Tea at Trianon: San Marco in Florence

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

Saturday, February 16, 2019

San Marco in Florence

From Aleteia:

In 1436, when Fra Angelico moved to the newly constructed convent of San Marco in Florence, he was commissioned by the convent’s patron, the rich and powerful Cosimo de’ Medici (who had his own cell as a personal retreat), to decorate the new place of worship and living space for the friars. His famous and often reproduced works, the San Marco altarpieceand The Annunciation, which grace the convent’s public rooms, were much admired and earned him commissions from the Vatican.

Some of his most beautiful works of art, however, were never meant to be seen by the public. Fra Angelico painted frescoes in the cells of the convent, for his fellow friars who, in their seclusion, used them as aids to prayer and meditation. Art historians have discovered his hand in at least 20 cells in the convent frescoes, including the particularly notable depictions of the Resurrection, the Coronation of the Virgin, and the Annunciation. (Read more.)