Some characters in For the King, including the would-be assassin Pierre de Saint-Régent, wear cadenettes. What were they? They consisted in two side braids worn in front of the ears, while the rest of the hair was gathered in two more braids behind the ears. Those were tied on the nape to form a queue. [...]
Frequent visitors to Versailles and more have become familiar with Louise-Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, one of the most successful painters of her time and Marie-Antoinette’s favorite portraitist. Madame Lebrun left France as early as October 1789, after the royal family relocated, much against their wishes, to the Tuileries. She traveled extensively in search of new patrons, in [...]
The early reviews of For the King praise my portrait of 1800 Paris. This, needless to say, makes me very happy. I do not wish to limit my novels to the glamorous aspects of aristocratic life, and strive to show Paris as it really was: a bustling, vibrant, but overcrowded, smelly, dirty city. The Seine [...]
Susan Holloway Scott has a great post on masks in the 17th century. They protected ladies’ complexions from the attacks of the sun and cold, but they were also most convenient for discreet assignations… In 18th century France, their use became limited to the balls and celebrations that marked the revelry of Carnival. This is [...]
This is another Paris street scene by our friend Louis-Leopold Boilly. As always, the artist has much to tell us beyond the depiction of an everyday incident. This takes place in 1803, when the streets of Paris were still mostly unpaved. Any rain shower turned them into torrents of mud. But there the poorest of the [...]
This may look like the other costumes displayed at this year’s Court Pomp and Ceremony exhibition at Versailles. But this picture is deceptive: this is in fact but a half-size model of a French court gown. Ordinary fine ladies, unlike the royal family of Sweden, could not rely on their own ambassadors to keep informed [...]
This will be the second post in a probably long series dedicated to Louis-Léopold Boilly. After specializing in interior genre scenes such as The Sorrows of Love, Boilly felt the need to switch to depictions of urban life. Apart from the artistic merit of his compositions, he offers us a direct, candid view of Paris [...]
Here is what Benjamin Franklin writes his daughter, Sarah Blache, on the topic of the Society of the Cincinnati. He opposes, of course, the very notion of establishing hereditary honors in the United States, and also discusses the insignia of this organization, which include a bald eagle: Others object, writes Franklin, to the bald eagle as [...]
Well, my post on 18th century court costume was one of my most successful, and I could not help noticing that it attracted comments from gentlemen readers. Yet it only featured one set of male clothes, the astonishing wedding suit of the Crown Prince of Sweden, future King Gustaf III. So the idea came naturally [...]
I saw the Court Pomp and Royal Ceremony exhibition at Versailles on its closing day last June and would have hated to miss it. My expectations were very high, and yet I could not help being somewhat disappointed, not by the quality of the objects on display, which were magnificent, but by their scarcity. I [...]
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