This panoramic view of Versailles from the south shows the Parterre du Midi in the centre of two monumental flights of steps. The parterre was designed for Louis XIV by André Le Nôtre (1613 – 1700) with six compartments of cut turf and a circular basin. This format – a panoramic scene taken from a high viewpoint – was commonly used for battle scenes, but was also particularly effective at capturing the extensive, symmetrical layout of the formal seventeenth-century garden.