Goppion Featured in Le Figaro

Goppion was recently featured in Le Figaro in an article titled “Les Invalides: entre histoire et mémoires, le nouveau parcours au Musée de l’armée,” showcasing our work at the Musée de l’Armée and our contribution to the museum’s newly redesigned exhibition spaces. Read a translation of the article below, or see the original on Le Figaro's website here.

Les Invalides: between history and memory, the new exhibition of the Musée de l'armée

By Eric Biétry-Rivierre

The Musée de l'armée has been enriched with a new tour that summarizes the history of the site from its foundation by Louis XIV to the present day.

Exactly three hundred and fifty years ago, the first wounded soldiers took up residence at Les Invalides. Why, by whom and how was it built? How has it evolved over time? What was missing was a permanent center. Aware of this gap, the Musée de l'Armée has filled it. Opened on July 14 for the Olympic Games, and then officially inaugurated on September 9, the Vauban gallery on the first floor of the west wing (a long 325 m2 rectangle) has been transformed by architects Antoine and Pierre Dufour into a vast and fascinating introduction under the exacting eye of Christophe Batard, chief architect of the Monuments Historiques.

It should be noted from the outset that this chrono-thematic tour of just 30 key objects, laid out in the center of this former boarders' refectory, never obscures the murals painted on the widths and west wall by Jacques Friquet de Vauroze in 1678. These bird's-eye views of the strongholds conquered by Louis XIV during the War of Devolution, the Flanders Campaign and the Dutch War, with plans of their towers and ramparts, may seem naïve or sometimes too damaged. Nevertheless, they constitute the oldest painted decoration on the entire 15-hectare site.

Royalty, empire and republic

The project lasted thirteen months. Where the “Cavalry Parade” had been, a beautiful and spectacular display of equestrian mannequins, but arranged without concern for periods - the uniforms presented being in fact separate from the chronological permanent collections - a place has been made for these works. They are emblematic of the site's three functions (commemorative and museum purposes have been added to the hospital function) and its three constituent periods: royalty, empire and republic.

To represent the key historical sequence, and in particular the reign of Louis XIV, a first masterpiece is installed at the entrance: the plan-relief of the Hôtel des Invalides, a marvel of papier-mâché. Its glass framework, with no horizontal or vertical supporting structure, was made by the same manufacturer that created the display case for the Mona Lisa (Goppion in Milan), and is in itself a technical feat. Its base is therefore entirely mechanized, allowing for maintenance and other interventions.

Weightlessness

An equally imposing painting hangs nearby. This is the preparatory cartoon for one of the haute lisse tapestries included in the Gobelins hanging of L'Histoire du roy. Created by Pierre Dulin in 1710, a pupil of Friquet de Vauroze, it depicts the completion of the Hôtel Royal. These carefully consolidated 3.53 m × 5.78 m images, digitized in high definition and restored in one of the dome's chapels, show Monsieur, the Dauphin, the Grand Condé, Turenne, Louvois, the successive architects Libéral Bruant and Jules Hardouin-Mansart around the Bourbon, who looks younger than his age... And also, on their left, the little band of maimed people. All explanations can be found on the back of the composition or on a nearby interactive screen, with four languages (including Mandarin) and three levels of more or less detailed information. This is the museographic concept.

When they're not on the floor (like this walking wheelchair or this refectory table, on which authentic forks were discovered between wall and panelling during work in 2008), the objects seem weightless, connected to the ceiling beams by a sophisticated set of counterweights, stays and pulleys, which ensure the necessary tension and adjustments. These cords also give the gallery an appropriately Royal, half-theatrical, half-maritime feel.

Deserving soldiers

Les Invalides was born in 1670, when Louis XIV signed an ordinance stipulating that the capacity of its planned buildings should be 1600 deserving soldiers. Fourteen years later, more than 4,000 were receiving quality care in the southern part of the building, provided by a doctor, surgeon, apothecary and Sisters of Charity. Living quarters were mainly located to the west. To this day, the Institution nationale des Invalides remains the protector of these residents.

Such was the original mission. The interior design model for the dome crowning the church, by Charles de La Fosse, is also noteworthy. This tondo depicting Saint Louis extending his arms to Christ, which was slashed by a saber during the Revolution and once hung from the ceiling of the governor's historic office, was not previously visible to the general public, except during Heritage Days.

Subsequent phases follow. One was imperial, from the moment Napoleon transformed Saint-Louis church into a military necropolis in 1800 - he had Turenne's remains and Vauban's heart transferred there. The other dates mainly from the Third Republic, when, in 1905, the Musée d'artillerie, opened at Les Invalides in 1872, and the Musée historique de l'armée, hatched in 1896, were merged. The ethnographic gallery created here in 1877 was also transferred, in part to the Musée de l'Homme and in part to the Muséum.

Today, the Musée de l'armée boasts some 500,000 items dating from the Bronze Age to the 21st century. Of these, 15,000 are on public display.