"We have a strong suspicion that a drawing we did was the basis of the restoration, " Zega says, laughing.
"I believe that the architects probably gave them to these ambassadors because otherwise they would have been destroyed, " notes Zega.
Zega and Dams began the process of illustrating Versailles and its satellite buildings--including Marly and the Trianon--in multiple stages of development.
Zega and Dams' watercolors are composed of hundreds of such discoveries, alive with exacting details as sharp as the facets of a gemstone.
For this reason, publication has become as important to Zega and Dams as their frequent exhibitions at Galerie de Bayser in Paris and Didier Aaron in Manhattan.
Versailles chief architect Fr??d??ric Didier's preface--in which he praises the resuscitation of "subtleties that one believed forever lost"--attests to the seriousness underlying Zega and Dams' light touch: This project represents a definitive architectural record of Versailles.
The look can be disconcerting to some viewers, Zega admits, but their work depends on it, whether they're excavating the architectural history of Versailles or, as in another concurrent project, the lost buildings of Central Park.
From these plans, as well as extensive inventories of construction materials carefully preserved by the French court to reflect the magnificence of the finished palace, Zega and Dams were able to trace the peculiar rise of Versailles.
In their early research, Zega and Dams learned of two Swedish envoys to the court of Louis XIV, both keenly interested in architecture, who had acquired plans by the Versailles architects, including Louis Le Vau and Charles Le Brun.
" New plans were drawn up in the fall of 1669, and by 1671 construction was complete, resulting in the palace that Colbert declared "monstrous, but a well-arranged monster, " and which was destined to become, in Zega's words, "a pillar of French civilization.
These he transferred in light pencil onto large sheets of Arches 300-pound hot-press paper, some of them as much as six feet in length, at which point Zega set to work painting the reconstructed edifices in intense watercolor hues, taking as long as a month on each.
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