Reviled toward the end of her life, Marie Antoinette has been revered in death. The enduring public obsession with France’s last Queen has only been fueled by the sensational nature of her death during the height of the bloodthirsty French Revolution. Items from Marie Antoinette’s deathbed, including her last writing and a guillotine blade, have gone on display at the V&A in London as part of a magnificent exhibition dedicated to her legacy as a style icon.
After marrying the future Louis XVI in 1770, Marie Antoinette became infamous for her extravagant tastes, including generous patronage of the arts and luxury sectors. But this life of carefree splendor came to an end in 1789, when revolutionaries forced the royal family to leave Versailles and return to Paris. After hostility against the old order grew, the King was eventually charged with treason and the Queen lived out her final days in prison. She was executed on October 16, 1793.
Installation view of “Marie Antoinette Style” at V&A Museum, London, U.K. Photo courtesy of V&A Museum.
The monarch’s gruesome end has titillated audiences in the centuries since. Much of this intrigue was expertly spun by French artist Anna Maria Grosholtz, much better known as Marie Tussaud. Adept at the production of waxwork likenesses of famous faces, she founded the popular Madame Tussauds tourist attraction in London in 1835.
Since the beginning, the museum’s main appeal has been its Chamber of Horrors, which once featured wax heads made from death masks of several victims of the French Revolution, including Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. These are said to have been modeled by Tussaud herself, who supposedly visited the Madeleine cemetery in secret to cast the ill-fated queen’s severed head, though she herself never confirmed this story. In any case, an effigy of the queen’s disembodied head went on display at Madame Tussauds in 1865 and immediately became a fan favorite, feeding Victorian England’s appetite for all things gothic. The mask was lost in a fire in 1925.
Installation view of “Marie Antoinette Style” at V&A Museum, London, U.K. Photo courtesy of V&A Museum.
Elsewhere in the Chamber of Horrors, Tussaud’s sons installed a guillotine blade from the French Revolution that they had bought from the grandson of high executioner Charles-Henri Sanson. It was exhibited for over a century with the claim that it had been used to behead Marie Antoinette, although this cannot be proven.
Some objects can be confidently connected to the queen’s final days. On view at the V&A is a plain linen worn by Marie Antoinette when she arrived at Temple prison in August 1792. Compared to the lavish dresses on view, it represents her newly humble circumstances. After Louis XVI was executed on January 21, 1793, Marie Antoinette began wearing black in mourning.
Installation view of “Marie Antoinette Style” at V&A Museum, London, U.K. Photo courtesy of V&A Museum.
One item that likely brought the queen some comfort was a medallion containing a lock of hair from her younger son, Louis-Charles, as well as some of her own plaited hair. The dauphin’s lock was arranged beneath the word “friendship,” and the item was given by Marie Antoinette to her chamber maid Madame Campan.
On the night of August 1, 1793, the queen was transferred to the Conciergerie, where she became prisoner number 280 for 76 days. At 4:30 a.m. on the morning of her death on October 16, Marie Antoinette scrawled a final note in her prayer book. “My God, have pity on me!” she wrote. “My eyes have no more tears to cry for you my poor children; adieu, adieu!”
Marie Antoinette wore a plain chemise dress when facing the guillotine and it is said that she was bravely composed while walking up to the scaffold. She even apologized after stepping on the executioner’s foot, according to contemporary engravings that quote her. Marie Antoinette’s death was met with an eruption of chants of “long live the Republic.” It became fashionable in Paris to wear black clothing in mock mourning, even sometimes decorated with a red choker in reference to her manner of death.
Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com
