Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is the second part of a two parter on
Speaker 1: Andre Lenore, who is France's famous gardener. We discussed for
Speaker 1: the first episode how that term doesn't really encompass all
Speaker 1: that he was or did, but it is usually how
Speaker 1: he has defined historically. And on the last episode we
Speaker 1: talked about Andre Lenotre's early life and how with one
Speaker 1: high profile project he went from being a well respected
Speaker 1: royal gardener and controller to being tapped by King Louis
Speaker 1: the fourteenth for a project that was going to be
Speaker 1: epic in scale, and so here in part two, we're
Speaker 1: going to pick up with that project, how it played out,
Speaker 1: and then take you right on through the end of
Speaker 1: Lenotre's life and also how his work is seen today.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna be completely lost if you pixings up
Speaker 1: here and you didn't listen to part one, but you're
Speaker 1: gonna miss out on a really juicy story about how
Speaker 1: that big project that kind of made him famous. UH
Speaker 1: contributed to a member of the royal court being imprisoned
Speaker 1: for life, not because Andre's designed it, but because it
Speaker 1: was lavish and beautiful. It's a juicy story. Go back
Speaker 1: and listen. So we're gonna pick up right where we
Speaker 1: left off. So we ended the last episode with the
Speaker 1: king tasking Andre lenotre with designing the gardens of Versailles.
Speaker 1: When Louis fourt decided that he wanted to renovate the
Speaker 1: chateau and have landscaped crowns there, it was initially because
Speaker 1: he just loved the hunting lodge and he liked life
Speaker 1: in the country. He preferred it to Paris, where he
Speaker 1: was always being watched, and it gave him a getaway
Speaker 1: where he could arrange romantic liaisons. But by the mid
Speaker 1: sixteen seventies, the king had decided to move the royal
Speaker 1: court from Paris to the redesigned Versailles. And while Andre
Speaker 1: Lenot had been a royal gardener, as we said before,
Speaker 1: this project heading up the garden plans of Versailles was
Speaker 1: very different because it was a true collaboration with the
Speaker 1: monarch and Louis the fourteen had opinions about plants and gardens,
Speaker 1: as he was an avid gardener, himself, but Lenopla was
Speaker 1: really the perfect creative match for the king. Where Louis
Speaker 1: could be mercurial and impulsive, Lenore was relaxed and steadfast,
Speaker 1: and the two very different personalities managed to achieve a
Speaker 1: balanced sort of harmony as they plotted out and executed
Speaker 1: this massive project. It really helped that Lenota was truly
Speaker 1: a royalist, that he was very devoted to Louis the fourteenth,
Speaker 1: and the young king in turn, who was in his
Speaker 1: twenties at this point, seemed to really enjoy the company
Speaker 1: of the older Lenore, who did not seem to be
Speaker 1: scheming in his relationship with the monarch in any way.
Speaker 1: Lenore also had to work with Lebron and Leveaux, as
Speaker 1: he had at void of Acomte, and he had to
Speaker 1: juggle the personalities of these two men plus the king
Speaker 1: throughout the project. Leva died in sixteen seventy and his
Speaker 1: assistant Friendsois Doorbet finished the work. Later, work on both
Speaker 1: the chateau and the gardens was commissioned by Jules Hardoin Montsart.
Speaker 1: Lenotre didn't seem to let constantly changing targets bother or
Speaker 1: unsettle him, and through it all, he wasn't just working
Speaker 1: with the King and his design collaborators. He was managing
Speaker 1: thousands of people in order to fulfill the desires of
Speaker 1: the Crown at a magnitude that was beyond anything any
Speaker 1: of them had ever worked on before. So if you
Speaker 1: visit their side today, which we have been lucky enough
Speaker 1: to do, it is all paved and landscaped and manicured,
Speaker 1: and it is absolutely breathtaking. But that location, as has
Speaker 1: come up on the show before, was a hunting lodge
Speaker 1: before Louis four decided to redo it and eventually make
Speaker 1: it into a palace, and it was out in the country.
