III.2. A MODERN ROYAL CITY

3.2. A modern royal city

 PLACE DE LA DÉFENSE, HEIR OF PLACE DES VOSGES

Streets converge, skyscrapers bring homogeneous architecture and the Grand Arch, symbol of capitalism, replaces equestrian statue of the king, symbol of monarchy :

Claude Abron

Claude Abron

As well...

• The Grand Axis as model

• The design that links straight streets and points of focus 

• "Places" stay royal

• The violent imagery of victors on horseback

• Heroes on white horses  

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Next,
The Grand Axis as model

THE GRAND AXIS AS MODEL

LOUIS XIV CREATES THE STRAIGHT LINE THAT MERGES WITH THE HORIZON AS A SYMBOL OF ENDLESS MIGHT

 It harks back to the space that leads to the royal tombs:

Claude Abron

Photo taken from the top of the Grand Arch, far to the west

Foreign cities adopt the model later, but only in capitals, and only to underscore the State:

In Washington, the point of focus emphasizes State grandeur

In New York, Fifth Avenue has no point of focus.

New York's three points of focus  — le Flatiron building, le MetLife building and the Public Library seen from W. 42nd Street —  are built on a layout that is practical only. 

...while the innumerable Parisian streets

that lead the eye to a target

and give the city its majesty

 hark back to the kings.

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Next,
The design that links straight streets and points of focus

STRAIGHT STREETS AND POINTS OF FOCUS, KEY TO THE CITY'S GRANDEUR

THEY ARE ANOTHER FRENCH SPECIFICITY AND ANOTHER GIFT OF KINGS

The design comes from...

• The space that leads to the monarchs' tombs.

• The straight streets that lead to symbols of monarchy.

• A probable plan for an urban complex, which culminates with a statue of a king. 

• The straight lines that converge toward the dome of the Invalides, which was meant to harbor the Sun King's tomb.

• The Grand Axis.

It brings grandeur by... 

• Amplifying prestige:

Claude Abron

The Invalides

• Highlighting power:

The Senate

• Linking the secular and sacred:

The Chamber of Deputies seen from the church of the Madeleine

• Recalling palaces:

Carolyn Ristau

The Opera

Eurodisney website

Eurodisney

• Adding clout:

The Bank of France

• Making streets dramatic:

Another bank (BNP Paribas, 18th district)

Yet another (the BNP in the 9th)

A church (Notre-Dame de Lorette, 9th)

Another church (Saint-Bernard, 18th)

The Saint-Lazare railway station

The Chamber of Commerce

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Those perspectives were due to one man

(The Baron Haussmann, active 1854-1869)

Emperor Napoleon III entrusted the city's transformation to a man who could stand up to him. When the emperor remarked that in London streets served only for traffic, Haussmann answered,

"Sire, Parisians are not English. 

They need something more."  

 -- "Memoirs"

 "Something more" 
is the memory of monarchy.

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Next,
"Places" stay royal

"PLACES" STAY ROYAL

ALL IMPORTANT PLACES* FOLLOW THE MODEL OF PLACE DES VOSGES

 

* The main open spaces in French cities, which hark back to the kings  

Only central symbols change with the times. They hark back to the royal statue on pont Neuf and symbolize the power of the State.

• The Arc de Triomphe, begun under Napoleon and inaugurated in 1836, exalts the victories of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic armies to unite the population around Louis-Philippe, a king who lacked legitimacy.

Internet, no photographer named

• At place Vendôme, the column built to honor Napoleon's victory at Austerlitz is a copy (Austerlitz, 1805; first column, 1807; column now, 1870's).

Internet, no photographer named

• Its militarism...

    Le Routard / zoom

Scenes of the battle compose its decor and it is supposed to have been made from cannon seized from the enemy, though Communards (please read on) find only a thin layer of bronze.

• ...led La Commune to tear it down (in 1871):

        Preparation for démolition, last measures by Bruno Braquehais / zoom

          Shattered statue of the emperor Napoleon by Bruno Braquehais / zoom

"A monument to barbarity, a symbol of brute force and false glory, the victors' permanent insult to the vanquished... the Vendôme column will be demolished" 

 -- Decree of destruction

• At place de l'Opéra the monument represents the regime and is itself the symbol (end of the 1860's):

Claude Abron

An enclosed public space, converging streets, homogeneous architecture

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Although set between the river and a street the Grand Courtyard of the Louvre cannot draw converging routes...

• The space is public, the architecture homogeneous...

Pinterest

...and the Pyramid evokes the State:

Monique Wells

Faced with an outcry against putting the contemporary work in the ancestral setting, the "Sun King of Socialism" — President Mitterand —  said, "I want it!" and the opposition answered the equivalent of "Oui, Sire" (in 1984).

President Macron celebrated his electoral victory with the Pyramid in the background (in 2017):

The royal imprint,

a current event.

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Next,
The violent imagery of victors on horseback

THE VIOLENT IMAGERY OF VICTORS ON HORSEBACK

ART THAT GLORIFIES WAR BEGAN WITH STATUES OF KINGS 

On the arch that dominated the Saint-Denis gate an exhausted lion evokes the defeat of the Habsbourg monarchy* and shows Louis XIV slaying the defeated: 

* The lion appears on its coat of arms.

The sculpture commemorates the Crossing of the Rhine by the French army in 1674, the prelude to two decades of massacres by the French armies in western Germany.  

 A century and a half later, the same idea:

Napoleon at Eylau by Jean Gros, 1807-1808, Louvre / zoom

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When Prussia crushed France (in 1871), the French were stunned by the hatred of the German Confederation's soldiers.

