The fame of the petit appartement de la reine rests squarely
in the hands of the last queen of France during the Ancien Régime. The restored
state of the rooms that one sees today at Versailles closely replicate the
petit appartement de la reine as it appeared during Marie-Antoinette’s day
(Verlet, 1937). Modifications of the petit appartement de la reine for
Marie-Antoinette began in 1779 (Verlet 1985, p. 585).
In this year, Marie-Antoinette ordered her favorite
architect, Richard Mique to cover all wall of the petit appartement de la reine
with white satin embroidered with floral arabesques, ostensibly to give a
decorative cohesion to the rooms. The cost of the fabric was 100,000 livres;
the hangings were entirely replaced with wood paneling in 1783 (Verlet 1985, p.
586).
In 1781, to commemorate the birth of the first dauphin,
Louis XVI commissioned Richard Mique to redecorate the cabinet de la Méridienne
(1789 plan #6) (Verlet 1985, p. 586). It was in this room that Marie-Antoinette
would choose the clothing she would wear that day.
In this same year, the bibliothèque – occupying the site of
the petite galerie of Marie Leszczyńska – (1789 plan #7) and the supplément de
la bibliothèque – occupying the pièce des bains of Maria Leszczyńska – (1789
plan #8), and, additionally, a room for the toilette à l’anglaise[6] a pièce
des bains and a salle des bains were arranged, opening on the cour de Monsieur
(Verlet 1985, p. 403).
The last major modification to the petit appartement de la
reine occurred in 1783, when Marie-Antoinette ordered a complete redecoration
of the grand cabinet intérieur. The costly embroidered hangings were replaced
with caved gilt paneling by Richard Mique. The new décor caused the room to be
renamed the cabinet doré (Verlet 1985, p. 586).
Of all the features of the petit appartement de la reine,
the so-called secret passage that links the grand appartement de la reine with
the appartement du roi is one that has become a legend in the history of Palace
of Versailles. The passage actually dates from the time of Marie-Thérèse, and
had always been a suite of service rooms that also served as a private means by
which the king and queen could communicate with each other (1740 plan #1-4;
1789 plan #1-4). It is true, however, that Marie-Antoinette, who was sleeping
in the chambre de la reine in the grand appartement de la reine, escaped from
the Paris mob on the night of 5/6 October 1789 by using this route. The
entrance to the so-called secret passage is through a door located on the west side
of the north wall of the chambre de la reine.
Richard Mique was born at Nancy, the son of Simon Mique, an
architect and entrepreneur of Lunéville and grandson of Pierre Mique also an
architect. Following their example, he became an architect in the service of
duke Stanislas Leszczyński, ex-king of Poland and father of Maria Leszczyńska,
the consort of King Louis XV of France. Following the death of Héré de Corny,
Mique participated as premier architecte in Stanislas' grand plans for
reordering and embellishing Nancy, his capital as Duke of Lorraine. Stanislas
made him a chevalier of the Order of Saint-Michel and maneuvered unsuccessfully
to have Mique placed on the payroll of the Bâtiments du Roi.
Following his patron's death in February 1766, Mique was
called to France the following October, at the suggestion of Maria
Leszczyńska's Polish confessor. His official career in France was initially
stymied by the influence of Ange-Jacques Gabriel, premier architecte. His main
clients were a series of royal ladies. For Maria Leszczyńska, he built a
convent, prominently sited in the town of Versailles, on lands at the edge of
the park belonging formerly to Madame de Montespan's Château de Clagny, of
which eleven hectares were consigned to the queen by her husband, Louis XV. At
the queen's death, her daughter Madame Adélaïde completed the project.
Mique must have gained the confidence of the dauphin and the
dauphine for, upon the accession of the dauphin as Louis XVI in 1774, he was
appointed intendant et contrôleur général des bâtiments du Roi; he succeeded
Gabriel as premier architecte to Louis XVI the following year, thus overseeing
the last works carried out at Versailles before the French Revolution. He
purchased a seigneurie in Lorraine, which completed his transformation to
courtier-architect.
He laid out the queen's garden at the Petit Trianon from
1774 to 1785 in collaboration, it is believed (though without documentary
evidence) with the painter Hubert Robert. The design — "one of the first
instances... of pre-Victorian kitsch" (Higonnet 2002) — was based on
sketches by the comte de Caraman, an inspired amateur of gardening. Mique was
also responsible for the Hameau de la Reine, a mock farming village built
around an artificial lake at the northeastern corner of the estate.
During the Revolution, he was arrested along with his son as
participants in a conspiracy to save the life of Marie Antoinette, whose
favorite architect he had been. He was brought before a revolutionary tribunal
and, after a summary trial on 7 July 1794, both father and son were condemned
to death and executed the following day. This was just three weeks before the
fall of Robespierre and the end of the Reign of Terror.
Pierre de Nolhac, the historian of the Château de
Versailles, in Le Trianon de Marie-Antoinette (1914), found Mique to have been
"un artiste savant, habile, et digne de plus de gloire". A street in
the city of Versailles commemorates his name.
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