Review How science wowed the court of the Sun King

Versailles: Science and Splendour Science Museum

- Jonathan Jones

When Louis XIV had an anal fistula, his doctors paced the mirrored halls of the vast palace he had built at Versailles, pondering how to treat it. Eventually the Sun King agreed to an operation – a risky choice in the 17th century. The royal surgeon Charles-François Félix invented a curved silver scalpel to get at the fistula and practised on local paupers, killing several. The rehearsals worked: he fixed the fistula and Louis lived until 1715.

In Versailles: Science and Splendour, a scalpel slices through the cliché that the French palace was a world of pure fantasy frolics. The royal surgeon's experiments were brutal but they also illustrate how Versailles in the 1780s was spearheading science.

You thought Marie Antoinette was just interested in shepherdess cosplay? Here you see a breed of hyacinth named in her honour, an intricate watch made for her that was only finished years after she went to the guillotine, and her copy of a French atlas. Portraits of two of Louis XV's daughters, Madame Adelaide and Madame Sophie, show them at their desks surrounded by books. A telescope has an inscription on it saying it was made by "Madame Sophie de France". And don't miss Louis XV's rhinoceros, a colossal miracle of 18th-century taxidermy.