urbane personality and spent much time with his wife at the French court, where he enjoyed the unusual distinction of being both a foreign head of state and a peer of France. Impressed by the palaces of the French king, who had employed the architect Jean du Cerceau to carry out alterations to the palace at Fontainebleau, Louis I used Fontainebleau as the inspiration for enhancements to his palace at Monaco. Thus he was responsible for two of the palace's most notable features: the entrance—a huge Baroque arch surmounted by a broken pediment bearing the Grimaldi Arms (Illustration 10)—and more memorable still, a double horseshoe staircase modelled on that at Fontainebleau. The thirty steps which compose the staircase are said to have been sculpted from a single block of Carrara marble. Both the architrave of the new entrance and the horseshoe stairs were designed by Antoine Grigho, an architect from Como. A prince noted for the permissiveness of his private life, Louis I's prodigality was notorious. While visiting England in 1677 he incurred the ire of King Charles II by showering expensive gifts on Hortense Mancini, the king's mistress. The English and Prince Louis later became political enemies when Louis took part in the Anglo-Dutch Wars against England, leading his own Monaco Cavalry into battles in Flanders and Franche-Comté. These acts earned Louis the gratitude of Louis XIV who made him ambassador to the Holy See, charged with securing the Spanish Succession. However, the cost of upholding his position at the papal court caused him to sell most of his grandfather Honoré II's art collection, denuding the palace he had earlier so spectacularly enhanced. Louis died before securing the Spanish throne for France, an act which would have earned the Grimaldi huge rewards. Instead Europe was immediately plunged into turmoil as the War of the Spanish Succession began. In 1701, Prince Antoine succeeded Louis I and inherited an almost bankrupt Monaco, though he did further embellish the Royal Room. On its ceiling, Gregorio de Ferrari and Alexandre Haffner depicted a figure of Fame surrounded by lunettes illustrating the four seasons. Antoine's marriage to Marie of Lorraine was unhappy and yielded only two daughters. Monaco's constitution confined the throne to members of the Grimaldi family alone, and Antoine was thus keen for his daughter Princess Louise-Hippolyte (Illustration 11) to wed a Grimaldi cousin. However, the state of the Grimaldi fortunes, and