Tea at Trianon: Royal Treasures from the Louvre

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Royal Treasures from the Louvre

In San Francisco.

By the late 18th century, Paris was acknowledged as the cultural capital of the world, and royalty and the aristocracy developed an unprecedented taste for luxury and comfort. “They lived in smaller rooms and the objects produced for them were finely and intensely decorated because they were so close to the viewer,” says Chapman. Rather than living in public in grand state rooms, the king embraced a more private, less formal mode of entertaining, often without servants. Many of these objects were designed to be used by the owners themselves, such as the magnificent solid gold coffee grinder made for Madame de Pompadour, the famous mistress to Louis XV.

Louis XVI continued to support both the Sèvres porcelain factory and the Gobelins manufactory (which by this time produced tapestries exclusively)—among others—after his coronation in 1775. His queen, Marie-Antoinette, commissioned elaborate furniture and decorative objects for her tiny private apartments at Versailles, and also revived the princely tradition of collecting hard-stone vases. Guided by Enlightenment ideals, the king put parts of the royal collection on view to the public and also acquired the most important hard-stone vases and furniture of the day for the foundation of a new museum in the Louvre. Unfortunately, events overtook him before this project could be realized. Economic hardship, caused by years of bad harvests, foreign interventions, and resistance to reform, fomented unrest in France, and public opinion began to turn against the king and the royal family. This unrest eventually led to revolution and Louis XVI was executed in January of 1793. Just eight months later, the Louvre, now designated as a collection for the people of France, opened to the public. (Read entire post.)

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