Tea at Trianon: The Farnese Blue

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, March 28, 2018

The Farnese Blue

Archduchess Maria Anna of Austria, Princess of Bourbon-Parma and the Farnese Blue

Marie-Thérèse de France

From The Antiques Trade Gazette:

The 6.16 carat pear-shaped fancy dark grey-blue diamond, known as The Farnese Blue has passed down through the Dukes of Parma. Kept secretly in a casket, as its owners negotiated the War of the Spanish succession and the fall of the Habsburg empire, few knew of its existence. It will be offered in Sotheby’s sale of Magnificent Jewels and Noble Jewels in Geneva on May 15 with an estimate of SFr3.5-5m.

Originating in the Golconda diamond mines of India, the stone was originally given to Elisabeth Farnese, the queen of Spain, following her wedding to King Philip V of Spain in Parma in 1714. It then passed through four European royal dynasties - its full history of ownership detailed in an inventory of the family jewels compiled by Maria Anna von Habsburg (1882-1940), Archduchess of Austria. For much of its life it was mounted on a diamond diadem which had belonged Marie-Thérèse de France (1778-1851), the first child of Louis XVI (1754-1793) and Marie-Antoinette (1755-1793) and the only one of their children to survive the French Revolution. (Read more.)

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