Apollo Room

The portrait over the fireplace is a copy made in 1702 after the painter Hyacinthe Rigaud’s state portrait of Louis XIV. The original, painted in 1701, is in the Louvre. Look at the royal mantle and the carefully arranged pose, then at Apollo, the sun god, in the ceiling. Louis XIV had chosen the sun as his emblem. Apollo became the throne room in 1682. A silver-covered throne stood on a raised platform beneath a canopy. It was melted down in 1689, along with other silver furnishings.