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.
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