Marie-Antoinette at Grand Palais
Parisian Exhibition on France's 18th-century Queen: An Overview
"Marie-Antoinette" at Paris' Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais explores the life of France's 18th-century queen from her Austrian origins through her tragic execution.
Marie-Antoinette (March 15-June 30, 2008) at Paris' Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais examines the life of the vivacious bride of France's King Louis XVI (r. 1774-1792).
The Exhibition's Themes
Arranged chronologically, more than 300 paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, objets d'art and letters from European public and private collections illuminate various aspects of the graceful queen of France's life and personality:
- childhood, careful education and aesthetic influence of her mother, Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria;
- arrival at Versailles and teenage marriage to the dauphin;
- daily life, role in producing a French heir to the throne, extravagant patronage of the arts and alienation of her courtiers; and
- reversal of public opinion against her, royal portraiture as propaganda, imprisonment and execution.
The galleries display Austrian and French furniture, Chinese lacquer, Sèvres porcelain, pastels by the Swiss Jean-Étienne Liotard, portraits by Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, a 20th-century reproduction of Marie-Antoinette's famous diamond necklace and the simple furnishings and utensils from the queen's days of incarceration and confinement.
The Historical Marie-Antoinette
The exhibition chronicles the life of Marie-Antoinette (1755-1793): from her Viennese courtly upbringing at the Schönbrunn palace to her captivity in the Conciergerie prison and tragic guillotining after the Ancien Régime's collapse.
An instrument of 18th-century dynastic politics, the Austrian adolescent arrived at Versailles at age 14 and married Louis-Auguste the Dauphin, several months her senior, four years later. Marie-Antoinette's preeminent purpose at the French court was to produce a male heir to the throne, a task that took the royal couple an arduous 10 years to achieve due to Louis XVI's sexual inadequacies, as some historians have suggested.
Le Petit Trianon and the Queen's Exercise of Taste
Louis XVI and his ministers took precautions to minimize the queen's participation in politics until the first throes of the French Revolution. Upon the dauphin's accession to the throne in 1774, she was given the Petit Trianon, a well-proportioned neoclassical château secluded on the grounds of Versailles. Marie-Antoinette's extensive refurbishing of the private residence's interior, along with its sumptuous furnishings, were reflections of her exquisite personal taste in the fine and decorative arts. As a refuge from Versailles' intrigues, the Petit Trianon allowed the queen to indulge herself with art that she found appealing and was not necessarily the court-sanctioned style of Louis and his minions.
Marie-Antoinette has long been the subject of speculation and derision by her contemporaries and historians alike. Her lavish spending on the Petit Trianon, its lush landscaped gardens, the rustic village Hameau near the retreat and her commissions contributed to the queen's declining popularity during the decadent age of the Rococo. To some degree, the Grand Palais' exhibition liberates the last queen of France from a history of ridicule. Marie-Antoinette allows the monarch to be seen as a sophisticated artistic patron during the years leading up to the French Revolution.
Sources:
- Chapman, Martin, Christian Baulez, et. al. Marie-Antoinette and the Petit Trianon at Versailles (exh. cat.). San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 2007.
- Koda, Harold, Andrew Bolton and Mimi Hellman. Dangerous Liaisons: Fashion and Furniture in the Eighteenth Century (exh. cat.). New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2006.
- Salmon, Xavier, et al. Marie-Antoinette (exh. cat.). Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2008.
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