Tea at Trianon: A Sèvres Vase with the Dauphine Marie-Antoinette

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

Saturday, April 15, 2023

A Sèvres Vase with the Dauphine Marie-Antoinette

Via Le Boudoir.

What the Meissen manufactory is in Germany, the venerable "Manufacture royale de porcelaine de Sèvres" - Sévres for short - is in France. The lady on this richly painted vase with the high forehead typical of the Rococo period is none other than the youthful Queen Marie Antoinette. This piece was created at the beginning of her regency between 1770 and 1774 and was intended as a diplomatic gift - as a pair with Marie Antoinette's husband Louis XVI. Only six of these pairs of vases have survived worldwide, one of which is in the Hetjens Museum. On the one hand, these vases were intended to bear witness to the beauty of the young queen, and on the other hand, to represent the wealth of her husband. A total of three painters were involved in these "vases with ears", one for the portrait, one for the flowers and one for the gold painting. Luck did not bring the daughter of the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa the splendor of these rococo vases: she was executed by guillotine in the turmoil of the French Revolution in 1793, a few months after her husband.

More HERE.