Speaker 1: So what Lenotto was faced with was turning a whole
Speaker 1: lot of swampy, muddy ground. It is something worthy of
Speaker 1: French royalty, no small task. The diarist Louis d'arrouva, the
Speaker 1: Duke de Saint Simol, wrote of the Versailles site that
Speaker 1: it was quote the saddest and most barren of places,
Speaker 1: with no view, no wood, no water, and no earth,
Speaker 1: for it is all shifting sand and marsh, and the
Speaker 1: air consequently is bad. And apart from that, it was
Speaker 1: a lot of land like that. By the time Louis
Speaker 1: the fourteenth finished acquiring parcels of adjacent land to expand
Speaker 1: the existing site. There was about fifteen thousand acres or
Speaker 1: six thousand hectars. Lenotre spent thirty years working on Versailles,
Speaker 1: turning it from that marshy expanse to a place of
Speaker 1: just unparalleled splendor. I feel compelled to point out that
Speaker 1: a lot of people will say Saint Simon in his
Speaker 1: writing was a little bit um of a drama lama
Speaker 1: and could exaggerate things, so it may or may not
Speaker 1: have been quite as bad as he described it. But
Speaker 1: everyone agreed pretty universally that it was a weird place
Speaker 1: for the king. I want to put a lot of
Speaker 1: effort in and that splendor that was created came at
Speaker 1: a very significant cost, partially because of that weird land,
Speaker 1: and that cost was both in money and in men.
Speaker 1: It was estimated that the cost of just leveling and
Speaker 1: excavating the land and preparing the clay basins for water
Speaker 1: tallied up to more than six million livre, and a
Speaker 1: lot of men also died over the course of construction,
Speaker 1: with the numbers of people injured on the job totaling
Speaker 1: in the thousands. The primary causes for these deaths and
Speaker 1: injuries were landslips while digging out the various water features,
Speaker 1: and malaria because that marshy ground is a perfect place
Speaker 1: for mosquitoes to be very very happy. A similar human
Speaker 1: cost had taken place during the construction at Vodeviculte, where
Speaker 1: serious injuries and mortalities were so common that a new
Speaker 1: hospital had to be established to handle them all. I
Speaker 1: read one story, but I didn't read any verification on
Speaker 1: it because I didn't particularly chase after it that at
Speaker 1: Versailles they were basically letting people kind of like fall.
Speaker 1: They would move the bodies, but they wouldn't permanently move
Speaker 1: them off the site until nighttime because they didn't want
Speaker 1: to like be carding dead bodies through the workers and
Speaker 1: demoralize them as they were digging. Just terrible. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of discussions to be had about the moral
Speaker 1: implications of of spending so much money on something like this.
Speaker 1: We're not digging super deep into them, but I want
Speaker 1: to mention that, like, there is human costs when you
Speaker 1: are indulging in something at this level. And this work
Speaker 1: was all done by hand. It was largely staffed by
Speaker 1: soldiers who were doing this work in between military engagements.
Speaker 1: The initial plan for organizing all of us at Versailles
Speaker 1: was to lay the landscaping elements out along a long
Speaker 1: axis with cross axes creating partitions within that, and the
Speaker 1: symmetry there was used to great effect. There was a
Speaker 1: rudimentary version of the east to west access already in
Speaker 1: place on the site when Lenore arrived at Versailles, and
Speaker 1: he fortified and extended it, including adding the gray and
Speaker 1: canal and creating what came to be known as the
Speaker 1: Grand Perspective. This east west alignment of the whole thing
Speaker 1: ensured that the movement of the sun over the gardens
Speaker 1: and the property would make it the perfect place for
Speaker 1: the sun king, because the sun rose on one side,
Speaker 1: crossed the long length of the property and then had
Speaker 1: a beautiful sunset on the horizon on the other side.
Speaker 1: And looking out from the windows in the Hall of
Speaker 1: Mirrors offers a full view of the Grand Perspective, or
Speaker 1: in French the GM perspective, leading the eye down the
Speaker 1: elongated Great Lawn as it meets a rounded fountain that
Speaker 1: sits between the lawn and the canal, and then extending
Speaker 1: the eye line down the canal again sort of to infinity.
Speaker 1: Having seen that perspective, it is a little bit like
Speaker 1: your brain can't process how far it goes on. Uh.
Speaker 1: Lenola also added a north south access, which eventually included
Speaker 1: a number of prominent spaces in the design, including the
Speaker 1: water walk, the Neptune Fountain, and the orangerie. There are
Speaker 1: very few survive having documents that feature Lenotre's garden designs,
Speaker 1: and most of those are sort of dutally rough sketches
Speaker 1: that suggests that he was working out concepts with pen
Speaker 1: and paper. We also don't have any clear notes on
Speaker 1: how he worked or executed his design, so how things
Speaker 1: transitioned from design idea to finished formal garden have to
Speaker 1: be pieced together through the writings of other people, and
Speaker 1: even then there are very few specifics to Lenotre, although
Speaker 1: the best practices written out by men such as Desaier
Speaker 1: darjan Via in his early eighteenth century book Latiori a
Speaker 1: la practic Jardinage are undoubtedly heavily influenced by Lenotre's work.
