Tea at Trianon: Portrait of Renaissance Queen Catherine de’ Medici to Go on View

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, June 5, 2021

Portrait of Renaissance Queen Catherine de’ Medici to Go on View

From Smithsonian:

Last week, officials revealed that the sumptuous image has been returned to Walpole’s former home and museum at Strawberry Hill House, a medieval-style castle in west London. Now, after nearly two centuries in private hands, this historic painting is set to go on public display. Per a statement, visitors will be able to examine the work up close when Strawberry Hill reopens on May 17.

The portrait’s anonymous owners returned the work to its former home in lieu of paying £1 million in taxes. As Claire Selvin reports for ARTNews, this program allows families to pay off some or all of their inheritance taxes by transferring heritage objects into the public domain.
As the museum notes in the statement, Walpole was a history fanatic obsessed with the Tudors, the Medicis, the House of Valois and other prominent European families. Experts don’t know exactly how this French portrait arrived in England, but records reflect that Walpole purchased it in 1742 “from a Mr. Byde Herfordshire.” The monumental work cost Walpole £25—a “sizable sum” for the time period, as Dalya Alberge observes for the Guardian. (Adjusted for inflation, this sale price equates to almost $6,000 today.)

Walpole had once considered writing a history of the Medici family—even preparing initial research for the project in 1759—but eventually dropped the project due to a lack of archival material. According to the Art Newspaper, he decorated his eccentric mansion with fireplaces, bookcases, Gothic carved ceilings and other fantastical elements inspired by the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. (An avid collector, Walpole even dedicated an entire room of the house to his trove of Tudor artifacts, per the statement.) (Read more.)