Cour Marly

Look at the horses straining against the attendants who restrain them. Their raised bodies and twisting movement give the upper end of Cour Marly an energy you can feel from a distance. Guillaume Coustou, the French sculptor who made these groups, turned the effort of controlling a powerful animal into a subject for close looking. The court takes its name from Marly, the leisure residence of Louis XIV, the French king who also shaped Versailles. Sculptures from its gardens and fountains now occupy broad terraces beneath a glass roof. They have kept a relationship with daylight while gaining protection from the weather. Let your eyes move between one figure and the space around it. Works intended for a garden had to hold their own among paths, planting and open air. Their scale and outward gestures still suggest that earlier setting. The terraces offer different views within a single covered courtyard. You can appreciate those layers from your permitted viewing position: one sculpture outlined against another, a horse rising above a lower group, the palace walls enclosing them all.