Reception of the Grand Condé at Versailles

Reception of the Grand Condé at Versailles, catalogued by the museum as Réception du Grand Condé par Louis XIV (Versailles, 1674), is an oil painting on canvas by Jean-Léon Gérôme, dated 1878 and in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, since 2004 (RF 2004 15).

The scene is set in 1674 on the great Escalier des Ambassadeurs at Versailles. Louis XIV waits at the top of the stairs to welcome Louis II de Bourbon, Prince of Condé, fresh from his victory over William of Orange at Seneffe. The gesture closed nearly fifteen years of disgrace imposed on the king's cousin for leading the Fronde against royal power. Condé, slowed by gout, climbs the steps hat in hand between ranks of guards and captured banners. The French Wikipedia article reads the picture as a comedy of power built on the prince's belated submission, part of Gérôme's turn towards the 'small' anecdotes of history.

The canvas measures only 96.5 × 139.7 cm, yet Gérôme packed into it his passion for historical reconstruction. He consulted engravings of Versailles and portraits of the people involved, and recreated the staircase, which had been demolished more than a century earlier. The Orsay points to the low viewpoint and the off-centre X formed by the two flights of stairs, and to the way the cool marble is enlivened by the colours of costumes and flags.

Gérôme hoped to sell the picture to the Duc d'Aumale, who was then fitting out Chantilly, the Condé family's former château, but the deal fell through. William Henry Vanderbilt bought it in 1878, and it was lent to the Metropolitan Museum in New York from 1886 to 1903 while engravings spread its fame in France. After the Second World War it fell into relative obscurity. The Musée d'Orsay bought it at Sotheby's New York in 2004 for $1,296,000, adding its first history painting by Gérôme.