Tea at Trianon: Anne of Cleves?

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

Thursday, August 12, 2021

Anne of Cleves?

From ArtNews:

Experts may be one step closer to verifying the identity of a woman in a celebrated Hans Holbein portrait that is part of the British Royal Collection. Historians had previously thought that the work, painted sometime around 1540, depicted Henry VIII’s fifth wife, Catherine Howard. But, according to a report by the Guardian, the painting may represent a different one of his spouses—Anne of Cleves, the Tudor king’s fourth wife.

Research by the art historian Franny Moyle has revealed the similarities between the face of the woman depicted and other accounts of Anne of Cleves. Moyle has drawn connections between the woman shown in this miniature portrait to a 1539 portrait of Anne of Cleves in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. She also points to Holbein’s decision to put the portrait on the four of diamonds playing card as another possible indication that Anne of Cleves is indeed the subject of the work. (Read more.)