Pomp and Power

Book excerpt: This lavish and beautiful book illustrates and discusses 52 French drawings dating from the late 17th to the early 19th century, all from the extraordinary collection Chateau de Versailles. Together the drawings tell the story of the major buildings at Versailles, its gardens, the court, and the personalities associated with the palace of Louis XIV and later French kings. Among the artists represented are many of the major figures of this magnificent period of French art, including Le Brun, Lemoine, Cochin, Claude-Joseph, Horace Vernet, Jean-Baptiste Isabey, Paul Delaroche, and Jacques-Louis David, whose splendid compositional study for his Oath of the Tennis Court, the event that marked the beginning of the French Revolution, is of particular interest.