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Bracelet clasps, France, Gold with brilliant cut
diamonds, central plaques of blue paste
(glass). © Victoria and Albert Museum,
London
As Sarah Grant, the exhibition’s curator, points out, Marie-Antoi-
nette embodies «the rare blend of glamour, spectacle, and tragedy that
remains as intoxicating today as it did in the 18th century.» By turns a
fashion heroine, a celebrity before her time, and a symbol of excess, she
continues to fascinate, and each era reinvents her in its own image.
This exhibition is striking proof of this: more than two centuries
after her death, Marie-Antoinette still reigns, not on a throne,
but in the collective imagination.
Marie-Antoinette remains a symbol of both pomp and disgrace, of
youth and drama, ever-living, ever-inspiring.
www.www.vam.ac.uk
Portrait of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France,
in a court dress. Oil painting by François
Hubert Drouais, 1773 © Victoria and Albert
Museum, London.