Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Model of the Ambassadors’ Staircase
Maquette by Charles Arquinet French
Not on view
A triple entrance in the brick and stone palace facade offered exterior access to the ceremonial Ambassadors' Staircase. On the day of their formal audience, overseas diplomats would have been escorted from the Ambassadors’ Salon across the marble courtyard to enter the imposing vestibule and climb the stairs leading up to the King’s State Apartment. Designed by the architect Louis Le Vau, the staircase was decorated between 1674 and 1679 with polychrome marbles and an elaborate program of illusionistic paintings by Charles Le Brun, all lit by a glass roof. Visiting dignitaries were duly impressed by the spectacle that unfolded before them while climbing the stairs that led to the King’s State Apartment. The staircase was destroyed in 1752.
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