Posts tagged history
a marie antoinette blog
Louis XV presenting a portrait of Marie-Antoinette to Louis-Auguste in 1770, in the presence of the royal family and court.
(C) RMN-Grand Palais (Château de Versailles) / Gérard Blot
A virtual tour of the current Madame Elisabeth exhibition at her estate of Montreuil!
A wonderful option for those of us who can’t make it to the real thing.
A trip to the Detroit Institute of Arts makes everything better! Here’s a photo of my favorite corner, with a chest of drawers (bottom left) that was once in both Madame Elisabeth and Louis XVI’s apartments and an 18th century Italian bust of Louis XVI.
Chateau de Versailles:
On 15 May 2013, the Palace of Versailles launched the work on the Water Theatre grove as reinterpreted by Louis Benech and Jean-Michel Othoniel. Visitors to Versailles will be able to discover this new grove beginning in summer 2014.
You can read more about the reinterpretation of the Water Theatre grove here.
The signatures of Louis Auguste (future Louis XVI) and Marie Antoinette on their marriage certificate. Marie Antoinette, unused to writing the new French version of her name, accidentally left an inkblot on the page.
In the name of your mother, monsieur, cover me.
—the last words of Madame Elisabeth, the sister of Louis XVI, to her executioner; her neckerchief had come loose and fallen to the ground as she was strapped to the plank of the guillotine.
They [the royal family] are under inexpressible affliction and none more so than the King and Queen, who all along expressed apprehension of the load which [Louis XV’s] death would throw upon them and which their youth and inexperience made them so little able to bear. One of the Dauphin’s expressions was ‘It seems to me that the Universe will fall on me.’
—from the May 11, 1774 dispatch of Lord Stormont, the British ambassador to France in 1774.
An account of the death of Madame Elisabeth, sister of Louis XVI, on May 10th, 1794:
At the foot of the scaffold was a long bench on which the victims were told to sit. By a refinement of cruelty Madame Élisabeth was placed nearest the steps to the scaffold, but she was the last of the twenty-five called to ascend them; she was to see and hear the killing of them all before her turn should come. During that time she never ceased to say the De profundis; she who was about to die prayed for the dead.
The first to be called was Mme. de Crussol. She rose immediately; as she passed Madame Élisabeth she curtsied, and then, bending forward, asked to be allowed to kiss her. “Willingly, and with all my heart,” replied the princess. All the other women, ten in number, did likewise. The men, as they passed her, each bowed low the head that an instant later was to fall into the basket. When the twenty-fourth bowed thus before her, she said: “Courage, and faith in God’s mercy.” Then she rose herself, to be ready at the call of the executioner. She mounted firmly the steps of the scaffold. Again the man offered his hand, but withdrew it, seeing from her bearing that she needed no help.
With an upward look to heaven, she gave herself into the hands of the executioner. As he fastened her to the fatal plank, her neckerchief came loose and fell to the ground. “In the name of your mother, monsieur, cover me,” she said. Those were her last words.