Speaker 1: There are some people that will say that we don't
Speaker 1: have surviving designs of Lenota because he didn't actually ever
Speaker 1: write out any designs. That seems unlikely. I think most
Speaker 1: historians will say that that doesn't really make any sense um,
Speaker 1: because the stuff he was doing was so careful and
Speaker 1: mathematical that even if he were a genius that could
Speaker 1: see it that way, you would have needed to have
Speaker 1: plans to direct the actual construction and layout and uh
Speaker 1: excavation that had to happen. And the team that Louis
Speaker 1: the fourteenth had assembled was quickly tasked with things like
Speaker 1: creating that orangerie for the orange trees that he had
Speaker 1: taken from vaule Vicomte uh and creating a menagerie space
Speaker 1: for what some would consider the first zoo in the
Speaker 1: Western world. For anybody that has maybe seen pictures of
Speaker 1: Version doesn't know, there's a famous section that you often
Speaker 1: see because it's very striking, which has these little partires
Speaker 1: of low boxwood hedges that are cut into curly Q shapes.
Speaker 1: That is the orangerie. If you look closely, there are
Speaker 1: pathways through it, and there's a circular center part to it,
Speaker 1: and orange trees are arranged in planters all around those walkways.
Speaker 1: So that is that is what we're talking about when
Speaker 1: we say the Orangerie. Yeah, let them take the orange
Speaker 1: trees inside when the weather was not going to be
Speaker 1: conducive to their being there. They do not love a winter.
Speaker 1: They a French winter is too cold for uh citrus normally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know why. It wasn't until we were in
Speaker 1: Paris and someone explained that to me that I was like, oh, right,
Speaker 1: of course. Obviously, in just a moment, we will talk
Speaker 1: about how Lenore tackled this immense task to turn swamp
Speaker 1: into a royal garden, but will pause first for a
Speaker 1: quick sponsor break. As we said before, set to partition
Speaker 1: the land out in that access based grid for the
Speaker 1: various elements of design that he wanted to include. Low
Speaker 1: parterres were designed to sit nearest the chateau on three sides,
Speaker 1: so that the open sight lines of that lower level
Speaker 1: could be maintained the north partire, the South partire, and
Speaker 1: the water partre. As the gardens extended farther back from
Speaker 1: the chateau, they were then laden with all manner of surprises.
Speaker 1: The paths that crossed the Grand perspective lead visitors into
Speaker 1: the groves of Versailles, each of which is unique. Lenotre
Speaker 1: created fifteen of them. Initially, some were modified and others
Speaker 1: were added by later designers. These groves featured fountains and
Speaker 1: sculptures that were designed by Lebron, each having its own identity.
Speaker 1: These groves included the Ancient Gallery that was an outdoor
Speaker 1: exhibition of sculptures, the Grove of Domes, which includes a
Speaker 1: hexagonal pool in the center, the Grove of three Fountains,
Speaker 1: which is credited as being the King's idea, and a
Speaker 1: marsh grove which featured plants that were sculpted out of
Speaker 1: metal all around its central fountain. There was also a
Speaker 1: ballroom grove which was a tiered amphitheater, which was the
Speaker 1: last grove that lenotre created that was completed in six
Speaker 1: Having walked around some of these wonderful, surprising little spaces
Speaker 1: in Versailles, they're delightful and you wonder how like these
Speaker 1: very complicated structures are existing seemingly tucked into like little
Speaker 1: private areas. But they are so um It's not like
Speaker 1: you find a little open space with benches. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're like little rooms. They're not little either, but compared
Speaker 1: to the rest of the grounds that you're on, they're
Speaker 1: like their own. It's like walking into like themed rooms
Speaker 1: in a really like um creatively designed house or something.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. In sixteen sixty five, Linota started
Speaker 1: plans for a labyrinth for one of the groves at Versailles.
Speaker 1: That was a feature that was popular on France estates
Speaker 1: at the time. That labyrinth wasn't completed until the mid
Speaker 1: sixteen seventies, in part because the King, on the advice
Speaker 1: of writer Charles Perrault, asked for a redesign. In sixteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine. Perot was the author credited with the first
Speaker 1: published Mother Goose. Stories that have become such classics include
Speaker 1: Being Cinderella, Little Red, Riding Hood, and Sleeping Beauty. Lenotre
Speaker 1: redrafted the labyrinths to include several dozen fountains to represent
Speaker 1: the story of Esop's fables. That's included carefully designed statuary
Speaker 1: and a whole lot of plumbing. The labyrinth and several
Speaker 1: other groves were later replaced and a redesigned by Jules
Speaker 1: hardom Montsart when he was tasked with updating the grounds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the labyrinth was was taken away, which is a pity. Um.
