Vaux
Le Vicomte
‘’On
17th August 1661 at six in the evening, Fouquet was the King of
France; at 2pm in the morning he was nothing’’ Voltaire.
When Nicolas Fouquet (Lord
High Treasurer of France, Superintendent of Finance) brought together the
greatest talent of the 17th Century in France, Louis Le Vau, Charles
Le Brun and Andre Le Notre to design and build his new country chateau and
garden called Vaux Le Vicomte, situated thirty four miles south east of Paris,
he set the fashion in France for the baroque garden for at least the next one
hundred years.
It must be understood that in all the great gardens of
France at this time no one man was responsible for the creation of chateau and
gardens, they were in fact an amalgamation of many talented men and minds. Of
course, this could lead to artistic and temperamental differences as happens
when great minds and even greater egos come together. In the case of Vaux and
again at Versailles Le Notre, Le Brun and Le Vau all worked well together and
were in fact friends.
Front view of the chateau
Front view of the chateau
The driving force behind the creation of Vaux was Nicolas
Fouquet; he was one of the few men capable of leading such an undertaking, when
you consider that at times the amount of men working at the Chateau numbered
eighteen thousand! The leadership of Fouquet and the creation of Vaux by these
talented men was described by William Howard Adams when he wrote’ ‘’The gardens at Vaux were the most complex
ever undertaken in France before, and the organising force and personality
behind such a stupendous enterprise had to be the Minister of Finance himself,
who could personally direct an undertaking of imperial magnitude. First, three
offending villages were levelled and the River Angueil marshalled into a canal
over three thousand feet long. Earth was moved to form massive terraces,
parterres, and ramps, followed by tree planting on an imposing scale. A hospital
was especially built for the workmen in a nearby village. When the major work
was completed in 1661, the results of Le Notre’s informing genius and that of
his colleagues had created nothing less than a masterpiece’’.
The problem was that Vaux Le Vicomte became the final
catalyst in Fouquet’s downfall. Work started at Vaux in 1656 and was completed
enough (but not completely) to hold a ‘Grand
Fete’ on the 17th August 1661, held primarily to honour the King, although this totally back
fired and led to Fouquet spending the rest of his life a prisoner at the Kings
pleasure. Many reports of the Grand Fete
have overestimated the number of guests, these range from three to six
thousand, in fact there was only around one thousand. Whether or not you believe
Fouquet should be cast as a villain or hero is a different matter and not for
this article, or whether he was a victim of his own ego, history will continue
to disagree on. Personally I believe he was all of these and indeed had a huge
ego, but I urge you to read the excellent book ‘The man who outshone the Sun King’ by Charles Drazin and you can
decide for yourself. Fouquet’s motto was; Quo
non ascendet – What heights might he not reach. He never reached the
heights he aspired to. Fouquet from prison wrote these words, ‘’this was the estate I regarded as my
principal seat, and where I intended to leave some traces of the status I had
enjoyed’’.
Despite myth, Fouquet was not the mysterious figure known
as the ‘man in the iron mask’. Louis XV1 was the last man to know the identity
of this person and he took the name to the guillotine.
Andre Le Notre is unarguably the most influential and
talented landscape architect ever to set foot in a garden and at Vaux he
created a landscape that has yet to be surpassed.
Andre Le Notre 1613-1700
Andre Le Notre 1613-1700
Le Notre was able to change levels, create vistas and
play tricks on the eye without the aid of sophisticated surveying equipment. This is explained by Adams discussing the
large square mirror pool, ‘’Visitors to
the garden of Vaux Le Vicomte experience another illusionistic effect after
walking around the large square pool at the end of the lawn parterre and turning
back towards the chateau the whole building is reflected in the water, even
though it is more than a quarter mile distant. This is the first miroir d’ eau
in the history of the art of gardening: water used as a mirror, one of Le
Notre’s inventions. Unlike earlier renaissance gardens Vaux was conceived
as a whole with the chateau and garden being intimately linked together, a
central axis of just under two miles starting in front of the building and
continuing through the centre of the chateau to the horizon. Linear perspective
had been discovered and was used to perfection by Le Notre, it started to have
a real revolutionary effect in art and garden design. The strong central axis displayed at Vaux demonstrates the
classical order and symmetry of the design.
