Tea at Trianon: Lost 2,000-Year-Old Roman Mosaic Found on Park Avenue

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

Wednesday, January 19, 2022

Lost 2,000-Year-Old Roman Mosaic Found on Park Avenue

It once belonged to Caligula. From Bright:

A Roman mosaic dating back to Emperor Caligula had somehow, reportedly, found its way into an art dealer’s Park Avenue apartment, where for the last 45 years it held up cups of coffee for her and her guests. For decades, Helen Fioratti—so the story goes—owned the opulent, colored-stone piece after it went missing from a Nemi museum in Italy. Roman architect Dario Del Bufalo, 63, who specializes in the study of ancient stone queries, had only a photo from the 1950s depicting the mosaic to publish in his book on porphyry. But he explained how an unlikely encounter at a Bulgari store on Fifth Avenue led to the mosaic’s rediscovery.
In 2015, Del Bufalo was lecturing and signing copies of his book at the luxury jewelry store when he overheard a woman commenting on the aforementioned photo while flipping through his book. “A couple of guys and an old lady came by and started moving the pages,” Del Bufalo told The Epoch Times. “At one point, they said, ‘Oh, look! This is your mosaic.’ And the lady said, ‘Yes, that’s my mosaic.’”

Seizing the opportunity, he caught up with one of the fellas who divulged that the woman’s name is “Helen,” that for decades she’d been using the ancient Roman floor piece as a coffee table in her apartment, and her building was 555 Park Avenue.

Given the mosaic’s prime importance in the Museum of the Roman Ships in Nemi, Del Bufalo, accompanied by a lawyer from the DA’s office on behalf of the Italian government, paid the art dealer and gallery owner a visit in hopes of retrieving the lost artifact. (Read more.)