Tea at Trianon: Royalty and Architecture

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, July 8, 2024

Royalty and Architecture

King Gustav III of Sweden and his Brothers (1771), Alexander Roslin.

Gustav III was an ally and friend of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. He admired them both and visited them in France in 1784. From Apollo:

To build might be considered a natural activity for royalty: to manifest majesty and to improve the fabric of the state. But how far were kings, queens, princes and princesses actually involved in the design of the buildings they commissioned? Royalty and Architecture offers a series of case studies in response to this question, examining rulers from the 17th century to the present day. Fourteen chapters, written by leading scholars in their fields, are arranged chronologically and take in the Papal States, France, Germany, Russia, Sweden, Poland and Great Britain. In light of historiographical shifts towards popular rather than elite subjects, histories of making and decolonisation, sceptics might question the need for further interrogation of the role of royalty, but the specific focus of this study provides fresh justification.

The consideration of architecture as a suitable endeavour for royalty arose from the Renaissance idea of architecture as a noble pursuit that encompassed subjects including mathematics, geometry and history. It had important implications for military success, the projection of authority and the common good. Young royals therefore often received architectural education in the form of drawing classes. In the case of Gustav III of Sweden, examined in an essay by Magnus Olausson, it led to a lifelong passion, testified to by more than 200 surviving architectural drawings in his hand. Royal libraries included books of architecture and design, and monarchs were the recipients of dedications from architectural authors keen to secure patronage and commissions.

John Goodall’s opening essay identifies magnificence as the key distinguishing feature of royal building projects. As Louis XIV wrote in the handbook of kingliness that he prepared for his son, the two ways in which a monarch could achieve gloire and secure his reputation for posterity were military success and building. Goodall underlines the importance of royal architecture for state occasions as the stage for ‘the performance of monarchy’. To illustrate his point, he offers a perceptive account of the architectural settings of Elizabeth II’s funeral in September 2022, demonstrating that the relationship between royalty and buildings is a contemporary as well as historical subject.

Although the public presentation of monarchy is key to many of the buildings that are examined in this volume, the emphasis here is on their direct personal engagement with architectural matters. Elisabeth Kieven’s lively essay shows us Pope Alexander VII (the papacy was an elective monarchy) not only commissioning works to transform the Eternal City, but also drawing with Bernini, researching ancient porticos to inform the square at St Peter’s, and helping to set up the columns there with the aid of his telescope. Likewise, in Simon Thurley’s essay on the later Stuart monarchs in England, we find Charles II sketching designs for Whitehall on paper, requesting plans of the Louvre for comparison, expressing his vision for the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire and approving Christopher Wren’s designs for the new St Paul’s Cathedral. Although building projects were inherently self-aggrandising, many of the monarchs were motivated to seek public benefit, as evidenced in Barbara Arciszewska’s chapter on the campaign by King Stanislaw August Poniatowski to revive Poland through architecture.(Read more.)