What I found to be the most intellectually delicious tidbit from our visit to Versailles was the god-like imagery King Louis XIV applied to himself. In hopes of creating a more godly aura around the French monarchy, Louis XIV had Versailles decorated extensively with the images of Roman gods. Thus, throughout the corridors of the palace, the ceilings and walls are covered in paintings of gods or King Louis XIV in the positions of those gods. This is especially true for portraits of Apollo, the god of the sun.

(Even in this image, where King Louis XIV’s countenance is represented in Hercules, the painting brings attention to Hercules by shining rays of the sun onto his body.)

Louis XIV’s insistence on attaching his role as the king of France to Apollo reminded me of Blake’s “French Revolution,” in which I found many instances of sun god imagery. Blake first uses sun god imagery to describe the aristocrats who lived in Versailles (in Blake’s poem the Louvre) and King Louis XVI in the poem. He describes the dining hall in which nobles eat as “Porches of the sun, to plant beauty in the desert craving abyss,” and the king before speaking to the nobles as “the sun of old times quenched in cloud” with his “his heart flamed” (55, 68, 69). I find it fascinating that Blake not only plays on how the French monarchs sought to attach themselves to Apollo but also how he neuters the luster and grandeur that comes with being a sun god, as he has Louis XVI quenched in clouds and the nobles deep in an abyss.

Using sun god imagery in a completely different way, Blake also attaches the Duke of Burgundy to Apollo. In introducing the Duke, Blake writes: “Duke of Burgundy, rose from the monarch’s right hand […] / Clothed in flames of crimson” (83, 86). In bringing sun god imagery to the satanic figure of the Duke of Burgundy, Blake accentuates the redness and the flames that seem to be quenched in Louis XVI. I really like this artistic decision, as Blake, who was a strong proponent of the French Revolution, is taking the propaganda the French monarchy used to make themselves seem more godly and subverting it to represent their demonic apathy towards the lower classes.