All around historic aesthetics, but mainly 18th century. Frederician Rococo and French Baroque? They slap, end of story. This blog will also include academic stuff too. This is a side blog for: Scribbled-anecdotes.
Young Catherine the Great portrayed in television from the last 30 years:
Julia Ormond in Young Catherine (1991), Catherine Zeta-Jones in Catherine the Great (1995), Marina Aleksandrova in EKaterina (2014) & Elle Fanning in The Great (2020)
The Financial Times published a list of 15 of the best history books published this year. Problem is, there were no women on the list AT ALL. In response, here are 15 of the best history books that were published this year (and that I read), all written by women:
A Curious History of Sex // Kate Lister
African Europeans: An Untold Story // Olivette Otele
The Beauty and the Terror: An Alternative History to the Italian Renaissance // Catherine Fletcher
Mistresses: Sex and Scandal at the Court of Charles II // Linda Porter
The Fall of the House of Byron: Scandal and Seduction in Georgian England // Emily Brand
Mad and Bad: Real Heroines of the Regency // Bea Koch
Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe // Judith Herrin
The Mother of the Brontës: When Maria Met Patrick // Sharon Wright
Female Husbands: A Trans History // Jen Manion
A Fatal Thing Happened On The Way To the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome // Emma Southon
A Black Women’s History of the United States // Daina Ramey Berry & Kali Nicole Gross
Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death, and Art // Becky Wragg Sykes
The Imprisoned Princess: The Scandalous Life of Sophia Dorothea of Celle // Catherine Curzon
The Last Libertines // Benedetta Craveri
Secret Britain: Unearthing Our Mysterious Past // Mary-Ann Ochota
I copied a portrait using coloured pencils and it ended up looking rather pretty! There are some issues, especially in the photographed version (why does it make everything look so harsh!?), but overall, I like how it turned out. Mina is an icon.
16 October 1793 ✧ The execution of Marie Antoinette
It was eleven in the morning when the prison gates opened and let the victim out. Thirty thousand men were to accompany the former Queen of France to her execution. Marie Antoinette climed into the dingy cart that was to bring her to the scaffold, on the Place de la Révolution. The cart moved slowly in the midst of a very dense crowd. At the corner of the rue Saint-Honoré, with a cruel stroke of the pencil, the painter David sketched the last image of the Queen of France for all eternity. Sitting very straight, pale but with cheeks flushed with fever and bloodshot eyes, her coarsley cut white hair sticking out of her bonnet, Marie Antoinette was oblivious to everything and everyone. It seemed that she did not even hear the cries of “Long Live the Republic! Down with tyranny!” When they arrived at the former Place Louis XV, the Queen looked toward the Tuileries gardens, saw the scaffold and grew pale. She climbed out of the cart with a light step and mounted, “with bravado,” the steep steps leading to the guillotine. With an abrudt movement of the head she let the bonnet fall and surrendered heself the the excutioners. Preparations for the execution lasted an endless four minutes. At twelve-fifteen, the board tipped and the blade fell; Marie Antoinette’s life ended. – Evelyne Lever, Marie Antoinette: The Last Queen of France
An adorable illustration of Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI, and three of their children at the Hameau de la Reine, posted on the Instagram of the Chateau de Versailles.