Painting A Scandal:

Tracing the Images of Marie Antoinette through Art

Sejal Tandon (483)

Department of History, Lady Shri Ram College for Women

History of Modern Europe - I

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ABSTRACT

The legacy of Marie Antoinette has been stained by a patriarchal lens and received the burning

end of history. Since the day she arrived in Versailles, the ill-fated queen has been villianised and

sexualised by the French people due to her Austrian heritage, Louis XVI’s phimosis that led to

lack of heir for a long period, her alleged promiscuous behaviour with men and women,

capriouscous spending and by default, misogyny. However, the question arises whether this

depiction was true and justified? The aim of this paper is to examine the many faces of Marie

Anotoinette, ranging from royal portraitures that attempted to gain a positive public opinion to

the scandalisation of her body and sexuality in libilles and caricatures.

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Painting A Scandal:

Tracing the Images of Marie Antoinette through Art

In times of political crisis, it seems especially likely that the political power of queens,

female regents, royal mistresses, and other first ladies will be criticised.The unfortunate Marie

Antoinette, whose narrow-minded frivolity and clumsy political interference earned her the

disparaging titles "l'autrichienne" and "Madame Deficit" early in her reign, particularly received

the brunt end of the revolution. The notorious queen was demeaned through political

pornography, caricatures, rumours about her sexuality and criticised on her notions of

motherhood. The period of political unrest in French history can be characterized through many
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mediums like pamphlets, books, poetry, dramas , art etc. This paper seeks to evaluate the many

images of Marie Antoinette in art and explores how the political notions of sexuality led to the

scandalisation of the queen over the years.

Women are essential to maintaining the social and political order, but historically, when

they got involved in issues outside the private sphere, they were viewed as potentially hazardous.

This was particularly true in France, where women may serve as mothers, regent or as wives to

kings but never as independent monarchs like in England. However, women's bodies also had

their own symbolic value: they might stand for purity or depravity, the strength of desire or the

need for dominance, the promise of a new order or the dissolution of an old one. The French

Revolution created unparalleled notions for women in the public sphere; art especially exploring

politic and gendered power relations like never before. This is particularly evident in the

evolution of Marie Antoinette’s image through royal portraits to sexual caricatures in libelles.

Who was the Dauphine of France?

Marie-Antoinette was born on November 2, 1755, to Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and

Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. She was given the name Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna. She

was the royal couple's sixteenth child to be born. Marie-Antoinette inherited various noble

bloodlines because she was born during a period of frequent intermarriage between royal

households. She obtained the blood of the Bourbons (the Orléans branch) and Lorraine from her

father ; her mother was the Hapsburg blood, from both the Austrian and Spanish lines. However,

her French subjects would conveniently forget about her French ancestry since they had been
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blinded by her Austrian birth and Hapsburg heritage 1. The Treaty of Versailles, which united the

two nations in a defensive alliance against Prussia and was signed on May 1, 1756, marked the

beginning of Austria and France's partnership, which had previously been fierce adversaries, six

months after Marie’s birth. The marriage of Marie-Antoinette to Louis-Auguste, the dauphin of

France, in 1770 served to firmly establish this bond. Marie-Antoinette relocated to Versailles

from her childhood home in Austria not long after her proxy marriage to the French prince. It

was necessary for the young princess, who had not yet turned fifteen when she got married, to

sever all links to Austria in favor of everything French, both practically and metaphorically.

Every aspect of the queen’s being was attacked, even her gender. As contemporary

historians concur, Marie Antoinette's trial "was staged virtually as a morality play on the evil

impact of women on the body politic," according to British women's accounts of the French

queen. Hunt contends that the male public realm is put at risk because the Queen is "the

embodiment (and sacrificial victim) of the feared disintegration of gender boundaries that

accompanied the Revolution,", thus follow the innumerable political satires and pornographic

representaions of the royal queen2. According to Joseph Andrino, a major element of the male

Gothic imagery, this challenge to gender distinctions was felt beyond of French boundaries and

political discourse. In Our Ladies of Darkness, Andriano makes the case that strong femmes

fatales in Gothic novels like The Monk endanger male subjectivity by causing a breakdown in

gender roles that masculinity cannot withstand. The most famous femme fatale of the time was

1
Antonia Fraser, Marie Antoinette: The Journey, 15, 2001.

2
Lynn Hunt, “Pornography and the French Revolution,” in The Invention of Pornography: Obscenity and the
Origins of Modernity 1500-1800, 1993.
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Marie Antoinette, known as the "Austrian she-wolf," who was portrayed as a vampire in satirical

cartoons.

The courtly order on seduction, in which women’s public influence was grounded in their

sexuality is especailly evident. For many British observers in the 1790s , Marie Antoinette's

imprisonment, widowhood, and execution transformed the French queen into precisely such an

idealised representation of bourgeois motherhood. As a result, during this decade, she enjoyed a

peculiar, paradoxical symbolic meaning, representing both the worst excesses of the ancien

r'egime and the best values of the new bourgeois moral order.

Lynn Hunt contends that Marie Antoinette had, in a sense, multiple bodies. These numerous

bodies were assaulted and destroyed one at a time because they stood in for the potential threats

to the Republic, both knowingly and unconsciously, to borrow one of the common revolutionary

metaphors for counterrevolution.

