Tea at Trianon: The Most Controversial Religious Artwork of All Time

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 28, 2025

The Most Controversial Religious Artwork of All Time

Personally, I never saw anything controversial about it. From ArtNet News:

Made by Bernini, arguably the greatest artist of the Baroque era, between 1647 and 1652 the sculpture depicts Saint Teresa of Àvila, also known as Teresa de Jesús (1515–1582), a Spanish Carmelite nun, who was canonized in 1622, merely 25 years before the sculpture’s creation.
Born to an aristocratic Spanish family, Saint Teresa was a religious reformer who founded the Discalced Carmelites order. She experienced mystic visions, which she described in penetrating detail in her influential vernacular writings, most famously in her autobiography The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus.

The sculpture was commissioned by Venetian Cardinal Federico Cornaro (1579–1653), who had chosen the church, which was home to an order of Discalced Carmelites, for his burial chapel, making Saint Teresa a fitting subject matter. (Read more.)