This visual essay on the personality of Louis XIV was composed to open the Fifth Aston Magna Academy of 1982, “Music, Art, Theatre and Dance in the Age of Louis XIV (1661-1715),” sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The special photography and research necessary for its preparation were carried out in situ at the invitation of M. Pierre Lemoine, Conservateur en Chef of the Château de Versailles. This visit was made possible by the encouragement of William Gudenrath, Robert Light, Donald Outerbridge, Gregory B. Smith and Miss Alice Tully. The foresight and generosity of these friends in 1981 formed the nucleus from which our present Helicon Network has grown and flourished.

The Helicon Foundation presented THE REIGN OF FAME at Symposium III, 16 March 1986, as the closing of our first season. We are happy to offer it again at the close of our Tenth Season.

THE REIGN OF FAME has also been presented: at the Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution to mark the twentieth anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination; at UCLA to open its first E. Nakamichi Baroque Festival; at the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, and for NYU’s French and Art Departments. Most recently, Mr. Fuller has been asked to present it for Oberlin College’s Historically Informed Performance Festival of the French Baroque, during this coming June.

Mark Golderman, artist/photographer, has created especially for this purpose the greater part of the images projected here. His photographs were conceived to reflect the emblematic and psychological context to the subject matter and to be propulsive, communicative art works in their own right.