Versailles: Science and Splendour at London’s Science Museum goals to focus on the French royal palace’s place because the crucible for scientific and mental innovation within the seventeenth and 18th centuries, underneath 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 show 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 research. The Muséum Nationwide d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris has loaned the stays of one among 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 occurring,” Howles says. “You’ve acquired these items just like the menagerie and the fountains which can be in themselves demonstrations of the monarchy’s energy and status, however on the similar time it offers scientists this nice useful resource. With the menagerie, scientists from the academy may research these creatures whereas they had been alive and dissect them after they’re lifeless and find yourself with rather 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 superbly 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 might simply as simply be on the Victoria and Albert Museum or British Museum. “We do discuss in regards to the opulence and grandeur of a few of the objects… however we additionally attempt to clarify the precise science that’s occurring behind these items: how they work, what they present, and what was important about them,” Howles says. He’s significantly enthusiastic in regards to 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 may be very clearly spectacular.” It was a present for an Indian nawab at a time when France and Britain had been competing for affect within the subcontinent. “It’s a extremely attention-grabbing story about science within the service of diplomacy and colonial pursuits as effectively,” 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
