Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Any mention of the Palace of Versailles is likely to summon images of gilt panelling, extravagant coiffure and majestic avenues radiating into the landscape — those lingering symbols of both grandeur and frivolity.But unless you count a faux window and some wooden topiary, all of that barely gets a look in at Versailles: Science and Splendour. This elegantly eccentric exhibition at London’s Science Museum concentrates instead on the palace’s lost reputation as a centre of scientific excellence.A version of the show appeared at the palace itself, 14 years ago, but it has been reimagined for London and includes many new objects. One — an intricate gold timepiece created for Marie Antoinette that was 40 years in the making — is making its UK debut.The engine of the exhibition is the relationship between science and power in the 17th and 18th centuries (the reigns of Louis XIV, XV and XVI), a time when France was a dominant political, cultural and military force in Europe. For such a vast, ambitious subject, its collection of 100 or so objects seems a modest assembly, but considering every item within the palace walls was pillaged or sold off during the French Revolution, it’s an impressive feat to bring them together. They are also choice pieces, miracles of ingenuity or beauty — often both — that together tell a story of wonder and obsessions, of theft, shipwrecks and knuckle-gnawing medicine. We begin in the mid-1660s, when work began on turning a former hunting pavilion at Versailles into a vast architectural glory fit for the Sun King (it became France’s seat of power in 1682). At the same time, the founding of a Royal Academy of Sciences established a quid pro quo between the king and the scientists in his employ, whose work might benefit the realm — astronomy to improve navigation, geometry and chemistry for better artillery, and so on.It lent scientific experimentation a competitive edge, and some of that intensity permeates the galleries: small, dramatically lit interconnecting rooms that, while far removed from the grandeur of the palace, convey something of its labyrinthine corridors. A soundscape of harpsichord and strings inspired by Jean-Baptiste Lully, master of music to Louis XIV, does its best to fill the gap.Scientists were lured to Versailles from across Europe by the promise of a salary and whatever rare equipment they desired: among them were the Dutch physicist and mathematician Christiaan Huygens, the Danish astronomer Olaüs Roemer and the mathematician and astronomer Giovanni (or Jean) Domenico Cassini of Bologna. On display is the latter’s map of the Moon, whose surface he spent several years recording in minute detail through a telescope. Lunar distance, meanwhile, was among the early proposals for the calculation of longitude, a major scientific challenge of the time and a recurrent theme in the show.From here we move outside, so to speak, into Versailles’ gardens, less to admire their beauty than the vast resources — mental and fiscal — that went into creating them. Because Versailles had no water supply of its own, a complicated engineering system had to be invented to divert water uphill from the Seine, whereupon various academicians were put to work calculating flow rates and pipe thicknesses, so that the water could be shaped into plumes and jets (some 27 metres high). On display here are some specially designed copper fountain nozzles, handsome as musical instruments, and an elaborately annotated, ink-splotched diagram of pipework for the Latona fountain — the finest of many mesmerising drawings in the show. A numbered plan of the dizzying number of soil beds in the king’s kitchen garden is a close second. Its array of vegetables and fruits, many of them forced or acclimatised, were tangible expression of France’s imperial creep. Besides, there were a lot of mouths to feed: at the beginning of the 18th century, the palace was home to around 3,000 people.There were also thousands of animals in the king’s menagerie, immortalised in life by the Flemish painter Nicasius Bernaerts and in death in the illustrated dissections of Claude Perrault. Examples of both are on display here. Dominating the room, however, is a rhinoceros the size of a car. Presented to Louis XV in 1769 by the French governor of Chandernagore in Bengal, it was killed during the Revolution (by sabre, or so the story goes). Its skeleton and stuffed hide have been borrowed from the Museum of Natural History in Paris. Quite an act to follow, but the 4,000 species of plants cultivated, classified and tested for their medicinal or nutritional properties at Versailles goes some way to meeting the challenge. A glorious portrait of the chemist and agricultural expert Antoine-Augustin Parmentier tells the story of his one-man mission to promote the eating of potatoes (which the French deemed pig food), and nearby there’s a delicate botanical study of sage by Madeleine Basseporte, who in 1741 became “painter of the king’s garden”. Why only one drawing? Because her predecessor and tutor Claude Aubriet signed many of her works and sold them as his. Basseporte is one of several women whose contributions to science the exhibition foregrounds. Look out too for Madame Du Coudray, a midwife whose stuffed cloth model of a foetus (with shaped nose, stitched ears and an open mouth) and womb parts taught the safe delivery of babies to some 5,000 women across France in the mid-1700s; and Émilie du Châtelet, who in the 1740s translated and clarified Newton’s Principia. There’s also a telescope with the startling inscription “Made by Madame Sophie de France” — one of Louis XV’s daughters.It’s perhaps best to gloss over the vitrines devoted to the treatment of Louis XIV’s anal fistula, though every detail of the experimental surgery (three hours, no anaesthetic) is preserved in exhaustive journals and bulletins on display.Be sure to leave plenty of time, however, for the scale model of a chemistry laboratory, created in 1783 to tutor the royal children. Ditto the grand map annotated by Louis XVI himself as he eagerly followed the explorer La Pérouse on his 1785 journey in Captain Cook’s footsteps to map the North American coastline. The final room evokes science as spectacle. Under Louis XV, 140 people took part in an electricity experiment in the Hall of Mirrors, and for Louis XIV, the engineer Francois Villette demonstrated a “burning mirror” that turned wood into ash and vitrified stone, a feat that so delighted the Sun King that he paid £7,000 to acquire it for the Academy. To see it here, still catching and returning light, is enough to make your hair stand on end.To April 21, sciencemuseum.org
