Versailles (AFP)

The ghost of Marie-Antoinette sneaking into Versailles in front of tourists stunned: it is the final surprise in 3D that reserves an abundant exhibition on the resurrection of the royal castle as a place of power and French identity between 1867 and 1937.

"Versailles revival": Catherine Pégard, president of the public establishment, justifies this borrowing to the English: "Revival has I do not know what seems to correspond to the effervescence of this period end of century where the castle becomes a phenomenon of society".

Under the Second Empire, Versailles was an eccentric museum that Louis-Philippe had arranged, a place suffering from the opprobrium into which the Revolution had thrown it.

The saving shock comes from an affront: the proclamation of the German Empire in 1870 in the Hall of Mirrors after Sedan. The Bismarck family also lent Anton von Werner's painting representing this humiliating scene.

"If the Germans had not had this idea, I do not know if the Republic would have gone to Versailles, if the Versailles Treaty would have been signed at Versailles." From this disaster, Versailles was replaced as the historical symbol of Versailles. France ", reports Laurent Salomé, commissioner and director of the museum.

Versailles becomes a subject of pictorial, poetic and musical production. And also a popular walk place.

"The craze for the eighteenth century develops: a very spectacular flowering, where we draw happily in the life of court: Marie-Antoinette, horrible Austrian, becomes an idol at the Belle Epoque Louis XIV becomes popular, character of Children's books, everyone plays at the court of Louis XIV ", notes the curator.

An operation of reconstitution, of refurnishing the castle in its state of old regime is launched. Indefatigable and passionate, director from 1892 to 1920, Pierre de Nolhac will be the pivot. He will have to convince the governments of the Republic.

- "Royal Foliage Cemetery" -

Before the Great War, Versailles illustrated, according to Laurent Salomé, "the question between modernity and tradition" of the moment. A vision of a dark and engulfed world, which fascinated certain aesthetes - Marcel Proust will see a "royal cemetery of foliage" - opposed the desire to restore the original splendor that the Conservatives led at a rate rampant.

The dandy writer Robert de Montesquiou will feed in Paris the passion for this place that, he says, "painting reproduces, famous poetry, whose music is inspired". He then reigns a "Versaillomanie" to paint the autumn at Versailles.

The exhibition recreates various atmospheres with vintage photos and colorful paintings on the edge of kitsch, as well as modern works, from Georges Rouault to Gerda Wegener. Short films from the beginning of the cinema describe a Versailles of the XVIIIth often imagined. François Flameng's "Ball of the Ladies of the Court" (1888) depicts, idyllic, courtesans bathing in a pool. More austere, films visits foreign delegations, elections in congresses every seven years of the new President of the Republic ...

Many loans come from Russian museums, starting with a beautiful series of paintings by the Russian Alexandre Benois, which we rediscover. Versailles was loved in Russia, thanks to events such as the tsar's visit in 1886.

The craze spreads abroad: the "Versailles of the seas", the liner France, with its lounge Louis XIV, Bavarian Versailles that are the castles of Louis II, the American Versailles with including the villa of Alva Vanderbilt in Newport. The American billionaire John D. Rockefeller will largely finance the restoration of the castle.

"Fete de nuit à Versailles" by the painter Gaston La Touche, who was well forgotten in Limoges, shows a wonderful dream: a couple of lovers in a night boat during the Grandes Eaux de Versailles.

At the end of the period in 1937, the "revival" will be well and truly accomplished. Witness the million visitors who attend the area.

© 2019 AFP