Tea at Trianon: More on the Art Collection of Charles I and Henrietta Maria

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

Tuesday, May 21, 2019

More on the Art Collection of Charles I and Henrietta Maria

Henrietta Maria of France

From Vogue:

Thusly spurned by the Spanish infanta, Charles subsequently chose 14-year-old Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henry IV of France and his taste-making Florentine wife Marie de’ Medici (and sister to Louis XIII), as his queen. Henrietta Maria promised her godfather, Pope Urban VIII, that she would bring up her children as Catholics, unwittingly sowing the seeds for the rise of Oliver Cromwell, the fall of the monarchy, and the execution of her husband. Problematic as her influence on the British throne would ultimately prove, Queen Henrietta Maria’s reign was at least possessed of refined taste. Through her godfather and his connections to the great artists of Rome, she introduced the work of some Italian Baroque stars to Britain’s court, bringing artists such as Orazio Gentileschi to work in London and smoothing the way for the commission of a portrait bust of her husband by Bernini. A disgruntled Bernini worked not from life, as he would have liked, but from a remarkable triple portrait of the king by the new star of the moment, Anthony van Dyck. Although this picture was intended merely as a model from which Bernini would work, it is evident that van Dyck was using the commission as an opportunity to showcase his virtuosity to the iconic sculptor, and perhaps attract the attention of potential continental clients. (Read more.)