Bibliotheque du Roi - Globe Celeste

*Note* If you like this object please consider buying it in the Louvre museum, thank you.

This celestial globe was gifted to Louis XVI in 1778 and placed in his library at Château de Versailles where it remained until 1793. Fortunately, it was excluded from revolutionary sales and sent to the Ministry of the Navy in 1796, at the request of Admiral de Rosily. Finally returned to Versailles on January 23, 1976.

The globe is carried by a beautifully sculpted Caryatid, a reconstructed version of the Caryatids from the porch of the Erechtheion in Athens, Greece. The Caryatid sits on a beautiful pedestal made out of bronze.
Caryatids as architectural and decorative elements were popular since the first time they appeared in ancient Greece, on the treasuries of Delphi dating to the 6th century BC. The best-known and most-copied examples are those of the six figures of the Caryatid Porch of the Erechtheion on the Acropolis at Athens. One of those original six figures, removed by Lord Elgin in the early 19th century, is now in the British Museum in London.
The Romans also copied the Erechtheion caryatids, installing copies in the Forum of Augustus and the Pantheon in Rome, and at Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli. Another Roman example, found on the Via Appia, is the Townley Caryatid.
At the time of the rediscovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum, in the mid-1760s, there was a huge craze for everything from ancient Rome and later for Greece as well.

The globe was made by Louis-Pierre-Florimond Lennel in 1777. A celestial globe, like this one, shows notable stars, and may also show positions of other prominent astronomical objects. Typically, it will also divide the celestial sphere into constellations. The oldest surviving celestial globe sits atop the Farnese Atlas, carved in the 2nd century Roman Empire. The name Farnese Atlas reflects its acquisition by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese in the early 16th century, and its subsequent exhibition in the Villa Farnese.

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