States of Proximity: Privacy under Louis XIV in Versailles

Privacy is one of the most widespread and evoked concepts of our times. First, in its recent manifestation, it acts as a synecdoche standing for the right to preserve intact the core of the indivisible subjectivity, called either intimacy, identity, or familiarity, Second, in the modern Western tradition, it emerges as a shield protecting against external intrusion into the recognition, tracking, and sharing of a personal inappropriable sphere. Third, during the last century, such shields had been constantly reinforced through technological apparatuses aiming to establish new boundaries against the public sphere. Lastly, privacy crystallised when indivisible subjectivity was captured by the legal device.
Nonetheless, when privacy is framed in its historical trajectory, the cleft between its emergence and its legal definition is clear. Therefore, the historical multidisciplinary inquiry promoted by the Centre for Privacy Studies (PRIVACY) is key to revealing what is at stake in the contemporary hypertrophic development of the social, political, legal, and spatial devices that regulate privacy. Specifically, within PRIVACY’s overall aim, this research operates within the history and theory of architecture. It aims to identify the conditions that triggered some early forms of privacy within the French royal palace of Versailles under Louis XIV.
The study establishes a dialogue with some theoretical concepts that are instrumental to revealing how privacy was modulated in the architectural environment, such as body, image, and sovereignty. Although these concepts are not typically part of the architectural vocabulary, they underline their implications and reasons, especially within a royal residence. Moreover, the research appraises three architectural mechanisms, intended as systems of rooms, spaces or architectural devices active in Versailles, whose agency modulated the proximity of the king’s body with the socio-political configuration of the court: the Appartement des Bains (1671-1681), the relation between the Appartement du Roi and the Cabinet du Tableaux (1671-1715), and the balustrade of the Chambre du Roi (1701).
The main research question is: How did privacy emerge in relation to the architecture of Versailles from its inception to 1715? Specifically, the research develops why the configuration of the French Appartement has been transformed from a space of pure visibility to a space for exposing nudity; why the Renaissance balustrade served as a political and theological instrument for the Chambre du Roi. And what was the reasons for transforming Louis XIV’s Cabinet des Tableaux from a traditional political means to a private instrument of contemplation.
To answer such inquiries the chosen mechanisms are unfolded through three diptychs: the Appartement, the Cabinet des Tableaux, and the balustrade. The format of the diptychs aims to offer a theoretical perspective on the reception, use, and symbolic engendering of the three architectural devices at stake in the French context. Each diptych provides, on the one hand, an archaeological overview of the emergence of the mechanism and its symbolic implications within a contiguous, and not necessarily previous, cultural context. On the other, the historical trajectory of the mechanism is examined as it emerges within Louis XIV’s Versailles. These sections examine the action of architectural devices in engaging the king's body in different states of privacy during the various phases of his project of a royal residence.
This research benefits from the analytical methodologies developed at PRIVACY: the terminological research of priv* words, and the investigation of limits and thresholds between the theorised heuristic zones. Moreover, it complements them with literature reviews and archival reviews, supported by the inscriptive tools of architecture (exhibition and graphics), and tools from the digital humanities. Therefore, being grounded in source-based research, the study considers written sources (the apostolic nuncio’s correspondence from Paris to the Holy See), and visual materials (the king’s painting collection, and the drawings related to the Versailles architectural project).
The overall argument of the current thesis is that Louis XIV’s privacy entailed specific degrees of proximity to his body. In the seventeenth century French royal setting, privacy did not emerge either as a state of total isolation (Louis was rarely, if ever, physically alone); nor there was a clear distinction between the private (i.e., the household) and the public (the court). Furthermore, privacy was neither the result of a standard architectural device (e.g., the cabinet had a restricted access, but such restriction was negotiated ad personam); nor was it a temporal attribute: Louis XIV’s routine and the court day were interdependent, and the ritualisation of life actuated by the etiquette suspended the normal flow of time. In other words, privacy in the Early Modern Versailles was a quality —or a threat— that originated per via negativa: it is apparently easier to define it based on what was not.
However, the study argues that early forms of privacy can be traced in relation to the above-mentioned architectural mechanisms that staged the cleft between the king’s natural and political bodies while exposing Louis’s nudity (within the Appartement des Bains), nurturing his contemplation (in front of the Cabinet des Tableaux), and engendering the monarch’s authority (behind the balustrade).