Tea at Trianon: Flower Crowns

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

Sunday, June 4, 2023

Flower Crowns

Madame de Lamballe

From Reading Treasure:

"Surrounded outdoors by the untamed, natural beauty of the jardin anglais, and indoors by the charming floral woodwork that adorned the villa’s walls, the Trianon ladies’ “professed ambition was to resemble wildflowers.”

-Caroline Weber, Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution

Flower crowns were a hit long before filters and photo apps; they can be found in particular abundance in portraits and paintings of the 18th centuries. Allegorical portraits of women in as goddesses or mythological figures often feature flower crowns; but as the century wore on, they even became fashion statements in their own right.

In the late 1770s and early 1780s, Marie Antoinette herself adopted the fashion trend that incorporated the beauty of nature. Or rather, the beauty of carefully chosen fresh blooms to compliment the less court-like gowns worn by the Petit Trianon clique. As a fashion statement, flowers were a representation of natural beauty--as opposed to the man-made beauty of traditional courtly accessories--as well as innocence and youth. Crowns of flowers, rather than crowns of diamonds or gold, were the ultimate "natural" adornment for the discerning lady. (Read more.)