Marie Antoinette slide lecture based on the exhibition at the Grand Palais

 (15 March – 30 June, 2008)

Three hundred exceptional paintings, sculptures and objets d’art  have been gathered in the Grand Palais to illustrate the life and times of of France’s last Queen of the Ancien Régime. Our lecture will trace Marie Antoinette’s career from her childhood in the court of Vienna to her arrival as very young Dauphine to  the court of Versailles to marry the future Louis XVI, her frivolous career as young Queen, but also major patron of fashion and the arts; the creation of her private universe in her legendary village and gardens at the Petit Trianon, the darkening of the political climate of the 1780’s with the scandal of the Queen’s necklace and then the proud resistant Queen under Revolution ending as courageous “martyr” under the guillotine blade in 1793.