Tea at Trianon: Lost Portrait of Isabella Clara Eugenia, Infanta Of Spain

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, February 3, 2022

Lost Portrait of Isabella Clara Eugenia, Infanta Of Spain

She was the granddaughter of Henri II and Catherine de Medici and daughter of Philip II and Isabel of Valois. At one time her father had hoped to put her on the English throne. As ruler of the Netherlands the Infanta late in life gave refuge to her cousin Marie de' Medici, Dowager Queen of France. From ArtNet:

Art historian Christopher Wright has a track record of spotting unrecognized masterpieces from art history in other people’s collections. But his latest find comes a bit closer to home. It turns out, a portrait he picked up for just £65 back in 1970 may actually be an original work by the great 17th-century Flemish artist Anthony van Dyck.

Wright had always assumed that the portrait of Isabella Clara Eugenia, sovereign of the Spanish Netherlands from 1598 to 1621, was a mere copy. But when Colin Harrison, senior curator of European art at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, stopped by for a visit, he was immediately struck by the work’s quality, and told Wright it might be the real deal. The art historian decided to act on Harrison’s hunch and had the painting examined and restored at London’s Courtauld Institute of Art.
“The adroit skill leads us to tentatively propose that [it] can be attributed to Van Dyck’s workshop and that it was completed during his lifetime and under his supervision,” the Courtauld wrote in a report by Kendall Francis and Timothy McCall. Now, Wright believes that the real Van Dyck, lying under he nose for over 50 years, could be worth as much as £40,000 ($54,000). Wright has previously identified works including a George Stubbs portrait at Ferens Art Gallery in Hull. This latest unexpected discovery suggests that Wright should have taken the proverb “physician, heal thyself,” to heart.

“The syndrome is the cobbler’s children are the worst shod. So the art historian’s collection is the least looked at,” Wright told the Guardian. “It was dirty and had yellow varnish, but it was in decent condition. The whole thing looks absolutely magnificent now.” Van Dyck likely painted the work between 1628 and 1632, depicting the Eugenia in a nun’s habit, mourning the death of her husband, Archduke Albert VII of Austria, in 1621. (Read more.)