We all know that Louis XIV, XV and XVI took lavish lifestyles to new heights in the 17th and 18th centuries before the last of the trio came to an unfortunate end in the French Revolution.

This commode, from the Louis XV period, is at The Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

Think Versailles, The Petit Trianon, Château de Montreuil. Elegant exteriors, beyond-opulent interiors.

And much of the furniture and decorative arts inside some of those estates can be found at the Getty Museum here in Los Angeles.

That’s why one of the favorite tours I give at the Getty I call my “Louis-Louis Tour.” Even though there are, of course, three of them, I’m invoking the hit 1963 song “Louie Louie.”

I invite you to my next “Louis-Louis” tour, but wanted to give you some of the colorful anecdotes behind these splendors of the French past:

• Never Upstage the Sun King: Louis XIV used the same designers for Versailles that his finance minister, Nicolas Fouquet, used for his country estate – but not before throwing Fouquet in the Bastille for upstaging the Sun King.

When Fouquet’s Baroque country estate Vaux-le-Vicomte was finished, Fouquet threw a huge party and invited Louis XIV. To illustrate the lavishness of this party, the dramatist Molière put on a play. He stood forward on the slope and pretended no actors or props were to be used. Thereupon, the garden ornaments began to move and lovely young men and women turned out to be waiting to perform.  Fireworks went off across the sky, and a model whale came drifting up the canal. 

Louis was so upset over the lavishness of the estate and being upstaged he had Fouquet thrown in the Bastille a month later on trumped-up charges of embezzlement. But he later used Fouquet’s designers for Versailles.

This Neoclassical bed from the Louis XVI era can also be found at The Getty.

• Pompadour & Circumstance: Madame du Pompadour, the official mistress of Louis XV, was the biggest influence on the period of the Rococo. She was a tastemaker extraordinaire in matters of art and culture.  She did not waste her position, and she used her power to commission the most daring and brilliant artists, architects and writers of the day. She was a very intelligent woman who left a substantial library at her death and sponsored such advanced writers as Voltaire.  Her intimate relationship with Louis XV lasted only about five years, yet they remained friends and she remained his close advisor.

In the decorative arts, Madame de Pompadour had a preference for porcelain and her collection would have furnished a fine museum.  She owned historic examples of Chinese wares as well as European porcelains.

The inventory taken after her death gives an idea of the sheer quantity of her possessions.  The inventory took more than a year to compile, and it consisted of diamonds and jewelry, seven sets of embroidery tools (one of solid gold), paintings, sculpture, wine, horses, saddlery, kitchen equipment, furniture, an enormous collection of textiles and embroideries, and packets of Chinese and Japanese painted papers for screens and shutters. 

• Louis XVI’s Two Left Feet: During Louis XVI’s reign, the corners of the furniture began to take on a rounded shape because the king was a clumsy fellow and kept injuring himself on the squared corners of furniture.

• Let Them Eat Cake – But Only if Invited: Marie Antoinette would come to the Petit Trianon not only to escape the formality of court life, but also to shake off the burden of her royal responsibilities. All was “de par la Reine” (by order of the Queen), and none were permitted to enter the property without the Queen’s express permission (not even, it was said, Louis XVI). Such exclusivity alienated the court nobility since only the queen’s “inner circle” (including the Princess de Lamballe and Gabrielle de Polastron, duchesse de Polignac) were invited.

It is a house of intimacy and of pleasure, and the building was designed to require as little interaction between guests and servants as possible. To that end, there was a table in the salle à mangerthat was conceived to be mobile, mechanically lowered and raised through the floorboards so that the servants below could set places sight unseen. The tables were never built, but the delineation for the mechanical apparatus can still be seen from the foundation.