Tea at Trianon: Portraits of Les Enfants de France by Fredou

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

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Portraits of Les Enfants de France by Fredou

Louis-Auguste de France, the Duc de Berry, the future Louis XVI

Louis-Joseph de France, the Duc de Burgundy, elder brother of Louis XVI

From the Versailles website:

Between 1760 and 1762, Jean-Martial Fredou produced eleven portraits of the children of the Dauphin, the son of Louis XV and Marie-Josèphe de Saxe. The pastel portrait of the Duke of Burgundy, completed on 15 March 1760 and kept in the collections of the Palace of Versailles (INV.DESS 726), was the source for several other oil-painted versions produced by Fredou. One of them was given by the Dauphin to the Marquis de Sinety. In 1760, the latter had been appointed sub-governor for the Duke of Berry and, in 1762, sub-governor for the Count of Provence. The portrait of the Duke of Berry (future Louis XVI) was also drawn by Fredou as part of the 1760-1762 commission. The portrait, painted as a match to that of the Duke of Burgundy and also given to the Marquis of Sinety, is in all likelihood a variant of this still unknown drawing. The identical frames, which are probably the original ones, confirm that these two portraits were produced as a matching pair. (Read more.)

(Via Tiny-Librarian.) Share