Tea at Trianon: Château de Chantilly: The Private Apartments

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, January 24, 2021

Château de Chantilly: The Private Apartments

From The Connexion:

The Private Apartments (Petits Appartements) were the result of the first major construction work carried out at Chantilly by the young Duke of Aumale. Having just married his cousin, Maria Carolina Augusta of Bourbon–Two Sicilies, in Naples in November 1844, he ordered that renovations begin in early 1845.
The project was assigned to Eugène Lami, an interior decorator who also worked on the Palais des Tuileries, alongside architect Victor Dubois, who was quickly ousted, however. Lami and the duke came up with an interior in the latest fashion, full of references to the history of Chantilly while conducive to the installation of the ducal couple as the new owners of the premises.
These apartments, endowed with all modern conveniences, were placed in the only surviving part of the chateau, the ground floor of the Renaissance wing. The duchess’s apartments were done in a lavishly feminine, eighteenth-century revival spirit. The antechamber, with white and gold woodwork like those in the upstairs rooms of the princes of Condé, combined Louis XV and Louis XVI styles.
Called the Guise Salon (Salon de Guise), it is named after the title of the duke and duchess’s younger son. The lavish furniture, mostly made by the Grohé brothers (as elsewhere in the apartments), was done in the same spirit.
The bedroom next door is impressively theatrical – the duchess’s monogram can be seen on the bedhead and fireplace mirror, as well as on a garland held by two parakeets painted on the ceiling by Narcisse Diaz. The room is dominated by a superb canopy bed reflecting the taste in fabrics of the day, accompanied by rosewood furniture and Louis XV style chairs that were given padded upholstery by Victor Cruchet. (Read more.)