(Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)
Louis
XIV used to be one of the most notorious name in the international history during our schooldays. Before he died inside the walls of great Palace
of Versailles on September 1, 1715, he had earned enough of not only ferocity
and barbarism but also opulence and splendor under his belt during his
interminable rule of 72 years making him the only King to rule France of such
long epoch. Also popularly known as “The Sun King” or the “Grand Monarch”, it
was under his reign France gained unprecedented prosperity and rose to become a
dominant power in Europe with expansion to America, Africa and India and also
be the kingpin of the arts and science. But during his later years of rule,
never ending war backfired on France resulting in defeats, economic apocalypse
and dire famine.
On
May 14, 1643, when King Louis XIII passed away, his eldest child Louis XIV was
ascended to the throne at the juvenile four years and eight months of age.
Christened as Louis Dieudonné (gift of God), Louis XIV inflicted himself as “Gift
of God” instilling any disobedience to his edicts to be a sin.
It
is enthralling to learn that Louisiana State today in USA is named after Louis
XIV when Frenchmen René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle claimed interior of
North America in 1682. United States purchased The Louisiana Territory in 1803
to make it American property.
The
equestrian statue (as seen above) outside "The Louvre" as designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini to depict
King Louis XIV. A prominent Italian sculptor, Bernini, born in 1598 was
requested by King Louis XIV to come to Paris to design a new wing of Palace and
was commissioned to produce a statue of King. This status was sculpted from a
single block of Carrara marble. Displeased with this statue, King Louis XIV ordered
alternation into a mythological Roman warrior and hero called “Marcus Curtius”;
features of face was changed, a Roman helmet was added along with the flames depicting
the Hill of Glory finally relegating it to the garden slowly deteriorated until
1980. It took eight long year for the restoration. Three copies were made, one for the garden,
one for the Louvre, and one for Jackson, Mississippi. The original is so weak that
it is stored away.
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