The Chancellerie d’Orléans: A Miraculous Renaissance

With just a few weeks to go before the opening, the work of reassembling the decors of the Chancellerie d’Orléans is in full swing. Amidst the racket of jackhammers, screwdrivers and sanders working on the marble floor of the grand staircase, it is a wonder to glimpse, through the metal scaffolding that occupies the entire room, the marvelous ceiling painted by Antoine Coypel in the early 18th century, with dazzlingly fresh colors. Le Triomphe de l’amour sur les dieux de l’Olympe ( The Triumph of Love Over the Gods of Olympus ) is the kind of light, graceful painting at which Coypel, the Regent's favorite painter, excelled. The iconographic program unfolding across the great salon’s ceiling revolves around adorable winged putti mischievously grabbing Mars's shield, Jupiter's trident and Diana's quiver. Seen up close in the harsh glare of spotlights, cracks that are imperceptible from the floor can be made out, like the seams of a garment whose different pieces have been put together. Barely visible, these are the only traces of the extraordinary adventure of the decors of the Chancellerie d’Orléans, an…