Speaker 1: As with his other work that we've talked about, Leno
Speaker 1: once again used visual trickery and interest points all over Versailles.
Speaker 1: He made rectangles that would look like squares from certain angles,
Speaker 1: or he created parterres of swirled boxwoods, kind of like
Speaker 1: we talked about in the Orangerie, that were trained and
Speaker 1: cut into shapes that resembled the scrolls that were found
Speaker 1: on carpets, tapestries, and clothing embellishments. While Versailles was a
Speaker 1: career defining accomplishment, Lenore went on to do a whole
Speaker 1: lot of other work after it was finished. As for
Speaker 1: Louis the fourteenth, he continued to make changes to the
Speaker 1: ground as his desires and whims shifted right up until
Speaker 1: his death. But the gardens of Versailles today are still
Speaker 1: very much governed by the designs that were developed and
Speaker 1: executed by Lenore. They didn't, of course, stay that way
Speaker 1: from his time up until now. They have at various
Speaker 1: points been replaced, like we said, fallen into disrepair, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But several of the groves and other features have been
Speaker 1: restored in recent years to how they looked in le
Speaker 1: Nutless time. But there is an interesting difference. In his
Speaker 1: book The Sun King's Garden, author Ian Thompson, who is
Speaker 1: a PhD in landscape architecture notes a key difference between
Speaker 1: the restored Versailles gardens of today versus what they looked
Speaker 1: like when Le Nutla was in charge. Based on eighteenth
Speaker 1: century engravings of the space, it appears that things were
Speaker 1: a lot more angular and sharply maintained in the eighteenth century,
Speaker 1: where quote, the hedges are so immaculately clipped that they
Speaker 1: look like walls. All of the fountains involved in Versailles
Speaker 1: created a need for a lot of water, and that
Speaker 1: was a need that was just impossible to meet. Fountains
Speaker 1: would have to be turned on as the king approached
Speaker 1: and then turn off once he was a distance away.
Speaker 1: A monstrous two hundred twenty one pump device with twenty
Speaker 1: massive water wheels was developed in the sixteen eighties. That
Speaker 1: was called the Machine to Marley, and it was meant
Speaker 1: to bring water in from the sin but it created
Speaker 1: way more problems than it was worth, and it also
Speaker 1: never really fulfilled its mission of bringing in enough water
Speaker 1: to keep more than two thousand fountains going at Versailles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is another thing that I would love to make
Speaker 1: into an episode of its own at some point in time,
Speaker 1: because just the drawings of it are bad breaking and
Speaker 1: there is a lot of tragedy associated with it as well.
Speaker 1: When I got to this, as I was reading through
Speaker 1: this this earlier this morning, I was like, I want
Speaker 1: to know more about this machine. Yeah, it's um, it's
Speaker 1: a thing, and I do want to talk about it
Speaker 1: at some point in the future. Uh. Taking on a
Speaker 1: project like Versailles surely occupied a great deal of Andre
Speaker 1: Lenotola's time, but he still did not work exclusively at
Speaker 1: the new palace location, and he continued to accept other contracts.
Speaker 1: This was a very shrewd thing to do, because his
Speaker 1: close association with the king and the universal recognition of
Speaker 1: the genius of the vaux Le Vicomte gardens meant that
Speaker 1: he was in very high demand among the nobility of France,
Speaker 1: and he could command very lucrative commissions. The Notes started
Speaker 1: another challenging project at just about the same time that
Speaker 1: he started work on Versailles. That was the gardens of
Speaker 1: the Prince of Conde Louis, the Second Debble. Those gardens
Speaker 1: at the Chateau de Chaunty posed their own unique problems,
Speaker 1: most notably the fact that while Conde wanted the symmetrical,
Speaker 1: manicured look that Lenore was becoming famous for the chateau
Speaker 1: itself had a really strangely shaped, asymmetrical moat that did
Speaker 1: not naturally lend itself to Lenotre's design aesthetic. To add
Speaker 1: to that dilemma, the Prince of Conde was not willing
Speaker 1: to knock down any of the old buildings on the
Speaker 1: property and service to this new design layout. Still, Leno
Speaker 1: took the job, and he turned his skill at making
Speaker 1: order out of chaos to it. He couldn't make the
Speaker 1: chateau a central point on an access that bisected the land,
Speaker 1: as was normally what he would do, because the house
Speaker 1: was also offset from the center of the property and
Speaker 1: the house itself was not symmetrical. It was kind of like,
Speaker 1: here are a bunch of ingredients that do not make
Speaker 1: any sense for a cake. Please make a cake out
Speaker 1: of them. And he was like, okay. Uh So the
Speaker 1: main access avenue of the design actually runs parallel to
Speaker 1: the front of the chateau, So for a visitor that's
Speaker 1: approaching the main gate, which sits at the center of
Speaker 1: the layout, the chateau is in the distance and to
Speaker 1: the left, and the grand gardens, which are situated beyond
Speaker 1: the chateau can't really be seen until you've reached the
Speaker 1: grand terrace due to the main entry path being a
Speaker 1: slight uphill incline, and the once a visitor reaches the
Speaker 1: central terrace, the large water feature and grand gardens emerge.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a visual surprise as you get
Speaker 1: to that apex and they stretch out across the property.
