*Rococo Revisited
Château de Versailles

Fountain of the children’s island 


To the north of the Versailles gardens, between the Green Round and the Star  Grove, hidden away from the most frequented walks, there is a circular pool with a rock in the centre. The Children’s Island, a light-hearted masterpiece, was sculpted by Hardy in 1710. Six nude children play with flowers while two others splash about in the water.
© EPV / Thomas Garnier
Parc Monceau (via Paris Walks: Walk 14: Eighteenth-Century Lifestyles , Parc Monceau)
Krowiarki Palace, Poland
(via The Caledonian Mining Expedition Company) 
Vaux-le-Vicomte château
Villa di Geggiano
19:26"Painting isn’t an aesthetic operation; it’s a form of magic designed as mediator between this strange hostile world and us." — Pablo Picasso
A friend built a modern house and he suggested that Picasso too should have one built. But, said Picasso, of course not, I want an old house. Imagine, he said, if Michelangelo would have been pleased if someone had given him a fine piece of Renaissance furniture, not at all.
—Gertrude Stein, Picasso (1938)
Picasso drawing inspiration in his fabulous rococo chateau (photo Arnold Newman/1956)
18:39

*Thinking of partially saving ‘A l’ancien regime’ to wordpress as a precaution measure*

18:22

The Times’s Jenna Wortham on the reaction to Yahoo’s acquisition of Tumblr and what it means for users.

Versailles
22:24

Tumblr is sold to Yahoo… is this the end of Tumblr as we all knew and loved it? :/

Versailles : Marie Antoinette’s Chateau, the Petit Trianon (via The Swelle Life)
View through a Baroque Colonnade into a Garden, 1760-1768
Canaletto (1697–1768)  
Pen and brown ink, black-gray wash in two tones, partly visible perspective construction lines in black pencil
Georges Jacob (1739–1814); gilder: Louis–François Chatard (ca. 1749–1819). Armchair from Louis XVI’s Salon des Jeux, Château de Saint-Cloud. French (Paris), 1788. Carved and gilded walnut; gold brocaded silk. The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Pauline de Rothschild’s Curtains  (via Architectural Digest)