Tea at Trianon: Vases for a King and Queen

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

Monday, February 13, 2023

Vases for a King and Queen

From Apollo:

This exhibition at the Getty Center in Los Angeles (14 February–3 March 2024) brings together two ornamental sets of vases owned by Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette of France. The vases are prime examples of the production at the Sèvres porcelain manufactory before the French Revolution and were personal treasures of the royal family. Beginning in 1778, the manufactory produced garnitures of vases to a design known as vases des âges (vases of the ages), which were typically made in three sizes with a large central vase and two pairs of smaller vases. Louis XVI bought one of these garnitures for his library at the palace of Versailles; the scenes painted on the front show episodes from François Fénelon’s Adventures of Telemachus, one of the king’s favourite books. The gilt-bronze mounts of another set of chinoiserie vases on show at the Getty are attributed to Jean-Claude Duplessis, who was appointed orfèvre du roi (goldsmith to the King) in 1758 and produced many designs for Sèvres. Find out more on the Getty’s website. (Read more.)

There are also a pair of the "jeweled" Sèvres vases at the Walters Gallery in Baltimore, MD. More on Sèvres, HERE and HERE.