Depicting a scene from La Princesse d’Élide, a five-act comédie-ballet staged in the gardens of Versailles in 1664, Israël Silvestre’s engraving is a visual record of an ephemeral but pivotal festival that marked the confluence of performing arts, court culture, and political power in the reign of Louis XIV. Along with fellow printmakers Jean Lepautre (b. 1618, Paris; d. 1682, Paris) and Jean Berain (b. 1640, Saint-Mihiel, France; d. 1711, Paris), Silvestre was commissioned to visually document the accomplishments of the king’s reign. Etchings and engravings of the splendors of Versailles, from the château’s architecture to the lavish outdoor spectacles such as the one shown here, were published in sumptuously illustrated festival books to commemorate these events. Sent abroad as diplomatic gifts, they also served as propaganda for the power

This plugin provides an extremely easy way to add elegant looking footnotes to your posts. The syntax is natural, simple to understand, and degrades gracefully if the plugin is removed. Footnotes are linked unobtrusively and the note itself links back to the original text where the footnote is referenced.

Adding footnotes to a post is simple. Just type them inline in your post in square brackets like this: ¹

Each footnote must have a number followed by a period and a space and then the actual footnote. They don’t have to be unique but it is recommended. It doesn’t matter what the numbers are since the footnotes will be automatically renumbered when the post is displayed.

Footnotes can contain anything you’d like including links, images, etc. Footnotes are automatically linked back to the spot in the text where the note was made.