After watching Sophia Copola`s Marie Antoinette, I was curious about the real French Queen, and picked up the biography Marie Antoinette by Antonia Fraser. The movie is a bit fanciful, but is a mere pop version of this important historical personage (apparently the book was Sophia`s primary reference). I did enjoy it, but being a devotee of history, I longed for the actual dame of the Austrian court. I am only on page 51, but I detect that it is well researched, and am enjoying it immensely. "Let Them Eat Cake!" This is a phrase that echoes throughout infamy (prep schools, union halls, or menacing water holes mostly). There is not a shred of evidence that Marie ever said it, if you listen to scholars, but it has come to symbolize the contempt that the aristocracy of France had for the people of the lower estates. Just how over-the-top was the French court in the years leading up to the French Revolution? Was the atmosphere of the latter days of the ancien regime at Versailles as luxurious as it is depicted in books and films? I am hoping this book will perform surgery on some of the thick skins of exaggeration that have here-to-fore been the preponderance of portrayals for the Sun King court. A few years ago I got hooked on Francois Boucher simply because he was so frothy, so decadent-almost more so than one could believe? I visited a Kimball exhibition a couple of years back, and was befuddled by all the angels, cherubim, seraphim etc...How did the art develop such as this, to this silky silliness, with mountains of pinkish flesh in a transparent (or fake) religious theme? This astounded me, and made me want to study the period more to decode these aberrations. Too, the example of Fragonard`s The Swing is given, to slam home the point that mid-18th century France was a plump goose ready to implode with social/political mutiny! This was convincing, when I scribbled down these developments in my history notebooks. "Yea, there it is, the flagrant opulence of the ancien regime, no mercy dude!"
The above portrait by Louise Elizabeth Vigee-Lebrun, while very staged, gives you a good idea of what Marie was like; sumptuous, haughty, majestic, stoic, or maybe just downright in fruitcake city? Was this the real Marie, or just a facade for the public? I will probe for that as I read the book. Louise Vigee-Lebrun did many other portraits of the Queen, so they provide visual fodder for the mozaic of a gazillion words in Antonia Fraser`s text. There is a documentary on Madame Antoine too; I ordered it on Netflix, but it malfunctioned when I was playing it, so I intend to actually purchase it, because it is well done. Maybe some day I can go to France, so that I can visit the haunts of the aforementioned lady, then I will really sense the way it went down! "Let Them Eat Cake", in the meantime (you may want to view this slideshow as you contemplate this fallacious trigger for the Fall of the Bastille)!
2 comments:
I believe the actual quote was "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche," the implication being that there were other forms of bread. Equally clueless, but possibly what she really said.
Yes, the truth is a little murky at this point. "Let them eat brioche" would mean the opposite of what we usually think the phrase (in English) means. Sweet breads were given the same price as regular breads. And anyone from Rousseau to Maria-Therese, wife of Louis XIV, may have actually said it...this phrase should probably be dismissed when assessing MA `s role in events...??
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