the palace, park, or gardens of Versailles every year, making it one of the most popular tourist attractions in the world. Louis XIII built a simple hunting lodge on the site of the Palace of Versailles in 1623 and replaced it with a small château in 1631–34. Louis XIV expanded the château into a palace in several phases from 1661 to 1715. It was a favorite residence for both kings, and in 1682, Louis XIV moved the seat of his court and government to Versailles, making the palace the ''de facto'' capital of France. This state of affairs was continued by Kings Louis XV an ...
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Edmé Bouchardon
Edmé Bouchardon (; 29 May 169827 July 1762) was a French sculptor best known for his neoclassical statues in the gardens of the Palace of Versailles, his medals, his equestrian statue of Louis XV of France for the Place de la Concorde (destroyed during the French Revolution); and for the Fountain of Four Seasons in Paris. He was also a draftsman and painter, and made celebrated series of engravings of working-class Parisians.''Le Petit Robert des Noms Propres'', Paris (2010) Biography Bouchardon was born in Chaumont-en-Bassigny, the son of a sculptor and architect, Jean-Baptiste Bouchardon. He learned sculpture first in the studio of his father, and then with Guillaume Coustou. He won the Prix de Rome of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in 1722, and as a consequence lived and worked in Rome from 1722 to 1732. He resisted the more ornate tendencies of the Rocaille style, and moved toward neoclassicism. While in Rome, he specialized in busts of distinguishe ...
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Orangerie
An orangery or orangerie was a room or a dedicated building on the grounds of fashionable residences of Northern Europe from the 17th to the 19th centuries where orange and other fruit trees were protected during the winter, as a very large form of greenhouse or conservatory. The orangery provided a luxurious extension of the normal range and season of woody plants, extending the protection which had long been afforded by the warmth offered from a masonry fruit wall. During the 17th century, fruits like orange, pomegranate, and bananas arrived in huge quantities to European ports. Since these plants were not adapted to the harsh European winters, orangeries were invented to protect and sustain them. The high cost of glass made orangeries a status symbol showing wealth and luxury. Gradually, due to technological advancements, orangeries became more of a classic architectural structure that enhanced the beauty of an estate garden, rather than a room used for wintering pla ...
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Ange-Jacques Gabriel
Ange-Jacques Gabriel (23 October 1698 – 4 January 1782) was the principal architect of King Louis XV of France. His major works included the Place de la Concorde, the École Militaire, and the Petit Trianon and opera theater at the Palace of Versailles. His style was a careful balance between French Baroque architecture and French neoclassicism. Biography Early life and career Ange-Jacques Gabriel was born on 23 October 1698 to a famous Parisian family of architects, and was connected by marriage with another celebrated architect of the time, François Mansart. His grandfather was an architect, and his father, Jacques Gabriel (1667-1742) received the title of Controller of the Buildings of the King at the age of twenty-one. His father's major projects included the Hotel de Ville of Rennes and the Place Royale (now Place de la Bourse) in Bordeaux. The young Ange-Jacques became a member of the Académie royale d'architecture in 1728, and assisted his father on the Place de la ...
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Bosquet
In the French formal garden, a ''bosquet'' (French, from Italian ''bosco'', "grove, wood") is a formal plantation of trees in a wide variety of forms, some open at the bottom and others not. At a minimum a bosquet can be five trees of identical species planted as a quincunx (like a 5 dice), or set in strict regularity as to rank and file, so that the trunks line up as one passes along either face. In large gardens they were dense artificial woodland, often covering large areas, with tall hedges on the outside and other trees inside the hedges. Symbolic of order in a humanized and tamed gardens of the French Renaissance and Baroque French formal gardens, the bosquet is an analogue of the orderly orchard, an amenity that has been intimately associated with pleasure gardening from the earliest Persian gardens of the Achaemenid Empire. Bosket is an English rendition of the word, now obselete; the usual English term for a large hedged bosquet was a "wilderness", while smaller unhed ...
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Parterre
A ''parterre'' is a part of a formal garden constructed on a level substrate, consisting of symmetrical patterns, made up by plant beds, low hedges or coloured gravels, which are separated and connected by paths. Typically it was the part of the garden nearest the house, perhaps after a terrace. The view of it from inside the house, especially from the upper floors, was a major consideration in its design. The word "parterre" was and is used both for the whole part of the garden containing parterres and for each individual section between the "alleys". The pattern or the borders of the beds may be marked by low, tightly pruned, evergreen hedge (gardening), hedging, and their interiors may be planted with flowers or other plants or filled with mulch or gravel. Parterres need not have any flowers at all, and the originals from the 17th and 18th centuries had far fewer than modern survivals or reconstructions. Statues or small evergreen trees, clipped as pyramids or other sha ...
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Louis XV
Louis XV (15 February 1710 – 10 May 1774), known as Louis the Beloved (french: le Bien-Aimé), was King of France from 1 September 1715 until his death in 1774. He succeeded his great-grandfather Louis XIV at the age of five. Until he reached maturity (then defined as his 13th birthday) on 15 February 1723, the kingdom was ruled by his grand-uncle Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, as Regent of France. Cardinal Fleury was chief minister from 1726 until his death in 1743, at which time the king took sole control of the kingdom. His reign of almost 59 years (from 1715 to 1774) was the second longest in the history of France, exceeded only by his predecessor, Louis XIV, who had ruled for 72 years (from 1643 to 1715). In 1748, Louis returned the Austrian Netherlands, won at the Battle of Fontenoy of 1745. He ceded New France in North America to Great Britain and Spain at the conclusion of the disastrous Seven Years' War in 1763. He incorporated the territories of the Duchy of Lorr ...
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Louise De La Vallière
Françoise ''Louise'' de La Vallière, Duchess of La Vallière and Vaujours, born Françoise Louise de La Baume Le Blanc de La Vallière, Mademoiselle de La Vallière (6 August 1644 – 7 June 1710) was a French noblewoman and the first mistress of Louis XIV of France from 1661 to 1667. She was created ''suo jure'' Duchess of La Vallière and Duchess of Vaujours. After leaving the royal court, Louise dedicated her life to religion, becoming a nun in 1674. Ancestry and early life (1644–1661) Françoise ''Louise'' de La Baume Le Blanc de La Vallière, Mademoiselle de La Vallière was born on 6 August 1644 at the Hôtel de la Crouzille (also known as Hôtel de la Vallière) in Tours, Kingdom of France as the daughter of military officer Laurent de La Baume Le Blanc, Lord of La Vallière and his wife, born Françoise Le Prévost, widow of a councillor of the ''parlement''. The La Blaume Le Blanc family had distungished itself in military service to the crown, while the Le Prév ...
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