Tea at Trianon: Madame du Barry's Apartments Restored

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, November 3, 2022

Madame du Barry's Apartments Restored

And there is a Netflix show being filmed. From The Art Newspaper:

Over the past 18 months, and at a cost of €5m, the Parisian restoration specialists Ateliers Gohard—known for restoring the Statue of Liberty’s torch—have painstakingly renovated the 18th-century decor of Du Barry’s home by gradually stripping away layer upon layer of paint to reveal the colours the king’s mistress chose.

To complete the restoration, matching paints have been prepared to 18th-century formulations using natural pigments and then applied over a layer of rabbit-skin glue and chalk from the original quarries in neighbouring Meudon. Gilding has been burnished and missing gold leaf meticulously replaced. The apartment has also been refurnished with period pieces from the Versailles storerooms.

Du Barry was born in 1743 in Vaucouleurs, 300km east of Paris, with the name Jeanne Bécu. She was the illegitimate daughter of an impoverished seamstress and, after a convent education while working as a cook, sold trinkets on the streets of Paris as a teenager before entering the city’s society gaming rooms. In her 20s, she was manoeuvred into court circles, soon becoming King Louis’s maîtresse-en-titre, or chief royal mistress.

After first meeting the king, a marriage was hurriedly arranged with Guillaume du Barry, a Gascon country squire with a dubious title. A new birth certificate was fabricated. Du Barry was formally presented at court in 1769 and installed soon after in the 14-room suite immediately above the king’s private quarters. The king was almost 28 years older than her, yet she became one of his closest and most influential confidantes, her apartment remaining next to his chambers until he died, aged 64, in 1774. (Read more.)