Tea at Trianon: The Marie Louise Diadem

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

Sunday, February 13, 2022

The Marie Louise Diadem

Worn by Napoleon's second wife. I personally think he had a fantasy about marrying Marie-Antoinette and so he came as close to it as possible. From Smithsonian:

“The Marie Louise diadem is one of the few spectacular jewelry pieces that survived that era. It represents that period of time in history, showcasing the symbolism and role gems played back in the early 1800s,” said Jeffrey Post, mineralogist and curator-in-charge of gems and minerals at the museum. “But the turquoise pieces were actually latecomers to the diadem.”

During the 1950s, jewelers replaced the diadem’s original emeralds with 540 carats of Persian turquoise, turning it into the piece now on display in the museum’s Janet Annenberg Hooker Hall of Geology, Gems and Minerals.

“The gems in these jewelry pieces change over time and those changes become part of their story. Generations of people have seen this diadem with the turquoise, and that’s its own story now,” said Post. (Read more.)