Tea at Trianon: Santa Maria Novella Lunettes

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

Tuesday, March 9, 2021

Santa Maria Novella Lunettes

From The Florentine:

The grand cloister of Santa Maria Novella was built between 1340 and 1360. At the time, it was the largest cloister in Florence. From 1562 to 1592, the architect Giulio Parigi received a commission from Eleanor of Toledo, the wife of Cosimo I de’ Medici, to fresco the cloister, calling on artists such as Bernardino Poccetti, Santi di Tito, Ludovico Cigoli and Alessandro Allori. In the eighteenth century, the stone elements were moved around in the cloister and some of the empty lunettes were painted. The fresco cycle, which consists of 52 lunettes, is considered to be one of the most typical examples of counter-reformation painting due to its scope, iconography and clear storytelling, which focuses on the life of St. Dominic and other Dominican saints. In 1920, the cloister belonged to the Carabinieri marshal and brigadier training college. In 2016, it became part of the Santa Maria Novella Museum. (Read more.)