Tea at Trianon: Historic Portrait Famously Recovered by the Monuments Men

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

Wednesday, November 6, 2024

Historic Portrait Famously Recovered by the Monuments Men

From ArtNet:

The work, titled Portrait d’une femme, à mi-corps, is one of three paintings seen in a historic April 1945 photo of the Monuments Men at Germany’s Neuschwanstein Castle. James J. Rorimer, a museum curator-turned Army captain, is seen overseeing U.S. soldiers recovering a cache of 5,000 paintings and 20,000 other objects the Nazis had hidden at the site in Bavaria.

Much of that art had been sold under duress, if not outright stolen, in the Nazis’ efforts to confiscate all valuables belonging to Jewish people. Rorimer, who would go on to become the director of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, was instrumental in the Army’s Monuments Men unit, which was dedicated to protecting cultural heritage during World War II, as well as recovering and returning stolen artworks and other artifacts. (Sadly, nearly 80 years after the war’s end, some families continue to seek restitution.)

The photograph became a symbol of that work, and appeared on the cover of the 2009 book The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History, by Robert Edsel with Brett Witter. George Clooney directed and starred in the film version in 2014. (Read more.)