Tea at Trianon: Old Mistresses: Royal Influencers

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, October 4, 2020

Old Mistresses: Royal Influencers

The article describes Marie-Antoinette as having a "career" but of course what we see as a "career" was completely unthinkable for a Queen of France. Marie-Antoinette saw her queenship as a vocation, meaning a call from God, and part of her marriage vows to Louis XVI, an anointed monarch. Also, just to clarify, her youngest daughter Madame Sophie died at eleven months old in June of 1797. From Mutual Art:

Vigée Le Brun has many well-known pieces, most of which are in relation to French royalty. After marrying Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Le Brun in 1776, who was a painter and art dealer with familial ties to the Académie Royale and Louis XIV, she was able to make connections of her own. As she gained a reputation for painting her subjects in a highly flattering way, she soon caught the attention of Marie Antoinette, who quickly became one of Vigée Le Brun’s main customers. While she painted over 30 portraits of the Queen and her family, some were more notable than others. Her painting Marie-Antoinette in a Chemise Dress showed the Queen in a beautiful but informal muslin chemise, shocking all of France. It was seen as so inelegant that it was promptly removed from the Salon and replaced by a similar painting, this time with the Queen in a classier silk gown.
As Marie Antoinette and Vigée Le Brun got closer, they began to help each other’s careers. Previously, the Académie Royale had denied Vigée Le Brun’s application because her husband was an art dealer, which was against the rules. Marie Antoinette decided to ask her husband, Louis XVI, to overturn this rule, which led to Vigée Le Brun’s acceptance in 1783, giving her one of the four spots available to women. A few years later, after becoming the first woman to reach the rank of painter to the king, Vigée Le Brun was tasked with influencing the public’s perception of the Queen, showing her as a maternal figure who experienced similar struggles to lower-class women. In the painting, she is shown holding her children and sitting alongside an empty bassinette, alluding to her fourth child who was born prematurely and died shortly thereafter. (Read more.)