Portrait of young Marie Antoinette is really of her sister, study says,
Marie Antoinette is surely one of the most the most famous monarchs in history.
Known for her extravagance and indulgence, she was last queen of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution.
One of her most famous portraits allegedly shows the queen as a young girl, holding a shuttle used for weaving in one hand and a red thread in the other.
Assumed to have been about seven years old, she wears a steely gaze directed at the observer, typical of a powerful queen–to–be.
The acclaimed watercolour, painted in 1762 by Genevan painter Jean–Étienne Liotard, appears in biographies of Marie Antoinette all around the world.
But according to a researcher, it does not show Marie Antoinette at all.
Professor Catriona Seth, scholar of French literature at the University of Oxford, says it actually depicts her older sister Maria Carolina, who later became Queen of Naples.
‘I am certain that the picture said traditionally to be Marie Antoinette (the girl with the shuttle) is in fact Maria Carolina,’ she told the Daily Mail.
Two decades ago, Professor Seth used the image as the cover of a book about Marie Antoinette, who was brutally guillotined in the centre of Paris in 1793.
But the academic said there was always something ‘niggling’ her about the painting.
As part of research for an upcoming book, she visited Musée d’Art et d’Histoire (MAH) in Geneva to look more closely at Liotard’s full collection of portraits of Marie Antoinette and 10 of her siblings.
What she discovered will mean websites, galleries and libraries around the world will have to make quick corrections to their captions.
One of the most telling clues in the painting is the ornament pinned to her chest, which features a medal with a red cross below a large black ribbon.
The academic identifies this as the Order of the Starry Cross, an imperial Austrian dynastic order for Catholic noble ladies.
Crucially, Marie Antoinette would not receive this medal until nearly 1766 – four years after this portrait was painted.
‘This was widely reported in the European press at the time: it was a very prestigious order,’ she said. ‘In contrast, Maria Carolina was awarded hers in 1762, when Liotard was in Vienna painting the imperial family.’
Meanwhile, Professor Seth identifies another portrait by Liotard as being of Marie Antoinette – and not her sister Maria Carolina as previously thought.
In this second, less famous painting, a more petite girl is smiling demurely as she looks to the side, while holding a rose to her chest.
‘Holding a rose is a recurring feature of portraits of Marie Antoinette throughout her life,’ said the academic, who has written up, but not yet published, the research.
The girl in this second painting is also wearing ‘distinctive earrings’ that were worn by Marie Antoinette in a later portrait made just as she became queen.
Perhaps most tellingly, the girl in the second portrait seems to be younger – and Marie Antoinette didn’t have any younger sisters.
At some point in the past 250 years, there ‘had to have been a switch’ or an error that meant the paintings were confused – although it is as yet unclear exactly when or how.
According to staff at MAH, the identity of the two sisters would already have been mixed up when these artworks entered the museum in 1947.
Maria Carolina (1752–1814) would have been about 10 when the paintings were done, while Marie Antoinette (1755–1793) would have been about seven.
Even though it doesn’t actually depict her, the painting of ‘Marie Antoinette’ (actually of Maria Carolina) has helped to shape the way we think of the last Queen of France in her early years, Professor Seth claims.
Her determined, almost stern expression has long been thought to demonstrate that the future Queen was destined for a ‘life of significance’.
The last queen of France helped provoke the popular unrest that led to the French Revolution and the monarchy being overthrown in August 1792.
Marie Antoinette was born in Vienna to Maria Theresa, empress of Austria, and Holy Roman Emperor Francis I in 1755. She was their 15th and youngest child, while Maria Carolina was their 13th.
In May 1770, aged just 14, she married King Louis XVI, himself just 15 years, but it is believed the couple didn’t consummate their marriage for seven years.
Her marriage to the future king of France was used to seal the newfound alliance between Austria and France after the Seven Years’ War.
But Young Marie was said to be very different in character from her husband. He was introverted and shy, but she was a social butterfly who loved gambling, partying and extravagant fashions.
During her teenage years she was popular in France and when she made her first appearance in Paris a crowd of 50,000 came out to see her, resulting in at least 30 people being trampled to death in the crush.
However, her popularity swiftly fell over her reign and she became a symbol of the excesses of the monarchy.
Nine months after the execution of her husband, she was executed by the guillotine order of the Revolutionary tribunal, aged just 37.
There were many trumped up charges against the former Queen including high treason, sexual promiscuity and incestuous relations with her son Louis–Charles, who was forced to testify that his mother had molested him (such allegations are thought to have been invented as a false accusation).
Following her beheading, her body was placed in an unmarked grave, but in 1815 it was exhumed and she given a funeral at the Basilica Cathedral of Saint–Denis.
Professor Seth said ‘history has a somewhat unfair vision of Marie Antoinette’, who was a much more complex person than is widely thought.
‘She is seen as frivolous, which she was when young, but certainly not during the Revolution,’ the expert told the Daily Mail.
‘She certainly influenced fashion during her lifetime and continues to, today. For instance, had a huge impact on the course of French music.
‘She was very thoughtful and generous with her friends but also more widely in her charitable activities, but she was also very naïve – friends took advantage of her time and time again.’
Who was Marie Antoinette?
Marie Antoinette – born Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna and an archduchess of Austria – was the wife of Louis XVI and the last queen of France before the French Revolution.
She grew increasingly unpopular among the public when the French ‘libelles’ – political pamphlets – accused her of being wastefully extravagant, promiscuous, of harbouring favour for France’s enemies (including her native Austria) and bearing illegitimate children.
(According to Evelyn Farr, her correspondence with Count von Fersen suggests this last accusation may have been quite true – with the historian believing that their 20–year affair resulted in the births of both her youngest daughter, Sophie, and her son Louis–Charles.)
In popular culture, Marie Antoinette is most often associated with the phrase ‘let them eat cake’, in response to the peasants not having enough bread, although there is actually no evidence that she said this.
The expression – which better translates as ‘let them eat brioche’ – in fact predates Marie Antoinette’s arrival in France in 1770 and can be found in the 1767 writings of the Genevan philosopher Jean–Jacques Rousseau.
Even if this story is apocryphal, the queen nevertheless fell afoul of popular opinion and was convicted of high treason and executed by guillotine at the behest of a Revolutionary Tribunal on October 16, 1793.
