Tea at Trianon: The Drama is in the Details

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, January 23, 2021

The Drama is in the Details

From The Washington Post:

Giovanni Bellini’s “St. Francis in the Desert” is regarded by many as the most beautiful painting in America. I’m with the many — although I reserve the right to nominate another painting if asked the same question tomorrow. It hangs in the Frick Collection in New York. Just look at the thing!
The painting’s protagonist — an oddly stiff Harry Dean Stanton look-alike — is St. Francis, who died in Assisi, Italy, in 1226. Two-hundred-and-fifty years later, Bellini depicted him in a state of ecstatic transport, his arms open to receive an indefinable radiance that all but overwhelms him.
Born in the late 12th century, Francis was the son of a wealthy silk merchant and a noblewoman from Provence. Like Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, Francis was a handsome, intelligent young man who renounced a life of privilege to preach a doctrine of poverty, good works and spiritual attunement. He cherished the natural world and identified deeply with Jesus. (Read more.)

More HERE.