Latona, the legendary mother of Apollo and Diana, fit the bill perfectly; she once turned a group of peasants into frogs when they tried to stop her drinking from a pond. Thus, the basin at Versailles was studded with lead-cast frogs and turtles, and the magnificent Latona and Her Children, installed in 1670, rose above them, facing the Palace, by then the grandest in all of Europe.

Later, she was elevated onto a marble pyramid, and placed with her back to the palace, facing the horizon, where she would gaze for the next three centuries.

It's a long time to wait for a real summer holiday. Versailles may be one of the world's most popular tourist destinations, with around 7 million visitors a year, but spare a thought for poor old Latona, who is finally getting the holiday she deserves; she'll be spending a southern summer in the air-conditioned confines of the National Gallery of Australia. And she's coming here on a plane, no less, all 1.5 tonnes of her.

For Adam Worrall, the gallery's assistant director in charge of exhibitions, Latona has become something of a beautiful dilemma – a silent, imposing diva who will be the star of a very big show, and is taking a great deal of effort to get here.

"She's about 2.2 metres tall but she's 1.5 tonnes worth of marble, so she is a massive logistic challenge, getting her out of France for the first time ever and bringing her to Australia," he says.

Fortunately, like many of ornaments in Versailles' vast gardens, Latona has been off display in recent times and replaced with a replica – a chance to send her across the world for a spell to be gazed on by different eyes. Securing her journey here was, says Worrall, something of a coup. Versailles – the modern museum version – has been progressively opening up new rooms to the public, and sending objects out for display. But never, it seems, quite to this extent.

When museum president Catherine Pegard and its chief curator, Beatrix Saule, were in Canberra in July for the official announcement of the exhibition, negotiations were still underway as to what, exactly, Canberra would be getting. Massive paintings, delicate furnishings, priceless carpets – all confirmed. The NGA, after all, is known for its high-quality shows and ability to deal with logistics big and small. Australia is, more often the not, the furthest any painting or object ever has to travel in its lifetime, but where there's a will – and a team of experienced curators – there's a way.

But even Worrall was taken aback by how much Versailles was willing to relinquish, if only for a short time. Case in point: when NGA director Gerard Vaughan finally got around to requesting, at the last minute, one of the ornate gold-and-crystal candelabras that line the famous Hall of Mirrors, Worrall was doubtful the answer would be yes.

"Beatrix said, 'Non, non, non', and I thought okay, that didn't go very well," Worrall says. But when Saule turned to a colleague and began speaking rapidly in French to her, he slowly understood that she was talking about the importance of symmetry throughout the palace.

"She was saying the symmetry in Versailles is so important that you could never take out one, we'd have to take out two," he says.

So, two candelabras will go on display in Canberra – another dilemma for Worrall to sort out on his last visit to Paris.

"I was there trying to work out how they come apart, how we'd packed them, how we'll get them here. I think we've got all that sorted now," he says. (For the record, the 3.5 metre candelabras do come apart, with the chandelier crystals all packed separately.)

Equally challenging has been the 9-by-5-metre Savonnerie carpet that required the removal of several walls in the NGA's exhibition space, to give a sense of the scale of the palace, with six-metre tapestries on either end of the room. And let's not get started on the monumental 1756 portrait of the Sourches family, painted by Francois-Hubert Drouais and requiring one of the world's largest freight planes to carry it across to Australia.

"This is the biggest painting you can bring to Australia without taking it off its stretcher and rolling it up," Worrall says, adding that there are just 3cm to spare corner to corner on the plan. The frame won't fit in the aircraft, so it's being left behind and a mock version being constructed here," he says.

Versailles curators have long contemplated lending the work – lush, arresting, incredibly detailed – but no museum has yet taken on the challenge of moving it from one institution to another. Leave it to the NGA to accept the mission.

"We've worked really hard with the freight agents and their conservators to actually get it to Australia," Worrall says. "One of our conservators has been to Versailles and worked with their conservators to line the back of the painting, so when it's laying on 45 degrees it doesn't vibrate when it travels."

Once on the walls and artfully lit, the Sourches, positioned "casually", with each family member, even the children, holding a musical instrument, will sing every bit as much as they did in their contemporary surrounds. Ditto Latona, who will be displayed in a room all to herself, surrounded by a high-tech multi-media projection and soundscape.

"We didn't want to bring her as an art object, put her in a room and say, 'Look how beautiful she is'. We actually wanted you to understand what her life has been at Versailles," he says.

"If we do our job properly, you'll actually get a sense of standing at the Versailles fountain, looking at the sculpture. If we get it right, it's definitely going to be the highlight of the show."

Orchestral music from the day – Louis XIV had his own composer and full orchestra on hand at all times - will also be piped through many of the rooms, and the gallery has even commissioned an actual French perfumer to create a scent to incorporate into the show, to "contribute to the immersive exhibition experience".

In this, and many other respects, the exhibition will have nothing to do with the Versailles of today. The last time Worrall and his team visited the museum, it was a Monday and, like many European museums, the palace was closed to the public. It was, he says, quite blissful to be able to peruse the rooms in relative solitude. Most of the time, and especially in summer, the museum is filled with people, filing along the narrow corridors on the edge of the rooms and glancing, on their way, into the roped off doorways of vast, treasure-filled apartments. Most paintings and objects can only be glimpsed from a distance before one is swept along with the crowd.

Vaughan, a self-confessed Versailles buff, is at pains to reiterate that the show is about the palace itself – the hothouse atmosphere of "one big unending house party" that lasted for more than a century. In its heyday, close on 3000 aristocrats, courtesans, government ministers and servants lived there at any given time, all vying for an audience with – or even a sidelong glance from – the king himself. With 700 rooms (and more than 2000 windows, 1250 chimneys and 67 staircases), the numbers could swell to 20,000 when there was a party. All along, the main focus was on the phenomenon of Versailles - centre of civilisation, factory of good taste, purveyor of the very latest of fashions. And not just Marie-Antoinette's robes, but of music, art, furniture and architecture.

"Louis XIV and his successors took the view that the French monarchy would be absolutely and totally associated with the arts and the very best of contemporary art and contemporary practice," Vaughan says.

"We look on these things as ancient things, hundreds of years old - forget all that. When the palace was built, it was modern architecture, the most fashionable, up-to-date architecture, and we see a shift in French architectural style in the front of the palace to the back.

"Isn't that interesting, that as an absolute monarch, an association with the arts, and being seen as a person who promoted innovation in contemporary culture, was absolutely central to the way the kind saw himself and his role in society? Those were the days!"

Will the show be a success? Australian art audiences are notoriously fickle; witness the sleeper hit that was the Tom Roberts retrospective last summer, and the relatively disappointing number of visitors to the James Turrell spectacular the year before. Conventional wisdom and actual evidence would indicate that we're hooked on all things French, but will this extend to rococo gilding and crystal chandeliers?

Time will tell, but the prospect of spending a few tranquil moments in a room with La Latona, contemplating the things she has seen, could well be enough.