Speaker 1: And for all the challenges that Lenotre faced at Schantay,
Speaker 1: the property had one resource that made the engineering aspect
Speaker 1: of it easier than other projects. It had a close
Speaker 1: proximity to the River Nonette, which was a tributary of
Speaker 1: the Wise, meaning that water was always plentiful. So despite
Speaker 1: the challenges, Lenotre, who worked on the gardens there for
Speaker 1: two decades, spoke of it late in his life as
Speaker 1: an example of a great French formal garden. In sixteen
Speaker 1: sixty four, the King and Colbert agreed that Lenore should
Speaker 1: redesign the Tuilerie gardens, and he changed them from the
Speaker 1: designs that had been in place since Catherine de Medici
Speaker 1: had commissioned the gardens to the popular formal French garden
Speaker 1: of which he was the master. He expanded the garden
Speaker 1: by lengthening its access to the west, creating the line
Speaker 1: of what would eventually evolve to the chansa lise. This
Speaker 1: if you are Intoli today, there are some modern editions,
Speaker 1: like their modern play areas and cafes, but the layout
Speaker 1: is still exactly what Lenota set up. In sixteen seventy,
Speaker 1: Jean Baptiste Colbert, who is the same person who had
Speaker 1: schemed to have Nicola Fouquet arrested, hired Lenotre to design
Speaker 1: a park to surround his new home at Chateau to So,
Speaker 1: several miles outside of Paris. There was no accident that
Speaker 1: he had waited nine years after the vote of a
Speaker 1: compe scandal to have his own chateau made over. Colbert,
Speaker 1: like a lot of people in the nobility, didn't want
Speaker 1: to similarly be associated with this conspicuous opulence or to
Speaker 1: look suspicious with their spending in the wake of Fouquets
Speaker 1: fall from grace. Yeah, he basically just like waited it
Speaker 1: out until he felt like it was safe because he
Speaker 1: also wanted a beautiful chateau with grounds designed by Lenotla.
Speaker 1: And even though he hired Lenotla, Colbert was still very
Speaker 1: very careful not to go too far with his chateaus grounds.
Speaker 1: Uh to us it would seem like extremely extravagant and lavish,
Speaker 1: but at the time he had dialed it back. Lenottla
Speaker 1: did design a spectacular eighteen basin cascade feature for so
Speaker 1: as well as the most powerful fountain effect known to
Speaker 1: France at the time. That shot watered twenty five ft
Speaker 1: into the air. That's a little less than eight meters.
Speaker 1: The Notre's work in redefining the tulry and sculpting the
Speaker 1: grounds of Versailles made him even more of a darling
Speaker 1: with the upper class, and that extended outside of France.
