A Kingdom of Images
A Kingdom of Images

Author: Peter Fuhring

Publisher: Getty Publications

Published: 2015-06-18

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 1606064509

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Once considered the golden age of French printmaking, Louis XIV’s reign saw Paris become a powerhouse of print production. During this time, the king aimed to make fine and decorative arts into signs of French taste and skill and, by extension, into markers of his imperialist glory. Prints were ideal for achieving these goals; reproducible and transportable, they fueled the sophisticated propaganda machine circulating images of Louis as both a man of war and a man of culture. This richly illustrated catalogue features more than one hundred prints from the Getty Research Institute and the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, whose print collection Louis XIV established in 1667. An esteemed international group of contributors investigates the ways that cultural policies affected printmaking; explains what constitutes a print; describes how one became a printmaker; studies how prints were collected; and considers their reception in the ensuing centuries. A Kingdom of Images is published to coincide with an exhibition on view at the Getty Research Institute from June 18 through September 6, 2015, and at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris from November 2, 2015, through January 31, 2016.

King of the World
King of the World

Author: Philip Mansel

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2020-09-01

Total Pages: 669

ISBN-13: 022669092X

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Louis XIV was a man in pursuit of glory. Not content to be the ruler of a world power, he wanted the power to rule the world. And, for a time, he came tantalizingly close. Philip Mansel’s King of the World is the most comprehensive and up-to-date biography in English of this hypnotic, flawed figure who continues to captivate our attention. This lively work takes Louis outside Versailles and shows the true extent of his global ambitions, with stops in London, Madrid, Constantinople, Bangkok, and beyond. We witness the importance of his alliance with the Spanish crown and his success in securing Spain for his descendants, his enmity with England, and his relations with the rest of Europe, as well as Asia, Africa, and the Americas. We also see the king’s effect on the two great global diasporas of Huguenots and Jacobites, and their influence on him as he failed in his brutal attempts to stop Protestants from leaving France. Along the way, we are enveloped in the splendor of Louis’s court and the fascinating cast of characters who prostrated and plotted within it. King of the World is exceptionally researched, drawing on international archives and incorporating sources who knew the king intimately, including the newly released correspondence of Louis’s second wife, Madame de Maintenon. Mansel’s narrative flair is a perfect match for this grand figure, and he brings the Sun King’s world to vivid life. This is a global biography of a global king, whose power was extensive but also limited by laws and circumstances, and whose interests and ambitions stretched far beyond his homeland. Through it all, we watch Louis XIV progressively turn from a dazzling, attractive young king to a belligerent reactionary who sets France on the path to 1789. It is a convincing and compelling portrait of a man who, three hundred years after his death, still epitomizes the idea of le grand monarque.

King Louis XIV
King Louis XIV

Author: Hourly History

Publisher: Independently Published

Published: 2017-03-22

Total Pages: 50

ISBN-13: 9781520722108

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King Louis XIV He was born on September 5th, 1638 in the French lap of luxury otherwise known as the "Chateau de Saint-Germain-en-Laye." This extravagant palace of French excess is located about 12 miles west of Paris. His birth name, "Louis-Dieudonne," is French for, literally, "Gift for God." This belief of divine right, initially inspired by his mother Queen Anne, would be a powerful theme throughout Louis XIV's life. Inside you will read about... ✓ The Conflict of Kings ✓ War and Marriage ✓ The Noose Tightens ✓ The Scorched Earth of Louis XIV ✓ The Balance of Power ✓ Louis's Last Stand ✓ The Death of the King And much more!Although he didn't create absolutism in France, King Louis XIV seemed to embody the "divine right of kings" better than anyone had before him. Louis XIV directly correlated his own private good with that of the public good. There was really no concept of private property under Louis. The French King viewed all of France as his personal estate, with all who lived and toiled in his domain doing so only under his express permission; even so, not everyone in France had the same sentiment. The ones who most notably resisted the notion of the King's absolutism were the French nobles and aristocrats that Louis depended upon to raise armies and defend the country. Despite his theory of absolutism, this dependence on French nobility to bear arms, gave them increasing autonomy and independence from the King. It was this independence that would one day come to a head, and send Louis, the so-called "Sun King" of divine inheritance, into a full-blown conflict with his own subjects - and the world at large.

