who was the palace of versailles built for
Palace of Versailles First built by Louis XIII in 1624 as a hunting lodge of brick and stone, and designed by the architect Jacques Lemercier, the edifice was enlarged into a royal palace by Louis XIV.[2] The first phase of the expansion (c. 1661–1678) was designed and supervised by the architect Louis Le Vau. It culminated in the addition of three new wings of stone (the enveloppe), which encompassed Louis XIII's original building on the north, south, and west (the garden side). André-Charles Boulle, the most famous French cabinetmaker and the preeminent artist in the field of marquetry,[3] was engaged in 1669 to create ouvrages de peinture, and Boulle was employed for many years at Versailles, where the mirrored walls, floors of wood mosaic, inlaid paneling and marquetry in the Cabinet du Dauphin (1682–1686) was regarded as his most remarkable work.[4] The rooms were dismantled in the late 18th century and their unfashionable art broken up.[5] More recently, a partial inventory of the Grand Dauphin's decorations at the Palace of Versailles has come to light at the National Archives in Paris.[6]
Louis XIV of France Louis began his personal rule of France in 1661, after the death of his chief minister, the Italian Cardinal Mazarin.[4] An adherent of the concept of the divine right of kings, which advocates the divine origin of monarchical rule, Louis continued his predecessors' work of creating a centralized state governed from the capital. He sought to eliminate the remnants of feudalism persisting in parts of France and, by compelling many members of the nobility to inhabit his lavish Palace of Versailles, succeeded in pacifying the aristocracy, many members of which had participated in the Fronde rebellion during Louis' minority. By these means he became one of the most powerful French monarchs and consolidated a system of absolute monarchical rule in France that endured until the French Revolution.