Situated on the banks of France's Loire River, Chateau de Menars, once owned by Madame de Pompadour, has been painstakingly restored by philanthropist Edmond Baysari. Now he hopes to donate it to an arts institution that will use the grand estate as a museum. (Credit: Denis Allard/REA/Denis Allard/REA)
France‘s Loire Valley is, of course, famous for its regal châteaux. Visitors have an embarrassment of riches from which to choose. One can meander through the more than 500 rooms of the Château de Blois, see Leonardo da Vinci‘s tomb in the Château d’Amboise or simply behold the river-spanning architecture of Catherine de Medici’s Chenonceau.
But there is one estate that sits quietly behind gates rarely opened to anyone. It is the only fully privately held royal château in the valley and is the personal trophy of a reclusive philanthropist–a stone structure with nearly 200,000 square feet of living space on 118 acres of sculpted gardens on the banks of the Loire River. It is known as Château de Menars.
Menars is owned by a 76-year-old press-shy introvert named Edmond Baysari, a Monacan by way of Lebanon. For Baysari the château is the ultimate labor of love in more ways than one. It’s a brick-and-mortar legacy representing his passion for art, architecture and history, one that cost him three decades and more than $100 million to restore. But, more important, it’s a tribute to his lifelong muse, Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, a renowned grand dame of the arts and the château’s former inhabitant, who is better known as Madame de Pompadour. Baysari refers to his regal château as “Palace Pompadour.”
Baysari was born and raised in a Maronite Christian family in Lebanon, then under French colonial rule. He left for the Americas as a teenager and graduated from Harvard in 1960. By the end of the decade, he’d opened a wildly successful real estate development business in Venezuela and returned to Harvard for a master’s degree focused on nuclear engineering. Later, he consulted on Wall Street, traveled the world and ultimately ended up in Monaco, where he became a full-time philanthropist.
His philanthropy has centered mainly on the arts–just as his lifelong heroine Madame de Pompadour’s did. One of his most enduring projects came about by way of a lasting friendship with Ronald Reagan; among other things, Baysari was an avid political supporter through Club 100. In 1990, Baysari contributed to what’s known as the Art in Embassies program, developing an initiative with the State Department that allows U.S. embassies to access works of art in an easier, less costly fashion than they could before. In the years following, he set up similar art-sharing networks for cities around the world.
But Palace Pompadour, he says, is his crowning achievement, a curatorship born of kismet. Baysari first heard of Madame de Pompadour as a young child. “Very early I came across this woman in my readings, and I was immediately passionate about her,” he says.
It’s easy to see why. Pompadour (1721-64) was a true Renaissance woman. She was a musician who loved painting and literature. She studied botany and ornithology, and established a salon to support philosophers, including Voltaire. She was also a great beauty. Born a commoner, she won the affection of King Louis XV in 1745, becoming his chief mistress and gaining nobility. With the king’s resources, she became a patroness of the arts and great works, including the Elysées Palace in Paris. She, like Baysari, was a philanthropist at heart, perhaps owing to her background, and once famously lashed out at some of her noble critics: “They all make fun of my lust for creating, this madness which enables so many poverty-stricken peasants to buy their daily bread. I derive no pleasure from viewing my hoarded gold. It must be distributed.”
The estate at Menars was among her last works, acquired in 1760. Pompadour enlisted court architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel–who designed Paris’s Place de la Concorde–to build her dream home, refurbishing the original château, which had been built in 1642. Pompadour added symmetrical wings to both sides of the structure, opened up the interiors and replaced the austere furniture with a more contemporary style. Pompadour never saw Menars to completion; she died in 1764, at age 42, from tuberculosis. Her brother, the Marquis de Marigny, completed the addition. And then the château sat quietly, weathering the French Revolution and thwarting the attentions of property developers and would-be tourists, for the next two centuries.
By 1980, the château was owned by Saint-Gobain, the Parisian glassmaking company, which used it as a company retreat. But soon thereafter, the company was nationalized by the French government and was forced to sell Menars. That’s when Baysari–who had amassed considerable wealth by then–pounced on it, hearing of the sale from Sotheby’s chairman, Peter Wilson.
He mulled over what to do with Menars for years before inspiration struck in 1989. “I decided I wanted to make a gift to Madame de Pompadour and put it back to the way she would have it if alive today,” he says. But “restoration” doesn’t fully encompass his painstaking efforts. It wasn’t enough to refinish the intricate wood paneling adorning the walls of rooms or to touch up the gold leafing gleaming from ceilings; Baysari set out to revive Menars by employing the very same methods utilized by Pompadour, sourcing authentic artisans and commissioning up-and-coming artists.
More than two decades later, Palace Pompadour is finally finished (or as close as it will ever be). Inside, the entry-level floor of both wings touts vast white galleries sparsely furnished and flanked by fortified walls capable of holding heavy pieces of artwork. Among Baysari’s favorite spaces is an ornately carved library paneled in two kinds of wood, situated on the second floor. The endless layout includes more than 50 bedrooms, a series of intimate drawing rooms and a regally appointed dining room with an underground passage to a separate kitchen building.
The estate has a lush array of gardens. The great terrace, stretching from the château to the river, is a geometric presentation of square grassy lawns hugged by squat hedgerows and studded intermittently with 18th-century statues of Roman emperors. Madame de Pompadour’s face has been carved into two stone sphinxes. There is a domed Temple of Love, designed by Soufflot. Vineyards on the property yield pinot noir.
Baysari uses the palace as a summer retreat, occupying it sporadically in the months of July and August. He once experimented with opening Château de Menars to the public for tours, until the estate was burglarized. Still, if a group wishes to arrange a tour, he often obliges them.
Now Baysari is looking to the future. He has no heir. He says he has already turned down several nine-figure offers from Russian and Middle Eastern billionaires looking for a trophy home. But that’s not what he has in mind. Ideally, Palace Pompadour will be gifted to an arts institution, like the Getty Museum or the Hermitage, that “brings all of the assurances that it will be safe for a long, long time.” And it will require some deep pockets: Annual upkeep on the château is roughly $1 million.
A new owner will also find three rooms that Baysari has purposely left unrestored: the ground-floor apartments that served as Madame de Pompadour’s bedrooms. “I don’t want to do it. I don’t think I’m qualified,” he says, laughing shyly. “I would rather that when she comes back, she does it herself.”
forbes.com
1 comment:
I am fascinated to read of this Palace de Pompadour. Reading that Mr Baysari has left three rooms for the great lady, her spirit, to come and occupy the three rooms he has left unrestored is very interesting.
Post a Comment