From Temple to Versailles, the peregrinations of Philippe de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's priant

Placed in the centre of the spacious Crusades Room in 1843, the praying kneeling figure of Philippe de Villiers de L'Isle-Adam acts as a contrapuntal sculpture to the painted portraits of the outstanding warriors who, in these large battle scenes set into the room's neo-Gothic woodwork, fought the Saracens in the era of the Crusades. Having decided to turn Versailles into a museum celebrating "all the glories of France", Louis-Philippe allotted a vast space to French Grand Masters of the Knights Hospitaller, such as Philippe de Villiers de L'Isle-Adam (1464-1534). His priant has a long and complex history. Carved in alabaster by an unknown French sculptor circa 1535-40, it initially surmounted the Grand Master's cenotaph in the sumptuous Saint-Nom-de-Jesus chapel in the Enclos du Temple, Paris. Mutilated during the Revolution, this statue was sent to the Musee des Monuments frangais, where Alexandre Lenoir restored it, then combined it with other works of diverse provenances to compose a monument, thus transforming the praying figure's original purpose for the first time. When it was transferred to Versailles in 1834, initially to the North Wing's Lower Stone Gallery, a "veritable cloister" to quote Theophile Gautier, then to the Crusades Room, where it was placed on a base specially designed by Jean-Baptiste Plantar, the July Monarchy thrust a new political significance upon this work.