Tea at Trianon: Little-known Botticelli Fresco

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

Thursday, August 6, 2020

Little-known Botticelli Fresco

From Aleteia:

In the lower part of the fresco, Botticcelli features a symbolic encounter between the Old Law and the New, with a young man healed of leprosy by Jesus showing himself to the High Priest in front of the Temple as the elements of a purification sacrifice are presented. The priest may represent Moses and the young man Jesus, who sacrificed himself for our salvation. The overall message of the fresco is the triumph of Christ over the temptations of the devil. A frieze holds the inscription TEMPTATIO IESU CHRISTI LATORIS EVANGELICAE LEGIS (“The Temptations of Christ, Bringer of the Evangelic Law”). A companion fresco depicts three trials overcome by Moses, as part of the artistic tradition of paralleling Moses and Jesus. (Read more.)