From the depth of the Cellar to the delights of the Garden

With their perspectives, colors and historic inspirations, the gardens form a backdrop to the rooms of the house, and make their mark on the interiors. This is particularly the case in the summer dining room, which sits directly on the line of the garden’s principal axis, and enjoys views out towards the reflecting pool and beyond it to the horizon. Opening onto the wide terrace that looks over the yew-tree parterres, it acts as a transitional space between the gardens, the kitchen, the drawing room and the red gallery – whose door is framed by two pipe-playing fauns, heralding the music to be heard within its walls.

But there’s another door that also catches the eye – the one that leads to the cellar. Accessed by a steep stone stair, the entrance to the cellar is further dramatized by an astonishing painted trompe-l’oeil décor that is combined with hunting trophies. Is this, perhaps, an evocation of another reference dear to the seventeenth-century imagination, the antique mythology of Hades, nymphs and Bacchanals? On the thickly plastered walls, whose rough texture contrasts with the other rooms in the house, the horns and skulls of the animal trophies are set off in striking contrast. A sort of threshold to Arcadia, the summer dining room calls up the far-off echo of the ancient world, and one half expects to see, outside in the gardens, a faun with his pan pipes playing the sweet-yet-plangent melody of a pastoral. Is this not the magic of theater?

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Philippe Abergel