Tag: monarchs

The monarchs throughout history have been some of the most fascinating people to have ever walked the earth. I feature them often in my diary entries.

Billowing ruched fabric, pointy toes of dainty shoes visible from beneath flounced skirts hemmed in gold fringes and ornate trims. A bejeweled crown on a pillow festooned with gold fleurs-de-lis; and a red velvet tablecloth flowing downward, its gold trim cascading onto a floral rug. Sumptuousness at every turn. Painting in its most magnificent forms. I am walking through the exhibition Vigée Le Brun: Woman Artist in Revolutionary France, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Porcelain skin and the richest colors infused with powdery light mesmerize. The Comtesse du Barry’s expression is jaded, the grey of her eyes matching the feathers arching above her straw hat and the lace ruffles fluttering around her collar bone. She is already the deposed mistress of Louis XV when this is painted, and Vigée Le Brun has rendered her in the style she became enamored with when she traveled to Antwerp with her husband.

Though the subjects she would paint would be many, she would gain the most fame from her portraits of Marie Antoinette, who first invited Vigée Le Brun to Versailles to paint a full-length portrait of her in court dress that would be given to the queen’s mother, Maria Theresa of Austria. Upon receiving the painting, the empress was pleased to see the regal bearing of her daughter that Vigée Le Brun had captured. As Vigée Le Brun’s memoirs prove, no matter how many famous women and men she would immortalize abroad, she never lost her fondness for Marie Antoinette and never felt quite as much joy as she had experienced painting the queen. I can understand why a fascination with the lives of the monarchs would catch hold of anyone who had anything to do with them, a subject I explore often here on the blog.