A must-see
article | Reading time5 min
In his château of a thousand portraits, Count Roger de Rabutin has compiled a veritable encyclopaedia of the genre, while at the same time creating a Facebook before its time ! Would you like to immerse yourself in the social network of our flamboyant Burgundian ?
The portrait in all its forms
An exhaustive inventory
By refusing to be forgotten during his exile, Roger de Bussy-Rabutin created in his home the Who's Who of his time, but above all an inventory of the portrait as a pictorial genre.
On the first floor, you will find :
Souvenir portraits, such as that of the Count in the Hall of War men or those of members of his family in the King's Gallery.
Official portraits, such as those of the military in the Hall of War men, those of the Kings of France in the Gallery or the portrait in armour of Roger de Rabutin in the Motto's Room.
Court portraits, such as those of his beautiful friends in the Golden Tower or those of the royal mistresses in the bedroom.
Ceremonial portraits , such as those of Madame de la Sablière in Bussy's bedroom, Sébastien de Rabutin killing the last wolf in the Forest of Fontainebleau in the Kings' Gallery, and the Duc d'Enghien.
Allegorical portraits such as that of the Count as a Roman emperor (or Hercules) in the Golden Tower ; The Four Seasons on the ceiling of the same tower, representing his grandmother (Winter), his mother (Autumn), his first wife (Summer) and his second wife (Spring).
Regards database / Centre des monuments nationaux
The atmosphere of the Court in the heart of Burgundy
If you don't go to Bussy, Bussy will come to you
Roger de Rabutin created his set with a very specific aim : to recreate the world of the French Court, from which he had just been expelled. He refused to be forgotten and sought to console himself by displaying portraits of important personalities on the upstairs walls. In this way, he succeeded in recreating the atmosphere of the Court in his Burgundian home.
Quantity prevailed over quality : there were no well-known artists and none of the paintings were signed. It was certainly a major company from the region that was involved throughout his seventeen years of exile. The painters employed had never seen the people they depicted : they based their work on engravings, which were more or less truthful and not always of the best quality (for example, the painting of Madame de Montespan in Bussy's bedroom, bottom left of the fireplace, shows her at a disadvantage). They are copies of copies, reinforcing the impression of déjà-vu that one can feel when discovering these walls with their various effigies.
This homogeneity of style can be seen in the portraits of soldiers and royal mistresses, whose faces seem identical.
Only the ladies of the Golden Tower stand out from a plastic point of view : we know for a fact that their portraits were produced by Versailles workshops. After all, you've only got to be as clever as you are !
To obtain them from his "beautiful friends" (as he called them), Roger de Rabutin informed the greatest gossip of the Court (whose name he did not mention, of course) that he was creating a superb study where he installed portraits of women who were kind enough to send him some. This was not true, but all the ladies fell for it and offered him the portraits they had printed for the occasion free of charge.
The Count, for his part, remains faithful to his good old habits : under each of the paintings, he has a few well-intentioned phrases inscribed !
Reproduction Hervé Lewandowski / Centre des monuments nationaux
The Bussy portrait gallery, a 'Facebook' before its time ?
Pictorial portraits, literary portraits
The Count's aim is to recreate his lost environment, the society he used to rub shoulders with on a regular basis.
The floor is the Who's Who of the 17th century ; it could even be likened to his "Facebook wall", a comparison made all the stronger by the very regular and more or less caustic inscriptions that Roger de Rabutin wrote below the portraits.
For example, he cannot resist the pleasure of castigating his former mistress, Isabelle Cécile Hurault de Cheverny, Marquise de Montglas :
Whose inconstancy has put the matron of Ephesus, the wives of Astolphe and Joconde, back in the limelight.
quote under the portrait of his mistress in the Tour Dorée
Since all these illustrious ladies were the greatest infidels of Antiquity, he implies that there is not one to take precedence over the other.
And what about the main protagonist of the Histoire Amoureuse des Gaules ? He claims that Catherine d'Olone (code name : Ardelise) was :
The most beautiful woman of her time, but less famous for her beauty than for the use she made of it.
Quote under the portrait of Catherine d'Angennes
Even members of her family suffered from her verve : for example, her brother Guy de Rabutin had "a rather spoiled waistline".
David Bordes / Centre des monuments nationaux
A full-size comic strip
In his autobiographical comic strip château, Roger de Rabutin brilliantly blends pictorial and literary portraits, paying double tribute to the various personalities who adorn its walls : beneath their pictorial portrait, he also paints them with a biting pen, giving them colour, an incomparable flavour, an impression that he is still there after all, ready to help us discover and get close to personalities who have disappeared for several centuries !
Colombe Clier / Centre des monuments nationaux