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Versailles: Science and Splendour at London’s Science Museum goals to spotlight the French royal palace’s place because the crucible for scientific and mental innovation within the seventeenth and 18th centuries, beneath the patronage of Louis XIV and XV.
The exhibition—a reworked model of a 2010 present at Versailles—is designed to light up a momentous “scientific shift”, says the affiliate curator Matthew Howles. “On this interval you see an growing emphasis on the significance of remark; experiments that may be repeated to display their accuracy and reliability; and the event of extra exact devices to measure these scientific discoveries.”
A lot of this exercise seems to have been a results of royal status and enthusiasms. The palace contained Louis XIV’s menagerie of unique animals, the primary modern-style zoo, which turned a centre for zoological examine. The Muséum Nationwide d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris has loaned the stays of considered one of its most celebrated inmates, an Indian rhinoceros given to Louis XV in 1770 by the French governor of Chandannagar in West Bengal.
Louis XV’s rhinoceros © MNHN – Agnès Iatzoura
One other technical innovation was the Marly machine, a pumping system constructed to produce Louis XIV’s elaborate fountains with water from the Seine river.
“There’s a two-fold phenomenon happening,” Howles says. “You’ve bought this stuff just like the menagerie and the fountains which might be in themselves demonstrations of the monarchy’s energy and status, however on the identical time it provides scientists this nice useful resource. With the menagerie, scientists from the academy may examine these creatures whereas they have been alive and dissect them after they’re useless and find yourself with far more detailed research of animal anatomy.”
Technical sophistication: the Clock of the Creation of the World © Musée du Louvre; Dist. RMN-Grand Palais © Thierry Ollivier
The present is stuffed with fantastically designed objects together with the amazingly intricate Clock of the Creation of the World, and an “eclipsarium” constructed by the royal clockmaker Isaac Thuret. It’s maybe an uncommon present for the Science Museum, with displays that would simply as simply be on the Victoria and Albert Museum or British Museum. “We do discuss concerning the opulence and grandeur of a few of the objects… however we additionally attempt to clarify the precise science that’s happening behind this stuff: how they work, what they present, and what was important about them,” Howles says. He’s significantly enthusiastic concerning the Clock of the Creation of the World, with its mechanical illustration of the photo voltaic system. “It seems completely astonishing within the element of the bronze work and the gilding, and its technical sophistication could be very clearly spectacular.” It was a present for an Indian nawab at a time when France and Britain have been competing for affect within the subcontinent. “It’s a very attention-grabbing story about science within the service of diplomacy and colonial pursuits as nicely,” Howles says.
He provides that they’ve labored with the palace to replace the present, together with extra “colonial perspective[s] and convey[ing] out extra tales about ladies in science” too.
• Versailles: Science and Splendour, Science Museum, London, 12 December-21 April 2025
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