Hidden Treasure

Our Trianon tour guide opened this upper-floor door to reveal an amazing drawing.  I so wish I had access to a Trianon historian who could tell me his/her educated opinion on when it was likely drawn and by whom.  If the tour guide expressed an opinion, I don't remember what it was.  Elissa?  Help me out here.  In which room was this door?  All I remember is that it was after we went through the Campan and Lamballe rooms.  Do the graph paper-like gridlines mean that the soldier was just the beginning of a larger scene?  When and why was the door walled up?  Was there ever a room behind it or has it always been a false door?  What's on the other side of the wall?  Does the fact that the backside of the door isn't finished indicate that it was done after Marie Antoinette's ownership?  I would think if it were done during her time or at the time of the building's construction, the builders wouldn't have neglected to finish even the inside of a false door.  The tour guide didn't definitively answer these questions, but my first thought, that it could've been drawn by Axel Fersen, so stunned me that I don't remember what was said.  Only afterward did I re-think the Fersen possibility and realize that, disappointingly, he probably wasn't the artist.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Madeleine this is the room directly beside MA's bedroom (it was an antechamber to her room. It was made as a fake door, so it was there during her time. There are 2 doors along the south wall of her bedroom and only one goes into this room. The drawing however wasn't made during her time. The guide said it was probably done after the Revolution. Remember the Trianon served as a hotel at one time and was then occupied by Napoleon's sister Pauline and then the wife of Louis Napoleon in the mid 1800s. Who knows who had access to it between the years 1789-1798 before Napoleon was consul and then Emperor. Very interesting stuff indeed!
I should've taken notes as we went from room to room! It seems reasonable that it was done between 1789-1798, because of the subject and the public access. We'll never know. Unless one of the Spirits tells us...

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