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Marie Antoinette Beheaded

Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, in coronation robes by Jean-Baptiste Gautier Dagoty, 1775.


On October 16, 1793, Marie Antoinette, who was the Queen of France from 1774-1792, was beheaded at the Place de la Révolution in Paris, France.

The future Queen of France was born Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna in 1755 in Austria to Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor and Empress Maria Theresa. As part of a plan to “unite” Austria and France after the Seven Years’ War, and due to the fact that several of Maria Antonia’s female relatives died during a smallpox outbreak, it was decided that she would marry Louis XVI, Dauphin of France. At the age of 14, Maria Antonia married Louis XVI by proxy and was renamed Marie Antoinette, Dauphine of France.

At first, Marie Antoinette was considered to be very popular with the people of France. Her first official appearance at the Tuileries in Paris was reported to have 50,000 people crying out to see her. The general public at this time was swooned by her beauty and personality. The French Court had a different opinion of her due to the long-time tensions between France and Austria.

Since the beginning of her marriage and her move to Versailles, the Dauphine received letters from her mother which were often filled with criticism. These criticisms included how Marie Antoinette could not “inspire passion” in her husband who occupied himself with his hobbies, or that she was no longer pretty and had lost her grace. Because of the lack of attention she received from her husband and the incessant criticism of her mother, Marie Antoinette began to spend money extravagantly on clothing and gambling. This extravagant spending would later work against her and how the people of France viewed her.

Marie continued to perform her wifely duties and finally began to bear children with her husband after they were married for seven years. Her spending habits did not cease, and she became known for her over-the-top fashions in the French court. Louis XVI sent large amounts of money to America to aid the American Revolution, which pushed France into further debt and raised taxes, even further negatively affecting the poorer people of France. This combined with increasing unemployment across France and poor crops caused the French people to be filled with resentment for the French monarchy by the late 1780s. Marie became an obvious target for hatred because of her Austrian heritage and her spending habits while the people of France were starving.

On July 14, 1789, revolutionaries stormed the French prison of Bastille, marking a turning point in the French Revolution. That October, Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and their surviving two children were taken from the Palace of Versailles and put under house arrest at the Tuileries of Paris. In September of 1792, it was officially declared that the French monarchy had fallen. Louis XVI was separated from his family and was executed by guillotine in January of 1793.

Mourning the loss of her husband, Marie Antoinette became severely depressed, refused to eat, and suffered from tuberculosis and possibly uterine cancer. She was charged with treason on the morning of October 16, 1793 after two days of court proceedings and was paraded around Paris for several hours in an open cart with her hair cut off. She was beheaded around noon that same day and her last words were, “Pardon me sir, I meant not to do it,” after she stepped on her executioner’s foot.

Sources: Wikipedia, MentalFloss.com

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Moulin Rouge Opens

Famed Parisian cabaret revue Moulin Rouge opened for the first time on October 6, 1889 in the Montmartre section of Paris. It was co-founded by Charles Zidler and Joseph Oller (who owned the Paris Olympia) and had the aim of providing entertainment for the rich as well as the working class in the fashionable arts district.

Moulin Rouge was an extravagant cabaret with plush furnishing lining the interior and champagne themed evenings. The dancers doubled as courtesans and would perform a variety of dances, the most popular of which was the scandalous “can-can”, where they would kick their legs high.

Meaning “Red Mill”, the Moulin Rouge building had a red mill on its roof and still does to this day. The Moulin Rouge cabaret was frequented by artists, perhaps the most famous of which was post-modernist painter Toulouse-Lautrec who painted posters advertising the nightclub.

Sources: Yahoo! Voices, Wikipedia

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Picasso’s First Exhibition

On June 24, 1901, 19-year-old Pablo Picasso had the first major exhibition of his artwork shown at a gallery in Paris on the famed rue Lafitte. The exhibition featured 75 original pieces of the relatively unknown Spanish artist, and the first critics of his art applauded his showing but blasted him for the quantity of influence from French painters. He would go on to harness a style that was completely his own, often marked by periods (Blue, Rose, Cubism, etc.).

Check out some of our awesome 2014 art calendars featuring work by none other than Pablo Picasso!

Sources: History, OUP Blog

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