Voltaire's Room, 39 portraits

During a group exhibition at the Château de Maisons-Laffitte, Anya Belyat-Giunta discovered that Voltaire had stayed there several times.

In 1723, the writer and philosopher even remained bedridden there for a long time, spending several days between life and death. The famous doctor Gervasi, who had just fought the plague in Gévaudan, inflicted many bloodlettings and purges on Voltaire, but above all, he made him ingest no less than two hundred pints of lemonade. Voltaire survived both the illness and the treatments. He left the castle, before learning later that the room he had occupied and where he had almost died had been devastated by a fire...

It took no less twists and turns and coincidences to pique Anya Belyat-Giunta's curiosity.

Stubbornly digging into the Voltaire vein, she learned that upon the philosopher's death at the age of eighty-four, his friend, the Marquis de Villette, had ordered his heart to be removed and placed in a gilded metal box filled with an alcoholic preparation.

On the box, an inscription: "Heart of Voltaire, died in Paris, May 30, 1778".

The casket was then transported to the Château de Ferney, which Voltaire had acquired in 1758 and where he had resided for twenty years before ending his life in the capital. The heart remained on display until the Revolution in the room known as "Voltaire's Heart Room," on the walls of which it is said that 41 portraits of Voltaire's friends watch over the memory of the great man...

Two engravings bear witness to these benevolent friendships, two engravings which are the starting point of Anya Belyat-Giunta's work, Chambre Voltaire, 39 portraits...