First Apartment at Versailles

This series of prints illustrates some of the evening entertainments offered to the courtiers on a regular weekday at Versailles, which included games, gambling, concerts, and dances. The French newspaper Le Mercure galant explained of these soirées in 1682: The King permitted entrance to his Grand Apartments of Versailles on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays of each week to play all sorts of amusements there from 6 o'clock in the evening until 10, and these are called days of the Appartement. Better known as a portraitist, Antoine Trouvain's depictions of these evenings include portraits of members of the royal family and the princes and princesses of blood, all of whom lived in large private apartments inside the palace. The young eleven-year-old prince, Monsieur le Duc d'Anjou (no. 1), is a grandson of Louis XIV and the future Philip V; he would succeed the last Spanish Habsburg King, Charles II, to become King of Spain just six years after this engraving was made.