Tea at Trianon: Marie-Antoinette's Jewels

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, October 15, 2025

Marie-Antoinette's Jewels

SWITZERLAND-FRANCE-AUCTION-LUXURY-HISTORY

Ironically, most of the jewels featured at the exhibition did not belong to Marie-Antoinette or, if they did, have been reset. For one thing, anyone can notice from portraits that the Queen wore jewelry sparingly. Marie-Antoinette's daughter inherited the jewels that were smuggled out of France during the Revolution, and she left them to her niece, the Duchess of Parma, who had many children. And so the remaining jewels were scattered, sold, resold, and reset. The famous pink diamond was probably Marie-Antoinette's as well as the matching diamond bracelets. Marie-Antoinette did have tear-drop pearl earrings and so some of the pearls may have been hers. But the heavy, gaudy pieces, that may be what is left of the monstrosity originally intended for Madame du Barry by Boehmer, never belonged to Marie-Antoinette. The Queen despised anything so vulgar. From The Times:

Jewellery is not only a beautiful luxury but also a form of ready currency. Aristocrats fleeing the Revolution slipped their jewels out of France to finance their new lives in exile. The royal family were no exception to this. Although their attempt to escape ended in disaster, Marie Antoinette’s jewels fared better. Smuggled out via the Austrian ambassador, they passed to her daughter Marie-Thérèse, the only survivor of the family. A pearl pendant with a diamond bow formerly hung from Marie Antoinette’s three-strand pearl necklace and, alongside other French royal jewels, survived in the Bourbon Parma family collections, reappearing to huge excitement in a 2018 Sotheby’s auction.
Splendid jewellery decorated Marie Antoinette as Dauphine and Queen, was stripped from her in her last moments, but remained as a memento for her daughter and a reminder of the doomed glamour of the ancien régime. (Read more.)

More HERE.