Print, Power, and People in 17th-century France
Print, Power, and People in 17th-century France

Author: Henri-Jean Martin

Publisher:

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 766

ISBN-13:

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Available for the first time in English, this major work of scholarship, originally presented as the author's thesis (Paris) and originally published in Geneva in 1969, places the publishing trade at the center of the study of the intellectual, political, and economic evolution of Europe through examination of the physical evidence. Martin, a French historian of the Annales school and president of the Institut du Livre, shows the printed book to be the focus of society's cultural well-being. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The First Bourbon
The First Bourbon

Author: Desmond Seward

Publisher: Thistle Publishing

Published: 2013-06-20

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 9781909609082

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The founder of the Bourbon dynasty, Henry IV, who ruled France from 1589 to 1610, is the most romantic of French kings. Very different from his grandson Louis XIV, he was a hard-fighting, hard swearing Southerner, who fought over 200 battles and had 60 (recorded) mistresses* After surviving his predecessor's murderous court, he rebuilt a France ruined by thirty years of war between Catholics and Protestants, enabling her to become the most powerful country in Europe. A man of enormous charm and humanity, he was famous for promising that every French peasant was going to have a chicken in the pot in Sundays. Even Napoleon admired him, always keeping a statue of him nearby.

Louis XIII, the Just
Louis XIII, the Just

Author: A. Lloyd Moote

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1991-08-08

Total Pages: 431

ISBN-13: 0520075463

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In this fascinating biography, A. Lloyd Moote provides the first authoritative account of one of the most enigmatic figures of seventeenth-century Europe. Contrary of popular portrayals of the monarch as a hapless kind, Moote argues that Louis XIII was a ruler who powerfully shaped his people's destiny.

The Secret Wife of Louis XIV
The Secret Wife of Louis XIV

Author: Veronica Buckley

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2009-09

Total Pages: 557

ISBN-13: 0374158304

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Françoise d’Aubigné, marquise de Maintenon and secret wife of the Sun King, Louis XIV, was born in a bleak French prison in 1635, her father a condemned traitor and murderer, her mother the warden’s seduced daughter. A timely pardon and a hopeful Caribbean colonial venture failed to mend the family’s fortunes, and Françoise was reduced to begging in the streets. Yet, armed with beauty, intellect, and shrewd judgment, she was to make her way to the center of power at Versailles, the most opulent and ambitious court in all Europe. At fifteen, she was married off to the forty-two-year-old satirical poet Paul Scarron, a former roué now grievously deformed by rheumatism—“a sort of human Z,” as he described himself. Despite his ailments, Scarron presided over the liveliest and most scandalous literary salon in Paris, and Françoise quickly became its most prized ornament. After Scarron’s death, she enjoyed a merry widowhood in the fashionable Marais district, in the company of the courtesan Ninon de Lenclos and the King’s splendid mistress, Athénaïs de Montespan, who made the young widow governess to her brood of illegitimate children. The appointment transformed Françoise’s life, but was fatal to the temperamental Athénaïs herself, with the King soon turning his attentions to the graceful governess. Françoise was raised to the nobility as Madame de Maintenon—and, unofficially, “Madame de Maintenant,” the lady of the moment. The acclaimed biographer Veronica Buckley traces the extraordinary story of Françoise’s progress from pauper child to salonnière to the compromised position of Louis’s secret wife and uncrowned Queen. An absolute ruler, Louis turned away his many other mistresses to live with Françoise only, trusting her as his closest confidante and remaining in love with her for forty years. Sparkling with the irresistible wit of contemporary chroniclers such as Madame de Sévigné, this exactingly researched biography is a pinnacle of the form. In vibrant colors, The Secret Wife of Louis XIV paints a portrait of Europe in an age of violent change, and the Sun King’s France in the process of becoming its modern self.