It came from the memory of those massacres (please scroll down), and the arrogance that those works express.

The Prussian emperor demanded an armistice that was deliberately humiliating for the French, and that it be signed under a triumphalist painting of Louis XIV in Versailles's Hall of Mirrors: 

  The Proclamation of the German Empire by Anton von Werner, 1885 / zoom

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Facing the Louvre is a statue de Jeanne d'Arc, the first to be made after that defeat: la revanche ("revenge") it represented was one of the reasons for World War I. 

*Le nouveau état allemand avait annexé l'Alsace et une partie de la Lorraine après la défaite des Français  mentionne ci-dessus. Jeanne d'Arc était le symbole de la revanche à venir, puisqu'elle avait chassé les Anglais du pays.

Monument to Joan of Arc by  Emmanuel Frémiet, place des Pyramides

Defeat 1870, statue 1874

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The Commander-in-Chief of the Allied armies of World War I, looks over the splendid perspective that leads to the Eiffel Tower.

It is changes the subject from the carnage of that war, which provoked the 20th centuries' calamities :

Maréchal Foch by Raymond Martin and Robert Wlérick / Internet, photographer not named 

The arrow leads to the Eiffel Tower.

But de Gaulle is always on foot. 

In front of the Grand Palais

Because his generation of officers no longer rode horses? Because of his height, long legs and long paces? Because the film of his march down the Champs-Elysées at the Liberation is so famous? Or to set him apart? 

Whatever the reason, 

de Gaulle is always shown striding,

an image that coincides with peace in Europe.

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Next,

Heroes on white horses

HEROES ON WHITE HORSES

WHITE IS SACRED IN MANY CULTURES AND HEROES ARE WHITE HORSES ARE OFTEN ASSOCIATED

The symbol is universal:

   Newsletter, source not said

Kublai Khan, 13th century

The Apocalypse: "Behold a white horse: And he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: And he went forth conquering"

Detail of illuminated manuscript, Poitiers, 12th century, British Library

     Washington Crosses the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze, 1851 / zoom

Reproduction in American classrooms

They signify chivalry and courage:

Fifteenth-century miniature / zoom 

Joan of Arc before Orleans

Saint George and the Dragon by Johann Kônig, announcement at Zurich auction, 2024

For other paintings on that theme, please click.

Their majesty links them to kings:

• In Europe

 Russian chronicle / Internet, no further information

The headdress identifies the tsar.

The Procession of the Youngest King by Benozzo Fozzoli, toward 1460 / zoom

Florentine symbol of royal beauty

 Internet / photographer not named

At Saint James of Compostela, a Spanish king fights the Moors (16th century).

Movie for Arte, the Franco-German cultural television station, by Historia magazine

The Empress Maria-Thérèse of Austria assumes the crown of Hungary (in 1741). In France, eight white horses pull the coaches of members of the royal family, six those of their cousins. 

•  In France

Internet, no photographer named

  Window of the cathedral of Laon, 13th century

Henri IV at the Battle of Arques, attributed to Jacob Bunel, early 17th century / zoom

Henri IV fighting

     Louis XIV Receives the Keys to Strasbourg on October 23 1681 by Constantyn Francken, toward 1700 / zoom

Louis XIV prepares an entry.  

Henri III leaves Paris after the Day of Barricades, "History of City Hall" by Jules Beaujoint,1883 (in French)

Henri III flees rebels who have taken over Paris.    

Maurice Leloir in Richelieu by Théodore Cahu, 1901, a history of  France for children

Richelieu and Louis XIII after they crush the Protestants   

The leader of the Descente from la Courtille, 1842

Marginals adopt the same symbolism.

 

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Already shown (usually scroll down)

 A crusading king arriving in Constantinople painted in the mid-15th century, as well as Charles VII entering Rouen in 1449, François I's royal entry of 1540, a king presiding over an execution in a manuscript of the end of the 15th century and in an altarpiece of 1611, Rubens on Marie de Médicis, 1624, Louis XIV at the Crossing of the Rhine, n.d. but after 1672, and Louis XIV's royal entry in an illustration of 1931.

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The hero's horse is white even in defeat, so long as the public backs his cause:

• The chief of the Gauls submits to Caesar with dignity, in a schoolbook for French children after defeat by Prussia:

Vercingétorix Throws his Arms at the Feet of Caesar by Paul Royer, 1899 : zoom

• But if defeat is only a personal incident, such as Henri II being mortally wounded in a tournament, his horse is brown and his adversary's white:

Sixteenth-century ceramic, Blois château museum / Carolyn Ristau

# # #

Modern leaders choose white horses...

     Street-fair painting

Chadaev, hero of the Soviet civil war

Robert Gueï, President of the Ivory Coast (2000-2002). Opponents kill the horse, thinking that Gueï draws supernatural power from it. 

The Horse, a Political Animal ("Le cheval, animal politique") by Jean-Louis Gouraud, ed. Fabre, 2009

Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France, 2011-17

# # #

The tie with royalty is ingrained in our imaginations:

The 19th-century artist takes the tradition of the white horse for granted, though Spanish queens rode mules because they were not supposed to fight.

The prince in Disney's Sleeping Beauty, 1959

Ad facing the Louvre, 2022

Announcement of a Versailles exhibit, 2024

Record cover, 2024

End of this section.

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These pages have shown
the importance of the royal imprint.
Why is so little said about it?

III.3.
Have the kings become subversive?