Tea at Trianon: Treasures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

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, January 3, 2016

Treasures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

From The New York Times:

The Crown of the Andes, as the Met’s new acquisition is known, might easily have graced any of those regal heads. Instead, it was created for a statue of the Virgin Mary — with emeralds seized from the Inca ruler Atahualpa, lore has it, and instructions that it go above and beyond earthly splendor. Made in what is now Colombia, in a region rich from gold and emerald mining, the crown sat in the cathedral at Popayán. Its diadem was created around 1660; its arches were added around 1770. One theory is that the crown was an offering of gratitude because Popayán had been spared during a 1590s smallpox epidemic

Officially named the Crown of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, the piece was originally used during Holy Week celebrations. The Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception safeguarded it until 1914, when Pope Pius X granted permission for its sale. American investors bought it, and it entered the United States in 1936. It was taken out of storage only for momentous occasions like the introduction of new Chevrolets in 1937 and the New York World’s Fair in 1939

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“It really is extraordinary for its rarity and its richness,” said Ronda Kasl, a curator of colonial Latin American art at the Met. “It’s the kind of object that expresses the spiritual values of the culture.” (Read more.)