Tea at Trianon: Most Expensive Elizabethan Portrait Ever

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, January 14, 2026

Most Expensive Elizabethan Portrait Ever

The Duke of Norfolk who plotted to marry Mary Queen of Scots. From ArtNet:

A 16th century painting of Thomas Howard, the 4th Duke of Norfolk, has become the most expensive Elizabethan portrait to date after selling for £3.2 million ($4.2 million) at Sotheby’s Old Masters sale in London on December 4.
It is, in a sense, heading home, with the art advisory Clore Wyndham purchasing the Hans Eworth painting on behalf of the Duke of Norfolk and the trustees of Arundel Castle, where in due course it will hang. “It fills a gap in the collection and is a highly significant Tudor portrait,” Henry Wyndham, the advisory’s co-founder, said over email. “Eworth, after Hans Holbein, was the most important artist working in England at the time.”

This is not hyperbole, Eworth seemingly filled the void left by the death of Holbein in 1543, leaving Antwerp for London in the mid-1540s and setting up a studio in Southwark. There, he would paint England’s aristocracy including the Howard family, which proved a particularly appreciative patron—Eworth painted Norfolk’s first and second wives, as well as his grandmother. Eworth’s identity, however, was long obscured. It wasn’t until 1913, when his name was discovered in the inventory of a great 16th century collector that the artist formerly known as Monogrammist HE was identified. To date, a little more than 50 paintings have been attributed to Eworth. (Read more.)