Tea at Trianon: Restoration of the Salon de Diane

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, November 25, 2024

Restoration of the Salon de Diane

From ArtNet:

King Louis XIV’s Versailles party room is getting the royal treatment. American Friends of Versailles aims to raise some €1.2 million (about $1.3 million) for the restoration of the Salon de Diane, which begins this month. Two years from now, the antechamber’s tired, cloudy ceiling paintings honoring the Roman goddess of the hunt will regain their divine glow—just in time for the 250th celebration of American independence, secured with help from France.
“It’s really important to continue strengthening ties between France and America,” Alicia Bryan, the impassioned new San Antonio, Texas–based president at American Friends of Versailles, told me over the phone. “Our collective mission should be to all come together to preserve our great histories.” (Read more.)