Auctioning Marie Antoinette's clothes
Summary
18 October 2012
A pair of Marie Antoinette's slippers and a garment she wore while in prison were auctioned in Paris to mark the anniversary of her execution. Among the 80 lots on offer were portraits and etchings of the queen and her ill-fated husband King Louis XVI.
Reporter:
Christian Fraser
A pair of Marie Antoinette's slippers she wore while in prison.
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Report
Before Marie-Antoinette arrived at the guillotine, she amassed anopulent collection of artwork and furniture. And today, in Paris to mark the anniversary of her execution on the 16th October 1793, some of it goes under the hammer.
Of particular note: a pair of green and pink silk slippers which belonged to the queen. Not one of the shoes she dropped while climbing the scaffold - that still resides in a French museum. But there is a framed cotton sleeve of a garment she wore in prison. And a fragment of a patterned silk dress she owned before her arrest.
There are portraits and etchings of the king and queen, glassware, candelabras, dinner sets - and, among other historic artefacts, a fork and spoon from St Helena that belonged to Napoleon. All together they are the symbols of a decadent tyranny but they still hold great fascination - and not just to the French.
Of particular note: a pair of green and pink silk slippers which belonged to the queen. Not one of the shoes she dropped while climbing the scaffold - that still resides in a French museum. But there is a framed cotton sleeve of a garment she wore in prison. And a fragment of a patterned silk dress she owned before her arrest.
There are portraits and etchings of the king and queen, glassware, candelabras, dinner sets - and, among other historic artefacts, a fork and spoon from St Helena that belonged to Napoleon. All together they are the symbols of a decadent tyranny but they still hold great fascination - and not just to the French.
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Vocabulary
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- guillotine
- machine used for execution, cutting off heads
- amassed
- collected
- opulent
- luxurious or expensive
- execution
- putting a person to death
- goes under the hammer
- is sold at an auction
- scaffold
- platform of the guillotine
- fragment
- very small piece
- etchings
- pictures created by scratching away the surface of something
- artefacts
- ancient, man-made object
- tyranny
- powerful or severe government regimesource here
and a bit of reading
Marie Antoinette's slippers fetch 50,000 euros at auction
A pair of Marie Antoinette's slippers has been auctioned for 50,000 euros (£40,600; $65,600) on the anniversary of the French queen's execution.The auction house Paris Druout had expected the green-and-pink silk shoes to sell for up to 10,000 euros.Auctioneers said they had been flooded with bids from around the world.Other artefacts on sale belonging to the 18th Century monarch included portraits and a dinner set once owned by her husband, King Louis XVI."Obviously, it's rather rare to find objects that belonged to the queen, particularly dresses or more intimate things," said art expert Cyrille Boulay."I have been doing the job of historical artefacts expert for 20 years now, and it's just the second time that I have a pair of shoes on sale."So it's rather exceptional and therefore of course, it has sparked an international interest."The successful bid was placed by telephone but the buyer's identity has not yet been disclosed, the BBC's David Chazan, in Paris, reports.Louis XVI married Marie Antoinette, daughter of the emperor and empress of Austria, in 1770 and the couple amassed an opulent collection of artwork and furniture.The queen's extravagant spending habits caused her to be nicknamed "Madame Deficit".Following the French Revolution, she was convicted of treason and guillotined in the French capital on 16 October 1793.A fragment of a patterned silk dress she owned before her arrest was also included in the 80 lots auctioned on Wednesday, a day after the anniversary of her death.
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