Tea at Trianon: Two Family Miniatures by Dumont

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, August 1, 2024

Two Family Miniatures by Dumont

From East of the Sun and West of the Moon via Vive la Reine:

A comparison between details of two Marie-Antoinette family miniatures by Dumont, with the top being Marie-Thérèse and Joseph, and the bottom being Marie-Thérèse and Louis-Charles.
The first miniature is formal and informal at the same time... Marie Antoinette is embracing and being embraced by her child in an informal manner, but he's dressed to showcase his regal status, while his sister Marie-Thérèse gestures toward him. The backdrop of the miniature is regal and formal.
The second miniature is about as informal as it could get, with both children enjoying their mother's embrace without the same type of stiff, formal deference that Marie-Thérèse was painted in with the first miniature. The setting is the Trianon, sitting on the grass, hardly the stiff formal palace interior of the first miniature.