This photograph shows the vista from the tower looking
along the axis. The two main parterre de broderie can be seen. They were also
called ‘Tapis de Turquerie’ after the Turkish carpet which were the inspiration
of the motifs. The design of this parterre is described by Michael Brix, ‘’The most important measure undertaken was no
doubt the redesign of the large parterre, which Le Notre extended considerably
towards the south, giving it a form that was very unusual for the age. Until
that time it was common to design such a parterre as a self-contained unity: a
square that was subdivided into four beds with a fountain or pool at the
centre. Le Notre, by contrast, designed an elongated embroidery parterre that
is divided into just two parts, with a symmetrical axis that is powerfully
emphasized’’. During the 17th Century, sand, charcoal, crushed
brick and coal would have been used to produce the colour required between the
box plants. The parterres designed by le Notre were lost by 1875; they had been
turfed over in the 1700 hundreds and were not reinstated until 1923 by Achille
Duchene. The rond d’eau marks the centre of the garden.
The French formal garden as at Vaux displayed a tight
control and even rigidity over nature, this can be described as ‘’Art over
nature’. This does lead you to think that nature was not considered or respected,
but this was not the case and is explained by Adams, ‘’In theory and in practice, French garden art emphasized the formal
subordination of nature to reason and order, there was, in fact, a wide-spread,
almost romantic awareness of nature expressed by Le Notre’s contemporaries.
Poets, novelists, nobles, and bourgeoisie conveyed a deeply felt and coherent
appreciation of nature’s pleasures’’. Hunting was the most popular pastime
of the court and of course carried out in the countryside, probably leading to
an understanding and appreciation of nature.
The
photograph on the left shows one end of the canal known as the ‘frying pan’,
where boats sailing on the canal could turn. On the evening of the grand fete a
large wooden whale was rowed up the canal and was the launch platform for a
spectacular firework display. The photograph on the right shows the River
Angueil before it is taken into the garden. The canal formed from
the river was altered by 45 degrees and canalised over a length of one
Kilometre. From the main axis the canal through the skill of Le Notre cannot be
seen until you are literally a few feet from it, creating an element of
surprise. The canal also has a stream that was diverted underground to feed the
moat and pools, drain into it, a feature known as the cascade.
The grotto at Vaux seems to rise from the square pool
which forms part of the canal and was and still is the most famous feature of
Vaux. The sheer size cannot be appreciated unless you stand in front of it. The
grotto was designed by Le Notre or Le Brun, no one can be really certain. The
figure on the left represents the River Anqueil and the right side represents
the River Tiber. There are seven vaulted scalloped recesses separated by a
figure representing Atlantes. The movement and shape of the surrounding steps
was inspired by the Italian baroque, probably Villa d’ Este. Looking from the
steps back towards the chateau, the sheer wonder of Le Notre’s masterpiece can
be seen. The wonderful harmony of the horizontal planes which show the change
in levels along the length of the garden that finishes with the final level of
the chateau in the distance.
Vaux became the blueprint for the baroque garden style in
France. Louis X1V invited Le Notre, Le Brun and Le Vau to work for him at Versailles.
Vaux became the nursery for the greatest talent in France. Le Notre stayed with
the King for the rest of his working life, working for the King at other
chateau and palaces. The King loved Le Notre and Le Notre the King. Louis
offered him a coat of arms and Le Notre being the man he was chose three cabbages
and snails as his crest! Louis gave Le Notre the highest honour by allowing him
to take his arm in the garden. Le Notre also famously said in his old age while
being pushed by the King in his wheeled chair at Versailles, that his father
would not believe that the greatest King on earth was pushing him, the humble
gardener.
Vaux showed the baroque style in its most perfect form
and still does to this day, being as it is the perfect example of a formal
garden. The total control and subjugation of nature, a strict control imposed
on the garden. The garden is a masterpiece of symmetry and geometric form. Le
Notre manipulated the topography of the site, moving vast amounts of earth to
gain the graduated levels he wished to see. The garden was enhanced by statues,
fountains and topiary in the most perfect forms. Vaux surpassed mere
horticulture; it went past simply being a garden and open air theatre but moved
to an art form in its own right created by the ultimate landscape architect.
I urge you to visit Vaux, it is a place of beauty, history
hangs heavy in the air. Time your visit
for one of the weekends when the water features are turned on, or stay until
11pm and see the chateau and garden lit up with thousands of candles and enjoy
the fireworks in honour of the original owner. I hope you love and enjoy Vaux
Le Vicomte as much as I do. The author does run guided tours to Vaux.
Vaux
Le Vicomte
77950
Maincy
France
Tel
- +33 (0) 1.64.14.41.90
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