Horse in Majesty: At the Heart of a Civilisation

To coincide with the equestrian events at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games,mto be hosted on the Versailles estate, the Château is holding a major exhibition dedicated to horses and equestrian civilisation in Europe – the first exhibition on this theme to be presented on such a scale. Nearly 300 works on exceptional loan from all over the world highlight the roles and uses of horses in civil and military society, from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, up to the eve of the First World War, which marked the end of horse-drawn civilisation and the relegation of horses to the realm of leisure.

Cheval en Majesté is divided into thirteen sections on a tour leading visitors through several emblematic areas of the Palace: the Africa Rooms, the King's State Apartment, the Hall of Mirrors, Madame Maintenon's Apartment and the Dauphine's Apartment on the ground floor.

In a gallery of princes' favourite horses, the exhibition presents Charles XI of Sweden's collection of horse portraits and more intimate portraits such as those of Queen Victoria's Arabian horses. But also the beauty and sheer scale of the aristocratic and royal stables built in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries bear witness to the importance attached to horses in representations of power under the Ancien Régime. Some rare examples of ephemeral festive arts are also presented.

The exhibition also focuses on the relationship between art and science in anatomical studies of horses. The iconic early drawings by Andrea del Verrochio and Leonardo da Vinci are exhibited together here for the first time, in a collaboration between New York's Metropolitan Museum and the English Royal Collections.