Le cheval sculpté à Versailles : une image du pouvoir ?

Sculpted horses at Versailles, an image of power? Sculptures of horses as parts of equestrian groups, or as decorative elements for stable buildings have been well studied for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but another iconographical field has so far been little examined, the horse sculpted for its own sake, in its own right. Yet some of the best-known examples of this theme, the two lateral groups at the Téthys grotto in the park of the Versailles château, or the famous groups by Coustou for the Marly watering trough, feature amongst the masterpieces of French sculpture. Executed for royal residences, do these ‘liberated’ figures of the horse offer some sort of reflexion on the image of power