Baldachin - State Bed

State Bed

The state bed, intended for receiving important visitors and producing heirs before a select public, but not intended for sleeping in, evolved during the second half of the seventeenth century, developing the medieval tradition of receiving visitors in the bedroom, which had become the last and most private room of the standard suite of rooms in a Baroque apartment. Louis XIV developed the rituals of receptions in his state bedchamber, the petit levée to which only a handful of his court élite might expect to be invited. The other monarchs of Europe soon imitated his practice; even his staunchest enemy, William III of England had his "grooms of the bedchamber", a signal honour.

The state bed, a lit à la Duchesse—its canopy supported without visible posts— was delivered for the use of Queen Marie Leszczinska at Versailles, as the centrepiece of a new decor realized for the Queen in 1730–35. Its tester is quickly recognizable as a baldachin, serving its time-honoured function; the bedding might easily be replaced by a gilded throne. The queens of France spent a great deal of time in their chambre, where they received the ladies of the court at the morning levée and granted private audiences. By the time Marie Antoinette escaped the mob from this bedroom, such state beds, with the elaborate etiquette they embodied, were already falling out of use. A state bed with a domed tester designed in 1775-76 by Robert Adam for Lady Child at Osterley Park and another domed state bed, delivered by Thomas Chippendale for Sir Edwin Lascelles at Harewood House, Yorkshire in 1773 are two of the last English state beds intended for a main floor State Bedroom in a non-royal residence.