Tea at Trianon: Rose Symbolism Throughout Art History

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, June 1, 2021

Rose Symbolism Throughout Art History

Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, Marie Antoinette with a Rose , 1783

Marie-Antoinette, Queen of France

From Art and Object:

If one symbol represents love, power, royalty, beauty, sensuality, and mysticism–it is the rose. Also known as "the queen of flowers," the flower as we know it dates back to at least the oligocene epoch (about thirty-three to twenty-three million years ago). While much like camellia and azalea, it most certainly originated in the area that now corresponds to Southwest China, it has appeared across cultures since 3000 BCE. This slide show will focus on the prominence of roses in Western art from the first millennium BCE to the twenty-first century CE. (Read more.)