Palace of Versailles, View of the forecourt.
(Chasteau de Versailles, Veu de l'avantcour.)
1682
- Medium
- etching and engraving
- Measurements
- 34.1 × 49.5 cm (image) 37.8 × 50.3 cm (plate) 51.4 × 65.3 cm (sheet)
- Place/s of Execution
- Paris, France
- Catalogue/s Raisonné
- Faucheux 317.18
- Edition
- only state
- Printing/Publishing
- published by l’Imprimerie Royale, Paris (c. 1673)
- Inscription
- printed in ink l.c.l.: Chasteau de Versailles, veu de l'auantcour.
printed in ink l.r.: Dessigné et graué par Isr. Siluestre en 1682. - Accession Number
- p.183.64-1
- Departments
- International Prints / International Prints and Drawings
- Credit Line
- National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Gift of Mr George Collins Levey, 1879 - Gallery location
- 18th Century Decorative Arts & Paintings Gallery
Level 2, NGV International - About this work
-
In the late sixteenth century, French printmaker Jacques Androuet du Cerceau became the first to conceive of representing architectural sites through comprehensive series of bird’s-eye views, plans, elevations and sections. In the seventeenth century, printmakers such as Israël Silvestre were enlisted to document Versailles in a similar manner throughout the palace’s successive phases of expansion. Silvestre’s official remit was to make ‘drawings of Architecture, views and perspectives of the royal Houses, carousels, and other public assemblies’, and he received an annual pension of 400 livres on those terms from 1664 until his death.
