The Shape of France Gardens, Fortifications, and Modern Urban1sm
10 THE SHAPE OF FRANCE GARDENS, FORTIFICATIONS, AND MODERN URBAN1SM N THE LAST CHAPTER, I discussed the than one occasion that he would be glad word pourtraiture as it was employed in to receive it from him, but that gift was > the garden treatises of the seventeenth never made. Perhaps Louis wanted it so century and suggested that, through the much precisely because it embodied what methodical adjustment of geometry to he, despite his gloire, had never really ex scale that it was intended to describe, gar perienced firsthand: direct military vic den architects did draw, in fact, a "por tory, its special release and incomparable trait" of the.order of the world upon its satisfactions. As a field commander, Louis surface. At the same time, the word pour was never quite able to close with the traiture may be thought to enemy. The one chance he have a double meaning, had to do so he let slip since each of the gardens through his fingers. Unlike was intended to portray the the Due d'Enghien, who character of its client and to won his victory at Rocroi embody his own intentions. through reckless personal At Vaux, it was clearly the daring, Louis, despite his will of Fouquet as an indi often-demonstrated physi vidual that was portrayed cal courage, was never quite and embodied in landscape. able to let himself go in that At Versailles, it was the 416. Mont-Louis, France. Fortifications. way. So all his victories realm of Louis XIV, his Vauban. Air view. were in a sense secondhand.
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