Les Animaux Du Roi

Exhibition at the Château de Versailles, 12 October 2021 - 13 February 2022

At Versailles lived dozens of pets in the flats of the princes, and in the anterooms of the kings, and the menagerie housed the rarest animals, from the coati to the couagga, from the cassowary to the crowned crane, game was abundant in the parks, and 2,000 horses were housed in the stables... The king's best painters, from Bernaerts and Le Brun to Desportes and Oudry, painted portraits of these exotic, wild and familiar animals.

This exhibition catalogue aims to bring this bestiary to life. It is structured along three lines: the animal as an object of study and collection, the animal as a political attribute and symbolic reference and the animal cultivated for its pleasure value.