Restoration of Grand Salon de Vaux-le-Vicomte

At the centre of the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte is the Grand Salon, around which the accomodation and gardens are organised.
The architect Louis Le Vau designed an oval room decorated with stucco, under a dome nearly 18m high, for which the painter Charles Le Brun planned to create an exceptional fresco, a true hymn to the sun,never executed. For almost 200 years, the dome remained undecorated until the palace was restored in the 1840s. A painter-decorator represented a sky dotted with clouds with an eagle in the centre. This fresco, too, was not completed and suffered from the ravages of time.
In 2020, the architectural firm RL & Associés was commissioned to restore the entire Grand Salon. The fresco, which had been fairly well executed, was covered with a reversible whitewash that would allow Charles Le Brun's drawing to be projected digitally.