Speaker 1: Everyone wanted him to turn his skill at creating grand
Speaker 1: vistas to their own properties. While work at Versailles was ongoing,
Speaker 1: he traveled outside of France and lent his expertise and
Speaker 1: artistry to other landscapes. He traveled to London in the
Speaker 1: early sixteen sixties at the behest of Charles the Second
Speaker 1: to design Greenwich Park, and he took on projects in
Speaker 1: Italy and Germany as well as all over France. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was so busy. It's one of those things where
Speaker 1: I mean, we work on law to different stuff here,
Speaker 1: but I can't imagine the scale of things he was
Speaker 1: working on, and he would just be juggling like tons
Speaker 1: of these contracts at a time. Uh. Next up, we
Speaker 1: are going to cover the last segment of Lenotre's life
Speaker 1: and his enduring influence, but we're going to take a
Speaker 1: quick sponsor break before we do that. In sixteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: King Louis the fourteenth made Andre Lenore a noble, and
Speaker 1: when the king asked the master gardener what he would
Speaker 1: like to have included on his coat of arms, Lenotrea
Speaker 1: replied that he wanted three snails ahead of cabbage and
Speaker 1: a spade to represent the thing that had brought him
Speaker 1: such favor from the king. I find this so charming
Speaker 1: it is, and you can see um images of what
Speaker 1: are probably the coat of arms designed for him. There's
Speaker 1: some question marks about whether those are the actual ones
Speaker 1: or uh, something that someone else just drew up by
Speaker 1: sat on this story, but they are very, very charming,
Speaker 1: and there are three snails in lieu of a spade
Speaker 1: directly represented. There's like a chevron that kind of is
Speaker 1: intended to represent the tip of an appointed spade, but
Speaker 1: there is a head of cabbage in the top and
Speaker 1: three snails spaced out beautifully on the rest of the
Speaker 1: the coat. In sixteen seventy nine, Lenotre traveled to Italy,
Speaker 1: where he spent the majority of the year visiting gardens
Speaker 1: and important people. There, he made an interesting stop along
Speaker 1: the way, diverting his trip to pin Roll in northwestern Italy.
Speaker 1: This was the prison where his former employer, Nicola Fouquet
Speaker 1: had been sent to live out his life under lock
Speaker 1: and key. So even though he had fallen from his
Speaker 1: position within the French court, it seems that Lenotre had
Speaker 1: maintained at least some relationship with Fouquet. Yeah, this also
Speaker 1: sort of upholds that ongoing image that's always portrayed of
Speaker 1: Lenotre is just being an incredibly nice person, Like, even
Speaker 1: though everyone else kind of turned their back on Fouquet,
Speaker 1: he he didn't think of him as somebody that he
Speaker 1: couldn't maintain a relationship with, even though weren't anybody else
Speaker 1: who made a visit like that. It probably would have
Speaker 1: made Louis the fourteenth really really angry, but Lenotre was
Speaker 1: again so beloved that he was allowed a little more leeway.
Speaker 1: Probably when Lenotre returned from Italy, he went right back
Speaker 1: to work at Versailles, and he started construction of that
Speaker 1: ballroom groove that we mentioned, uh in sixteen eighty and
Speaker 1: it was completed, as we said, in sixteen eighty five.
Speaker 1: And he continued to work on fine tuning the grounds
Speaker 1: with the king for eight more years before he decided
Speaker 1: to retire in sixteen ninety three at the age of eighty.
Speaker 1: Lenotre died on September fifteenth, seventeen hundred, at the age
Speaker 1: of eighty seven. He had managed, through what the diarist
Speaker 1: the Duke de Saint Sement called his quote charming, simplicity
Speaker 1: and truthfulness, to avoid any of the kinds of personal
Speaker 1: scandals or court intrigues that were common. He had stayed
Speaker 1: out of that in his lifetime. Lenore stands as a
Speaker 1: unique figure in the world of Louis the fourteenth and
Speaker 1: that he didn't have any interest in taking others down
Speaker 1: to try to improve his own footing. He was an
Speaker 1: uncommonly good collaborator and happy to share credit, also willing
Speaker 1: to compromise and hard working. Uh yeah, we um. We
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier that Mansart was called in to redo some
Speaker 1: of the grounds at Versailles, and that's another one that
Speaker 1: gets told two different ways. Some people will say that
Speaker 1: Lenotre and Manzart had a sort of rivalry and that
Speaker 1: that was the one person that Lenottla was ever heard
Speaker 1: dissort of criticized. But then there are other suggestions that
Speaker 1: indicate he may have even been the person that recommended
Speaker 1: that Mansart be the person that Louis the fourteenth hired
Speaker 1: for those next rounds of of redesigns. So it's a
Speaker 1: little unclear, but he didn't seem to ever get involved
Speaker 1: in like the gossip or mess of of all of things. Uh.
Speaker 1: Three hundred years after under Lenot's death, in the year
Speaker 1: two thousand, a group of experts in French history to
Speaker 1: compare notes on their knowledge of the landscape artist who
Speaker 1: had so significantly shaped the French garden aesthetic, and they
Speaker 1: published a French language book about the man and his
Speaker 1: work titled Lena inconnu ilost, which translates to an illustrious stranger.
Speaker 1: One of the things that remains certainly to me and
Speaker 1: I would think to others completely sort of brain bending,
Speaker 1: is that Andre Lena was always designing with the thought
Speaker 1: of what the gardens would look like from above, primarily
Speaker 1: from terraces or windows of the chateaus that his design surrounded.
