Tea at Trianon: Marie-Antoinette's Ceiling

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, January 22, 2014

Marie-Antoinette's Ceiling

The ceiling in the Queen's bedroom at Versailles. (Via Louis XX.) Share

2 comments:

The North Coast said...: The wealth of fine, dense details in beautiful old buildings overwhelms me. I can imagine staring at that ceiling might make it easier to relax on a sleepless night, or during a boring conversation.

Modern architecture killed the old crafts that went into something like this. Many a lovely mansion remains in our old cities, especially, such as stupefying ceiling frescoes that look like the work of the ancient masters, but after WW1, the crafts began to die as modern architecture eliminated the exquisite stonework, plasterwork, fine carpentry, and other crafts. A story comes down about how a busload of Italian stone masons- they are the most skilled in the world- shook their fists at a flat-roof, unadorned modern building going up in NYC in the late 30s.; January 22, 2014 at 7:53:00 PM EST
elena maria vidal said...: Thank you for your thoughts, NC, which are better than anything I could put into words!; January 22, 2014 at 8:06:00 PM EST