The New York Times-20080125-Antiques- -Movies- Performing Arts-Weekend Desk-
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Antiques; [Movies, Performing Arts/Weekend Desk]
Full Text (934 words)One consequence of a successful political revolution is often a huge yard sale of the belongings of the ousted regime. In 1793, during the French Revolution, officers of the new, cash-starved French Republic organized a public auction of the contents of the Petit Trianon, the small chateau that had become Marie Antoinette's private domain at Versailles, filled with furnishings she had commissioned. The sale took place two months before her execution.
That auction is at the center of Marie-Antoinette and the Petit Trianon at Versailles, an exhibition at the Legion of Honor, one of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, through Feb. 17. Several pieces in the exhibition, like this queen's porcelain dinner service and a magnificent suite of flower-festooned Georges Jacob furniture, were retrieved from that sale.
But that wasn't the end of the story. About 60 years later the Empress Eugenie, the wife of Napoleon III, tried to improve Marie Antoinette's image. On May 21, 1867, the empress inaugurated an exhibition about Marie Antoinette in the Petit Trianon with some of the young queen's treasures. The show, an adjunct of the Paris Exposition of 1867, attracted visitors from all over the world. Since then the Petit Trianon has been a museum filled with objects associated with Marie Antoinette's reign. It is by no means fully decorated; many of her things have been lost, remain in private collections and museums, or are out there for sale at fine antiques shops.
The Petit Trianon reclamation project continued for more than a century, aided by Americans like John D. Rockefeller Jr., who financed the restoration of the gardens in the 1930s, and a group of Francophiles known as the American Friends of Versailles, who last year paid to restore one of the outdoor pavilions.
The current exhibition was made possible by current restorations at the Petit Trianon. For 20 years I've been talking about doing something in America on Versailles with Pierre Arrizoli-Clemental, the museum director there, said John E. Buchanan, Jr., director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. In 2006, when I heard the Trianon was closing for a while, I said this is a once-in-a-lifetime situation.
The show aims to evoke Marie Antoinette's life in her chateau, which is considered the neo-Classical masterpiece of the French court architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel. Marie Antoinette did not commission the Petit Trianon; it was built as a pleasure house by her husband's predecessor, Louis XV. After Louis XVI ascended to the throne in 1774, he made his queen mistress of it by presenting her with a key decorated with 531 diamonds.
She used it as a retreat from court life. While there, and nowhere else, she famously said, Je suis moi. (I am me.) No one was allowed to enter without her permission, and while the king did visit her there, he never spent the night. She invited friends from her inner circle to join her, reading, doing needlework, playing games and making music. She commissioned new botanical gardens and English-style landscaping, a small separate theater (restored in the 1990s by the World Monuments Fund) and the Hameau, a hamlet with thatched cottages, a mill and a menagerie of domestic animals.
The exhibition includes several fine portraits of Marie Antoinette, including the last official one by Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun, as well as sculptures, architectural renderings, prints and pieces of furniture signed by the top royal cabinetmakers.
The queen was expected to be a patron of the arts and was obliged to commission decorations and furnishings, said Martin Chapman, curator of European decorative arts at the San Francisco museum. It is difficult to say precisely what she ordered and what was purveyed to her by the royal architects, but certain emblems all reflect back at the queen.
He is convinced that Marie Antoinette personally chose the flowers on the 239-piece dinner service ordered from the Royal Manufactory of Sevres in 1784, he said. Each plate has a wide border of alternating cornflowers and roses interrupted by medallions enclosing pansies.
The queen loved cornflowers because they reflected on the rustic nature of the Trianon, Mr. Chapman said. The rose is a symbol of the queen's Hapsburg family in Austria. In the exhibition similar cornflowers, roses and pansies, along with sunflowers and daisies, are seen on textile, bronzes and furniture.
Perhaps the most famous object is the glass lantern attributed to the bronze worker Pierre-Philippe Thomire. Made for the main drawing room, it was mounted in a gilded bronze frame.
The lantern contains several emblems of love that would have been perfectly legible in the 18th century, Mr. Chapman said. The arrows of love, Cupid's unstrung bow, the torch of Hymen and the cherubs send strong messages that have to do with love and the pastoral nature of the Petit Trianon. There is an extraordinary wealth of detail.
The popular view of Marie Antoinette has been that she was frivolous and spoiled. But did she have much choice?
Only in private areas like the Petit Trianon could the queen assert her personal preferences, and they seem to have been what we would call country chic.
The Jacob bedroom suite in particular is painted, not gilded and full of floral motifs. The chairs retain their original covers, which are cotton, not silk. The embroidery of roses, buttercups and cornflowers are in wool, not silk. This may be as understated as she could manage.
[Illustration]PHOTOS: The Petit Trianon, above, Marie Antoinette's private hideaway. Below left, her portrait by Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun, and right, a lantern attributed to Pierre-Philippe Thomire. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHRISTIAN MILET; J.M. MANAI)