Speaker 1: He even at one point kind of commented about making
Speaker 1: parterres that were beautiful when seen from the windows, that
Speaker 1: it was kind of sad that the only people that
Speaker 1: would ever really see what he was doing were like
Speaker 1: the Nanni's because the top floors tended to be where
Speaker 1: the children's rooms were. Um But even today, what's really
Speaker 1: cool is that when you see full aerial views of
Speaker 1: his work, it is breathtaking. And he was drafting these
Speaker 1: gardens more than a hundred years before the first hot
Speaker 1: air balloon was even invented, so he didn't really have
Speaker 1: a sense that we would ever get these beautiful views.
Speaker 1: So while some higher ground vantage points during his lifetime
Speaker 1: offered a sense of what he had accomplished, kind of
Speaker 1: like the Nasca lines, the true extent of his achievement,
Speaker 1: I think couldn't be seen until much later, when we
Speaker 1: had the technology to fly. It's also interesting to consider
Speaker 1: that while the style of landscape that Lenore became famous
Speaker 1: for is considered very much to be a matter of
Speaker 1: taming nature and making things look precisely designed and curated,
Speaker 1: he always started by looking at the land and seeing
Speaker 1: what it offered. He wasn't so much taming nature as
Speaker 1: figuring out how to work with it challenges at all
Speaker 1: and coming out with something that looked almost unreal and
Speaker 1: its exacting geometric layouts. And that's something I feel like
Speaker 1: we should say that all landscape architects are taught to do.
Speaker 1: But I think because when you look at Lenotre's work,
Speaker 1: it doesn't. It looks a little removed from nature because
Speaker 1: it is so pristine and manicured. But really he was.
Speaker 1: He was doing exactly what you're supposed to do, which
Speaker 1: is looking at like different elevations of any given property
Speaker 1: and figuring out how he could use those to cut
Speaker 1: out terraces in the right places and develop something that
Speaker 1: was not necessarily going to look natural, but worked with
Speaker 1: some of the natural topography he was given. And we
Speaker 1: have mentioned numerous cases where the gardens and landscapes designed
Speaker 1: by Lena can still be seen today, and while some
Speaker 1: have been fairly consistently maintained, others have gone through cycles
Speaker 1: where they have fallen into disrepair or been allowed to
Speaker 1: grow over and have subsequently been restored and revitalized. And
Speaker 1: the bones that he laid out initially for those those
Speaker 1: strong axes of paths and canals and roadways around which
Speaker 1: his symmetrical geometric designs spread out are readily apparent when
Speaker 1: you look at those gardens today. His work continues to
Speaker 1: influence creators today, and you've undoubtedly seen places shaped by
Speaker 1: Lenore's ingenuity and manipulating space to try to create impactful illusions.
Speaker 1: When Pierre Chaos Lafonque worked on the landscape designed for
Speaker 1: the US Capital, he turned to Versailles for inspiration, and
Speaker 1: when architect Peter Walker designed the ultramodern square shaped fountains
Speaker 1: at the Ground Zero Memorial in New York City, he
Speaker 1: referred to Lenore's use of space to guide him. In
Speaker 1: Alan Rickman may He rest in Peace directed a film
Speaker 1: titled A Little Chaos, which is a fictionalized account of
Speaker 1: Lenotre's life. It is very fun, but I want to
Speaker 1: make clear to anybody that goes to it looking for
Speaker 1: an interesting look at Lenotla that it is very fictionalized.
Speaker 1: It revolves the story around an assistant that Lenotre never
Speaker 1: had and a resulting romance between Lenotla and this made
Speaker 1: up woman. We don't know all that many details of
Speaker 1: Lenotre's personal life that is why that that French book
Speaker 1: was titled An Illustrious Stranger. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: question marks about about his day to day life, but
Speaker 1: it seemed more because he was kind of humble and
Speaker 1: didn't think he needed to record his everything. There is
Speaker 1: nothing to ever indicate that he had any kind of affair,
Speaker 1: so that is very much uh speculative and uh fiction,
Speaker 1: but also very fun um. You can see lots of
Speaker 1: pretty things who I literally could watch just like flyovers
Speaker 1: of his gardens four hours and did while working on
Speaker 1: this episode. It was one of those things where I'd
Speaker 1: be like, oh, I just want to go look at
Speaker 1: Vaude Vicomte, and then like two hours later I'd be like, whoops,
Speaker 1: maybe let's look at Versailles. I then three hours later, whoops, whoops,
Speaker 1: I lost half a day. Clearly, I love under Lennotla,
Speaker 1: and I understand why France loves and Andre Lenotla. There
Speaker 1: were also in a lot of really fantastic exhibits and
Speaker 1: retrospectives of his work all over France, and a lot
Speaker 1: of write ups about him all over the world. Since
Speaker 1: that was the the and the four hundredth anniversary of
Speaker 1: his birth, it's kind of weird because we keep talking
Speaker 1: about him in terms of like three hundred years since
Speaker 1: and four hundred years since, but it was because he
Speaker 1: lived almost ninety years and he worked for sixty of
Speaker 1: those really hard. So so that is why I have
Speaker 1: again listener mail. I'm working through holiday stuff, but this
Speaker 1: first one is very very germane to the topic at hand.
