Tea at Trianon: Allegorical Painting of Two Ladies wearing Beauty Patches (1650s)

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

Monday, January 3, 2022

Allegorical Painting of Two Ladies wearing Beauty Patches (1650s)

From ArtNet:

The work, Allegorical Painting of Two Ladies Wearing Beauty Patches, dated 1650s and attributed to the English School, depicts two women adorned in similarly opulent dress, hair, and jewelry. It is remarkable because it is highly unusual to find a portrait from the era depicting a Black subject, and even rarer that the subject was not a child in a position of subservience.

The painting has been valued at £272,800 ($362,000), according to a statement from Arts Council Engalnd’s department of digital, culture, media, and sport.

Because it depicts the two women as being of equal status, the portrait contributes to the historical conversation about how race and gender were perceived in the 17th century. It also has an allegorical dimension, as the women are depicted wearing beauty spots, a cosmetic fashion which is condemned as a sin of pride via an inscription above them. Galleries and institutions in the U.K. will have until March 9, 2022, to make a bid for the work.

If it does not find a buyer, it will could be sold abroad.

“I hope a gallery or museum in the U.K. can be found to buy this painting for the nation, so that many more people can be part of the continuing research and discussion into it,” arts minister Stephen Parkinson of Whitley Bay said in a statement.

The decision to put an export bar on the work followed advice from the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest. (Read more.)