Tea at Trianon: A Cozy Milan Flat

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, October 28, 2021

A Cozy Milan Flat

From Architectural Digest:

On bringing a bit of England to Italy, Hicks points out that “the English have been learning from Italians for centuries, since Henry VIII started using Italian artists for his palaces. In this case, I wanted to give Martina a contemporary version of her childhood home by the great Renzo Mongiardino, albeit with my own paltry skills and my own paintbrush in place of his army of craftsmen. Where his walls used panels of faux scagliola inspired by a Milanese altar, I chose an old Persian design, woven in silk for Ottoman caftans in 1490, which I stenciled onto the walls, sponging and painting highlights and shadows to give them the look of Moroccan carved plaster.” Indeed, Mongiardino’s spirit is everywhere here, perhaps most intimately in the form of Cosima’s twin beds, taken from Mondadori’s mother’s childhood home in Pordenone, outside Venice. (Read more.)