Tea at Trianon: Where Marie Antoinette Was Born

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, August 11, 2019

Where Marie Antoinette Was Born

From Royal Central:

What of the room of her birth? Maria Theresia’s rooms at the Hofburg Palace were located in the so-called Leopoldnischer Trakt (Leopoldine Wing) which was built in the 1660s during the reign of Emperor Leopold I after whom the wing takes its name, although the dynasty had occupied the vast complex since the thirteenth century. Today, these rooms are part of the Austrian Chancellery of the Federal President and are therefore not open to the public, with the exception of Nationalfeiertag, on 26 October each year. The Leopoldine Wing connects the much older Swiss Wing – with its famous Swiss Gate – to the Amalienburg and directly faces the Imperial Chancellery. Originally constructed under the Swiss-Italian architect Filberto Lucchese, it was later enlarged by Giovanni Pietro Tencala.

Maria Theresia used these rooms in the Leopoldine Wing primarily during the winter, with the court spending summer at the imperial residences of Schönbrunn and Laxenburg, the former of which she had enlarged considerably under the direction of the Austro-Italian court architect Nicolo Pacassi. The old Favorita – today’s Theresianum – the aptly-named favourite residence of her father Emperor Charles VI, ceased to be used by the Imperial Family following the Emperor’s death. Laxenburg was essentially an imperial holiday home, which Marie Antoinette adored and would forever associate with her Austrian youth.

The Leopoldine Wing is entered by means of the Adlerstiege (Eagle’s Staircase) up to the first rooms of Maria Theresia’s suite, the Bellariazimmer. These contain portraits of the Imperial Family, including Emperor Leopold I – the Emperor of the eponymous Wing – and paintings of Emperor Leopold I’s first wife, Margarita Teresa of Spain and of the future Emperor Charles VI, Marie Antoinette’s maternal grandfather and son of Leopold I by his third wife, Eleonore Magdalene of Neuburg.

The second Bellariazimmer bears the strong imprint of Maria Theresia’s family and personality. Again there are portraits of the formidable Empress, her co-regent and eventual successor Joseph II, her husband, Francis Stephen – Holy Roman Emperor Francis I. Stephen since 1745 – and a further portrait of her mother, Empress Elisabeth Christine – together with two pastels by the Swiss-French painter Jean-Etienne Liotard, whose work she enthusiastically patronised. The Rosenzimmer (Rose Room) is so named after the supraporten – the oval oil paintings above the doors – which contain images of flowers. The Pietra Dura Room leads into the magnificent Spiegelsaal, or Mirror Room – which was where the courtiers gathered to await the news of the outcome of Maria Theresia’s labour with this, her fifteenth child. It was into this room that Francis Stephen emerged after the birth to announce the news of the birth of his baby daughter. (Read more.)