The Queen of Acquisition

Anyone who has ever been to Versailles knows that it was stripped of its contents during the French Revolution. But what happened to the stupendous collections of furniture, sculpture, porcelain, and paintings assembled by the most voracious of all royal collectors, Marie-Antoinette?You could hardly expect the revolutionaries who murdered Louis XVI and his queen to appreciate the value of such things, but the knowledge that they had a price was fortunately brought to their attention. And so, instead of destroying the contents of the Petit Trianon (the queen’s exquisite château in the grounds of Versailles), they sold them.A poster advertising the sale of the furniture and effects of the person referred to as the “So-Called Queen” took place on Sunday, August 25, 1793 — seven months after the execution of her husband and two months before her own death on the scaffold. In small print at the bottom of the poster, it states that any items bought at the sale could be taken abroad tax-free — an open invitation to foreign collectors to remove all traces of the hated queen from French soil.For that reason, you will find more pieces of furniture and works of art once owned by Marie-Antoinette displayed in a single room in London — at the Wallace Collection — than in France. I mention this to give some idea of the formidable obstacles that Pierre Arizzoli-Clementel faced in mounting the blockbuster exhibition devoted to the queen at the Grand Palais in Paris. Although in recent years a number of her possessions have found their way back to Versailles and are displayed in this show, Mr. Arizzoli-Clementel has had to look abroad — and particularly to Austria — for an exceptionally large number of important loans. Exhibitions focusing on the decorative arts are often difficult to pull off, but Mr. Arizzoli-Clementel uses these foreign loans, together with documentary material in the form of prints and letters, to tell the story of Marie-Antoinette’s life with all the panache it deserves.The story starts in Vienna, in the palace of Schonbrunn, where Archduchess Marie-Antoinette was born in 1755, one of the many daughters of the Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and Maria Theresa. Though she was to gain a well-deserved reputation for frivolity, in fact she was taught the French language and literature, and given lessons in music and art that were to serve her well when she became queen.Displayed in the first galleries of the exhibition are pieces she might have known at the Viennese court, including Austrian painted furniture, Chinese lacquer, and objects made of hard stone.Significantly, some of the most spectacular works are by foreign artists, including a view of Schonbrunn by the Italian Bernardo Bellotto, charming pastel portraits of the royal children by the Frenchman Jean-Etienne Liotard, and a splendid service of green and white Sèvres porcelain presented to Maria Theresa by King Louis XV in 1756.On her marriage to the king’s grandson in May 1770, the 14-year-old was introduced to a new world of luxury, taste, and artistic sophistication. In that year, the new dauphine was presented with a table-mounted jewel casket by the delightful German-born cabinetmaker Martin Carlin. Decorated with marquetry of rosewood and sycamore and inset with 13 Sèvres porcelain plaques painted with brightly colored sprays of flowers, the delicacy and refinement of the piece make the Viennese furniture we have just seen look hopelessly provincial.Remarkable as they are, such pieces are merely the hors d’oeuvres. It was only after Marie-Antoinette became queen in 1774 that she truly began to exercise her own taste and judgment in art.In 1778, the queen summoned the 23-year-old Elizabeth Vigée-Le Brun to Versailles to paint the magnificent full-length portrait showing her in full court dress. From that year until she fled for her life in 1789, Vigée-Le Brun would paint the queen, her children, and friends in portraits that are at once modulated, amusing, and thoroughly civilized. Though stylistically these portraits are closer to the neo-Classicism of Jacques-Louis David than to the painters of the court of Louis XV, in their nuances and gentilities we sense what was best about the ancien régime.In the 1780s, the queen was spending vast sums on furniture, paintings, and works of art. What is remarkable is not how much she spent, but the knowledge and taste she displayed in her choice of the most advanced artists and craftsmen of her time. I never thought I’d feel like genuflecting in front of pieces of furniture, but the cylindrical secretary in mother of pearl, gilt bronze, and silver made by the master cabinetmaker Jean-Henri Riesener for her boudoir at Fontainebleau, and the set of armchairs exquisitely carved with wreaths of flowers and classical ornaments by Georges Jacob for the Petit Trianon, are great works of art.Wherever you look, the eye alights on something exquisite, from a pair of gilt bronze fire dogs in the shape of sphinxes by Pierre-Philippe Thomire, to a writing table of ebony and sycamore, Japanese lacquer, and gilt bronze by the German Adam Weisweiler.At first, you are left speechless in front of works of such perfection and refinement. But as the opulence becomes more and more incredible, it also becomes sinister. By the time we come to the famous diamond necklace that caused the scandal of 1785–86 often cited as a cause of the Revolution, I felt a twinge of revulsion. Even though what is on display is a 20th-century copy made of white sapphires and pearls, in terms of design the necklace is a grotesque object. Next to it is a jewel chest in which the queen presumably intended to keep it. The quality of the workmanship by Ferdinand Schwerdfeger here is as fine as ever, but the enormous scale of the piece feels obscene, especially if we recall that charming jewel chest made for the dauphine by Carlin in 1770.By then, the queen was hated. She tried to effect an image makeover by commissioning portraits that showed her surrounded by her children. But it was too late. A darkened hall downstairs is devoted to the long agony of her imprisonment and execution. In addition to revolutionary propaganda and the simple furniture and utensils she used while in prison, a long wall has short extracts from her letters at this time.In her acceptance of the inevitable, she regains some of the sympathy she’d lost in the final years. On the far wall, hung on its own just before we leave the exhibition, is Jacques-Louis David’s drawing of the queen in the tumbrel on her way to the scaffold. Often as I’ve seen it in reproduction, it has never struck me with the emotional force it has here.Until June 30 (3 avenue du Général Eisenhower, Paris, +33 (0)1 44 13 17 17, www.rmn.fr).

The Queen of Acquisition

The Queen of Acquisition

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