Tea at Trianon: Conservation of Velázquez’s ‘Las Meninas’

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, July 12, 2024

Conservation of Velázquez’s ‘Las Meninas’

From ArtNet:

The 17th-century portrait Las Meninas (1656), or “The Maids of Honor,” is universally regarded as Diego Velázquez’s magnum opus, and perhaps the single greatest existing expression of classical Spanish art. Velázquez himself, King Philip IV’s court painter, is regarded as the leading artist of Spain’s 17th- and 18th-century Baroque style. He completed the painting just four years before his death.

“Few paintings in the history of art have generated so many and varied interpretations as this, Velázquez’s culminating work,” wrote art historian Jonathan Brown.

It comes as no surprise, then, that the Spanish public is fiercely protective of its crown jewel. By 1984, a layer of resin varnish applied to seal the painting after a previous restoration had yellowed. When both Spain’s Prime Minister and the Prado Museum’s director invited British-born art conservator John Brealey to clean the work, it caused an uproar. (Read more.)