The unknown Louis XVI (expo)

The Hôtel Abbatial in Lunéville is to host a new temporary exhibition entitled ‘Louis XVI, l’inconnu de Versailles‘ , to run from 10th April 2026 to 28th February 2027.

"Consecrated at Reims in 1775, guillotined in January 1793:  But how well do we really know this sovereign  about whom caricatures and clichés, often malicious, have circulated ceaselessly for two centuries?"

Espace Muséal Hôtel Abbatial | Ville de Lunéville

See: Lunéville et vous, December 2025-March 2026, p.20

https://online.pubhtml5.com/pzcy/baik/

According to organiser Marc Leroy de Ricci, the exhibition aims to rehabilitate the personality of the King:  

"Throughout his life contemporaries who met Louis XVI in person for the first time expressed their astonishment.  The physical appearance of the King...was a revelation that did not correspond at all with the commissioned portraits motivated by propaganda; the discovery of the personality of Louis XVI was for many a "divine surprise" completely unlike the malicious clichés, but perfectly consistent with the grandeur and example of the Testament and final moments of the sovereign."

Themes covered:

• Louis XVI and science 
• Gardens 
• Hunting
• Locksmithing and clockmaking 
• Bronze engraving
• Dress and costume
• The abbé de l'Épée and the education of the deaf
•  Architecture and furnishing

The exhibition will include items from the  private collections  of Marc Leroy de Ricci and Benoît d'Amat, also loans from the musée de Schwetzingen, le Docteur Brinckmann and the Erkenbert-Museum in Frankenthal.  A 3-volume catalogue will be published.