Speaker 1: This from our listener Amy, who went to Paris with us.
Speaker 1: She writes, Dear Holly and Tracy, I wanted to share
Speaker 1: my Christmas card with you both because it is primarily
Speaker 1: photos of the trip to Paris. I'm so happy that
Speaker 1: I was able to take this amazing trip. Thank you
Speaker 1: for the podcast and for being so wonderful and kind.
Speaker 1: Also thank you Holly for taking the photo on the
Speaker 1: bottom right of me in the Versailles Gardens. I hope
Speaker 1: to see you again in Yeah. Amy was with us
Speaker 1: and we were there at Versailles that day, and she
Speaker 1: had wandered off by herself and Versailles, as we keep saying,
Speaker 1: it's huge, and so I looked over at one point
Speaker 1: and I just saw her walking around one of the
Speaker 1: circular water features and she was the only person visible
Speaker 1: for like a huge expanse, and there were beautiful statues
Speaker 1: around her, so I just took a picture and then
Speaker 1: later I told her that I had it, and I
Speaker 1: texted it to her and now it's on her Christmas card.
Speaker 1: She was an absolute delight and went out to eat
Speaker 1: with me one night, and we had so much fun
Speaker 1: with everybody that was on that trip. I think about
Speaker 1: it daily. That was one of the best nine days
Speaker 1: in my life. Uh. So, thank you, Amy, and thank
Speaker 1: you for coming in that trip, and we hope we
Speaker 1: see you again this year. I have one more card
Speaker 1: to read. This one is from our listener Nicole, who writes, uh, Derek, Tracy,
Speaker 1: and Holly. I have listened to the podcast for a
Speaker 1: few years now. It is excellent. Thank you for all
Speaker 1: that you do. I've learned so much and I always
Speaker 1: look forward to learning more when I see the new
Speaker 1: episodes drop. I wanted to send this particular card for
Speaker 1: a couple of reasons. First, Edward Gorey, it is a
Speaker 1: beautiful Edward Gorey Christmas card. Uh. Second, I got it
Speaker 1: at the Seattle Art Museum when I went to see
Speaker 1: the Flesh and Blood exhibit, which included Artemisia Gentileski's Judas
Speaker 1: Slaying Holoferrenies, and I had not known anything about her
Speaker 1: or her work prior to your podcast episode. It was
Speaker 1: amazing to be able to see the actual painting and
Speaker 1: connect it to what I had learned that. It's one
Speaker 1: of my favorite things about researching this show is then
Speaker 1: getting to go experience art with a lot more knowledge
Speaker 1: about it. So I'm glad that she had the same experience.
Speaker 1: Uh there's one last bit I'd like to share as well.
Speaker 1: Over the summer, I misheard part of the Packard Versus
Speaker 1: Packard episode. The actual sentence in the show was the
Speaker 1: awful List Packard had his wife institutionalized, But what I
Speaker 1: heard was the awfu list Packard, which I think somebody
Speaker 1: could make that case she had, she said, I had
Speaker 1: quite a laugh. I hope you do too, Wishing you
Speaker 1: both a lovely holiday season and all the best in
Speaker 1: the new year. Nicole Nicol, thank you so much. That
Speaker 1: is so sweet. I'm so glad that, uh, that art
Speaker 1: came alive for you in a new way, and also
Speaker 1: that the awful List sounded like the awful List, because
Speaker 1: I think that's a valid interpretation. If you would like
Speaker 1: to write to us, you can do so at History Podcast.
Speaker 1: At iHeart radio dot com. You can also find us
Speaker 1: everywhere on social media as Missed in History, and you
Speaker 1: can subscribe to the podcast at Apple podcast, the I
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, or wherever it is you listen Stuffy
Speaker 1: Missed in History Class is a production of I heart
Speaker 1: Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. H