New Versailles exhibit reflects Sun King's glory

PARIS — The Sun King shines again at Versailles.

Hundreds of long-dispersed portraits, sculptures and tapestries celebrating Louis XIV have returned to Versailles, a former hunting lodge that the autocratic French monarch transformed as a reflection of his glory into a palace of unrivaled opulence.

The exhibit "Louis XIV: The Man and the King" gives visitors the 17th century ruler in all his varied incarnations. A massive oil painting shows the cherub-faced child who ascended to the throne at age five. Imposing marble busts extoll the steely eyed "Louis the Great," whose iron-fisted leadership helped forge the modern French state. A wax relief captures the elderly monarch — all droopy jowls — facing his own mortality.

The show, which opened Tuesday, also highlights Louis XIV's artistic tastes. A great champion of music, architecture and gardening — as evidenced by the gilded Versailles palace and its manicured lawns — the Sun King also dabbled in theater, tapestries, gemstones and illuminated manuscripts.

The show's more than 300 pieces reflect those varied interests. Widely dispersed during and after the 1789 French Revolution, some of them have not been back in the country since.

"Louis XIV was a world unto himself," the exhibit's curator, Nicolas Milovanovic, told The Associated Press. "He's at once an inspiration for the most important artists of the 17th century, who did sometimes very different portraits of him, and a passionate lover of art who had very strong relationships with artists."

Milovanovic said the king had well-known ties with taste-makers such as architect Louis Le Vau, landscape artist Andre Le Notre and painter Charles Le Brun, but his affinity for lesser-known Northern European painters was a more private passion.

"He had his official collection, which by tradition had to be of a splendor rivaling those of Europe's other sovereigns, but he also had his own private collection of objects he loved, constituted according to his own taste," said Milovanovic.

Born in 1638 to Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, Louis Dieudonne, or Louis the God-given, ascended to the throne at the tender age of five following his father's death in 1643 — though he didn't direct the government himself until 1661. His reign, which came after the bloody Wars of Religion, was one of relative peace and prosperity, and saw France eclipse Spain as Europe's dominant power.