Département de l'Argenterie, the Menus, Plaisirs et Affaires de la Chambre du roi

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The Département de l'Argenterie, des Menus, Plaisirs et Affaires de la Chambre du roi (abbreviated Menus Plaisirs ) was an administrative branch at the French royal court in the Ancien Régime , whose services partly went back to the era of François I.

During the renaissance of the Valois , four cost centers were merged:

  • l'Argenterie ( table silver ), precious goldsmiths and fabrics for sacred purposes
  • les Menus (small purchases), not representative, but indispensable for daily life
  • les plaisirs (amusements), for example the king's divertissements
  • les Affaires de la Chambre du roi, the king's dressing room.

Louis XIV bundled the last three items, with a distinction being made between “ordinary” expenses (e.g. personnel costs) and “extraordinary” (e.g. carnival events, aristocratic weddings, funerals).

The Hôtel des Menus-Plaisirs (rue Bergère) - currently the seat of the Conservatoire national supérieur d'art dramatique
Floor plan of the Hôtel des Menus-Plaisirs (rue Bergère)
Section through the Hôtel des Menus-Plaisirs (rue Bergère)

Supervision of the Menus Plaisirs lay with one of the Premiers Gentilshommes de la Chambre du roi (First Chamberlain ) and thus switched to a rotation system. They stipulated how much the directors under their control - from 1627 on one, later up to four - were allowed to spend and received the accounts of the general controllers. The enormous costs of the Versailles festivals of Louis XIV suggested a collaboration with the Bâtiments du roi (royal construction), who were already active there , but under Louis XV it was limited . consciously off again, not least to be free in promoting self-preferred artists.

Fireworks were relatively expensive, like the one on December 30, 1751 on the occasion of the birth of the duc de Bourgogne (Louis de France († 1761)), which cost 604,447 livres . The costumes for the various events were also expensive - they were all kept for this reason, only to be destroyed in a fire in the Louvre in 1704 . Perhaps this was a reason to create special magazines for Menus Plaisirs . One of the guardians of this treasure, garde général Antoine Angélique Levesque (1709–1767), gained fame through the fact that his collection of 767 drawings and 109 engravings was preserved. Much of the contents of the 1225 administrative and legal archives were scattered or discarded during the French Revolution , not that in the Menus Plaisirs headquarters , the 1763–1765 building on rue Bergère in Paris. The 120,000 livres to purchase the property came from Levesque's private assets. Since 1750 there was a building next to it on Versailles avenue de Paris.

From 1760 onwards, the entrances and exits of the magazines were strictly controlled, a bureaucracy with a lot of papers. Levesque's successor, Jacques Philippe Houdon, played a part in preserving the documents through the revolution.

literature

  • Jérôme de La Gorce (ed.): Dans l'atelier des Menus Plaisirs du roi. Spectacles, fêtes et cérémonies aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles , Archives nationales, Paris 2010, Éditions Artlys, Versailles 2010, ISBN 978-2-85495-439-5

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jérôme de La Gorce: Berain. Dessinateur du Roi Soleil , Editions Herscher, Paris 1986, p. 17
  2. Jérôme de La Gorce: Carlo Vigarani, intendant des plaisirs de Louis XIV , Editions Perrin / Etablissement public du musée et du domaine national de Versailles, 2005, p. 49
  3. Jérôme de La Gorce: Les Menus Plaisirs du roi , in: ders. (Ed.): Dans l'atelier des Menus Plaisirs du roi . Paris / Versailles 2010, pp. 11–13
  4. Jérôme de La Gorce: Antoine Angélique Levesque , in: ders. (Ed.): Dans l'atelier des Menus Plaisirs du roi . Paris / Versailles 2010, p. 24
  5. Pierre Jugie: Le fonds de la Maison du roi (O1) et les archives des Menus Plaisirs aux Archives nationales , in: Jérôme de La Gorce (ed.): Dans l'atelier des Menus Plaisirs du roi . Paris / Versailles 2010, p. 18