How French absolutism powered a techno-progressive revolution

The Enlightenment is back. Despite the best efforts of the past decade of handwringing about cultural imperialism and wailing over machismo, money and majesty, the future keeps crashing in. The Science Museum has now laid its cards on the table with Versailles: Science and Splendour. Think gilt, not guilt.

Is there anything in our lives that could compare to witnessing the first successfully grown pineapple?

It’s marvellous, and unusual these days, to visit an exhibition and feel the colossal force of history without anyone bashing you over the head with infantile morality tales. Expanding on a 2010 display at the Palace itself, lead curator Anna Ferrari ought to be saluted for this unabashed celebration of genius – perhaps with a three-hour firework display. Hopefully it’s a sign that museums and galleries are becoming less embarrassed by their collections and might re-embrace brilliance instead.

The alliance between the ultra-rich and genius is a deep one – and it’s easy to be on the right side of history if you make it. Versailles covers the reigns of the Sun King Louis XIV (r.1643-1715), his great-grandson Louis XV (r.1715-1774) and his grandson Louis XVI (r.1774-1792). While Louis XVI ultimately succumbed to the bloody technical progress of Monsieur Guillotin’s most infamous invention, the 150 years that preceded the founding of the Republic were exceptionally exciting and beautiful in equal measure.

Seeking to extend France’s glorious reign on the advice of his chief minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV gathered the greatest astronomical, engineering, mathematical, medical and architectural minds of Europe – among them, the Italian Giovanni Cassini, the Dutchman Christiaan Huygens (invited to run the new Academy of Sciences in 1666) and designer of the new Paris Observatory Claude Perrault – and let them experiment, invent and explore to their hearts’ content.