Tea at Trianon: The Discovery of Greek Art in France

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

Friday, December 10, 2021

The Discovery of Greek Art in France

From Culturez-vous:

The exhibition adopts a chronological approach and begins in 1675 when the Marquis de Nointel, ambassador of Louis XIV, goes to Constantinople. On his way, he passed through Athens and brought back antiquities that joined the royal collections and allowed the discovery of this art in France. A century later, the Count of Choiseul Gouffier, ambassador of Louis XVI “to the Sublime Porte” – that is Constantinople – became one of the first philhellenes (friends of Greece) to defend its independence. He carried out the first excavations of the Acropolis and obtained on this occasion the authorization to make casts of the sculptures of the Parthenon but also to bring back some fragments which will be discovered in France for the first time. He also brought back from his trip an important book of observation, “Le Voyage pittoresque de la Grèce”. Without knowing it, these diplomats realized a first step in the birth of archaeology. They allow us to discover, through their testimony and the collections they brought back, the cultural diversity of Greece at that time. (Read more.)