Versailles, France - With an artist's aplomb, Daniel Evangelista gold-leafed a door as Sebastien Forst fussed over the patina on the onyx and marble, giving the final touches to the biggest restorative overhaul ever of Versailles' celebrated Hall of Mirrors.
More than 300 years after its completion in 1684, the newly-revamped jewel in the crown of the Chateau de Versailles will be unveiled to the public on Wednesday after four years of labour by a squad of architects, art historians, carpenters and, above all, specialist arts craftsmen.
"We have restored its youth, brightened its marbles, rediscovered its hues," Frederic Didier, chief architect of France's historic monuments, told AFP. "Visitors will have a better idea now of what this festive place was really like."
To the tune of &uero;12-million (about R116-million) provided by French construction and services giant Vinci, the programme included a year of detailed historical study followed by three of dusting down, stripping and renovating "from the ground to the ceiling", Didier said, "the most extensive renovation ever."
Toured by more than 10 000 people a day on average, the richly-decorated hall facing out onto the Chateau de Versailles' grandly geometric gardens was once a terrace before being turned into a gallery to the glory of Sun King Louis XIV.
The vast brightly-lit hall, whose 73-metre length is flanked by tall windows on one side and 357 mirrors on the other, initially served for galas, or as a place to hang out in hopes of seeing the king.
"Hundreds of people, perhaps 1 000, would crowd together there to see Louis XIV go by on his way to chapel," Versailles director Pierre Arizzoli-Clementel told AFP. "Anyone could go, you just had to be properly dressed."
Shortly before dying, Louis XIV donned a gown embroidered with all the crown diamonds to meet the Persian ambassador there. Witnesses recount he was bent over by the weight.
And history has it that during a fancy-dress ball in the hall, his successor Louis XV, turned out as a tree, met his powerful mistress-to-be Mme de Pompadour, disguised as "a beautiful gardener."
The past has seen multiple restorations, as well as revolutionary looting, of the gallery built by architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart, and of the painted ceilings depicting the big moments in the Sun King's early years of reign - by Charles Le Brun, chief painter to the king.
Cleaning of the canvases by Didier's team of artist-workers quickly revealed scenes and characters painted over by earlier restorations as well as the original flashy blue hues used by Le Brun - a highly precious lapis-lazuli pigment unaffected by time.
Around 80 percent of the canvases had been over-painted during the centuries. "Today we have the original Le Brun," Didier said.
And were the mercury mirrors, Didier's specialists wondered, really produced in France as ordered by a king anxious to compete with suppliers at the time from Venice? Scientific analysis proved they were, underlining the technical prowess of the country's mirror-makers then.
Scratching away at layers of paint, the restorers also discovered that the windows and arcades originally had been gold-leafed. So grey paint was replaced by buckets of leaf - work done by hand.
"I think we have re-expressed, as well as we could, the work by Mansart and Le Brun, and have done it justice," Didier said. "The three-year restoration was the same time it took Le Brun to paint the ceilings."
Originally furnished in solid silver before Louis XIV had the metal melted down to finance war, the Hall of Mirrors had its great moments in history.
In the 19th century, it was the scene of a meeting between Napoleon and Queen Victoria, while in the next century, President Charles de Gaulle hosted a dinner in the Hall of Mirrors for the Kennedys.
"Jackie Kennedy wore a dress by Givenchy embroidered in red, white and blue flowers," Arizzoli-Clementel said.
But perhaps the Hall of Mirrors will best be remembered by the history books as the venue for the signing of the 1919 treaty that ended World War I.