Tea at Trianon: The Dangerous Beauty of Jacques-Louis David

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, March 11, 2022

The Dangerous Beauty of Jacques-Louis David

David's "Tennis Court Oath" with a glimpse of lightening striking the Royal Chapel

David the regicide later glorified Napoleon at his coronation. From The New York Times:

You are young, you brim with ambition, you want to change the world; you are an artist. You’ve been admitted to your field’s most prestigious institute, and won the favor of the top collector in the land. But your country is plagued by social inequality and galloping inflation. Political crises cascade one atop the other. Is art enough, right now? Or should you turn your art into something else — something more engaged, more dogmatic, more like propaganda?
And when the world changes, then how far will you go? Perhaps all the way into the halls of power, where you will adopt a zeal no one foresaw. When your allies execute their foes, you’ll cheer them along. When they get murdered themselves, you’ll glorify them as martyrs. You’ll end up in prison, pleading for brushes and pencils, and re-emerge in a country eager to forget what you’ve done.
In 2022 our museums and streaming services deliver daily sales pitches of culture’s “power” and “relevance.” Our discourse boils art down to the dullest political messaging. It all sounds like children’s story hour in the shadow of Jacques-Louis David, the artist-moralist who depicted the French Revolution with lethal purity. In the 1780s, he eradicated the lightness and joy of the Rococo in stern history paintings drawn from classical examples. Then, when the Bastille fell, he channeled that Roman rectitude into images of current events, and right into political life.
We’re not talking about some creative soul who went to a protest or two. With David we are talking about the greatest artist of his generation, the most influential for the next, who was — in the original sense of the word — a terroriste. Friend and ally of Robespierre throughout the Reign of Terror, David sat in the revolutionary parliament and joined its most fearsome committees. He would both design the new republic and sign the death warrants of counterrevolutionaries real and perceived. (Cancel culture, forsooth.) In 1792, when the king’s fate came before the National Convention, Citizen David proudly cast his vote to send Louis XVI to the guillotine. (Read more.)