Tea at Trianon: King Henry VII Reconstructed from Death Mask

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, June 6, 2020

King Henry VII Reconstructed from Death Mask

From Ancient Origins:

An Irish artist has brought King Henry VII of England back to life in a high-tech historical photography project. Looking deeply into the photo-realistic eyes of the famous English king, the observer’s mind is free to wander into the historical world of the legendary warrior-king, who with what is recorded as an “embarrassingly slender” claim to the throne, took it by sheer force and determination and went on to change the entire socio-political landscape of England.

One of the most turbulent, therefore the most dramatized, periods of English history was during the Tudor monarchy of the late 15 th and 16 th centuries, and perhaps most remembered are figures such as Elizabeth and Henry VIII , not to mention his harem of wives, but less talked about is the founder of the dynasty, his father, Henry Tudor, who became King Henry VII of England.

As a 14-year-old boy, Henry became the strongest Lancastrian claimant to the English throne, even though Historians say his claim was exceptionally weak, and as such he fled England to the relative safety of Burgundy in France. During his time in exile, the Wars of the Roses raged in England between supporters of the child king to be, and armies of the Yorkist Edward IV . (Read more.)