Royal Portraiture: Marie Antoinette’s attempt to shape a Reputation

Propaganda is one of the primary purposes of royal portraits. The aim of a royal portrait,

whether it was delivered as a diplomatic gift or displayed for the general public, was to conjure

images of the royal personage's grandeur, authority, and glory. Louis XVI of France's reign

(1774–1791) saw a new height of the propagandistic significance of royal portraits. It was crucial

for the monarchs to project a public persona that portrayed the royal family as benign rulers who

cared for their subjects at this period of political upheaval and revolution in France.
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The French people expected to see their king and queen shown in the manner prescribed

by these customs since French royal portraiture greatly relied on tradition. Marie-Antoinette, the

queen of Louis XVI, did not always follow the established pattern of regal representation,

nevertheless. Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun a young woman artists who was especially known for

minimising defects and inserting a personality and unique character to the subject was chosen as

the official portraits of Queen Marie antoinette , painting over 30 portraits for the royalty3. It is

fundamental to understand other portraits illustating the standard representation of the queen

where she is often represented as a strong woman including attributes like the crown, classical

columns that convey power and strength , elaborate hairstyles such as the pouf and expensive

clothing, placed mostly in a royal palace as a setting, later acting as the epitome of rococo

characterization of intricate and dreamy motion. For instance, “Portrait of Marie Antoinette of

Austria”, 1775 by Jean Baptistse-Andre’ Gautier-Gatody, illustrates a strong woman in an

elaborate blue and white silk gown placing her hand over a globe implying how the french

empire was conquering many countries and the glory of ancien regime. Later, motherhood

becomes a vital subject for many royal portraits as Marie Antoinette is surrounded by her kids

and strollers showing her as a loving mother, nurturing the nation as she does with the future

king.

3
Mary Sheriff, The Exceptional Woman: Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun and the Cultural Politics of Art ,The University of
Chicago Press, 1996
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Figure 1. Jean Baptistse-Andre’ Gautier-Gatody, “Portrait of Marie Antoinette of Austria”, 1775.

Figure 2. Vigée-Lebrun, , Elisabeth. “Marie-Antoinette (La Reine En Gaulle).” Kronberg: Hessische

Hausstiftung, 1783. National Gallery of Art, . Washington, D.C.

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However, Elisabeth Vigee-leburn’s ability to uniquely illustrate an individual’s

personality through a portrait and constructing a public persona through art drew Marie

Antoinette’s attempt to shape a reputation and sway the public unrest. Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun,

the queen's favourite painter, created a portrait for Marie-Antoinette wearing the chemise à la

reine in 1783 and displayed it openly at the Académie. The Académie du Peintre et Sculpture's

inaugural art show, the biennial Salon du Paris, took place in the Louvre in late August 1783

where the focal point of the collection was a three-quarter-length image of a woman in a white

gauze dress and flower-adorned straw hat, holding a blooming pink rose tenderly between her

fingers with one hand while weaving a soft blue silk ribbon around its stem with the other. In a

week, it would be taken down amid a commotion, and both the sitter and the artist would become

the targets of slander with broad repercussions. Due to the queen's unusual attire which was a

white cotton muslin cloth worn usually as undergarments the populace was outraged by this

painting and the painting was removed and replaced with one by Vigée-Lebrun that depicted her

in more formal clothes. The initial attempt of this portrait was to invoke an earthly vision of the

Queen however, it invoked scandals and was censored later due to various speculated reasons.

Firstly, it did not align with Rousseau’s and montesquieu’s popular norms of femininity and

sexuality. 4Secondly, few costume and fashion historians believe the reason behind why the Paris

elite reacted with disgust at the sight of the queen in a similar outfit is because the chemise gown

(a gualle) is associated with Creole women5. Thus, hinting that this controversy stemmed from

racism. Thridly, Marie Antoinette chose to wear imported cloth instead of french silks, she

attempts to portray a pastoral idealism which did not exist at the time of economic crisis. It can

4
Stefan Zweig, Eden Paul, and Cedar Paul, Marie-Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman, 106, 1932.
5
Dobie, Madeline. Trading Places: Colonization and Slavery in Eighteenth-Century French Culture. Cornell
University Press, 2010.
 10

be evaluated how her affinity with minimalism and need for comfort influenced the clothes she

wore, This enables us to examine both her attempt to project her private identity onto others and

the visual evidence that her critics believed showed her scandalous, impure character being

reflected in clothing considered inappropriate for a queen. However, later similar dresses were

deemed fashionable in english and french markets.

In order to calm the controversy of chemise à la reine where the queen had crossed the

boundary of propreity to impropriety , a few months later Elisabeth Vigee-leburn painted

“Portrait of Marie Antoinette” in 1783 6. The artist depicts the queen as a more socially digestible

royal figure where she is wearing blue silk dress with white lace, pouf adforned with feathers

without sacrificing the aim of the patron which was being represented as a young woman rather

than a queen. The idealistion and status can be also be viewed in the posture and the

porcelain-like skin illuminating the canvas. The rococo art style of delicate contour lines and

hazy dreamlike environment is evident. Marie Antoinette stills holds a rose weaving a silk ribbon

onto it in a garden setting and is viewed as an aristocratic woman more than a queen. Hence,

Marie-Antoinette actively commissioned portraits that portrayed her as a good queen and mother

in order to overcome the terrible rumours and public backlash that surrounded her.

6
Heidi A. Strobel, “Royal ‘Matronage’ of Women Artists in the Late-18th Century,” in Women’s Art Journal 26,
No. 2, 2006.
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Figure 3. Vigée-Lebrun, , Elisabeth. “Marie Antoinette with a Rose.” Lynda and Stewart Resnick, 1783.

National Gallery of Art, . Washington, D.C.

Marie-Antoinette became embroiled in a controversy in 1785, two years after the failure

of La Reine en gaulle, and it would follow her for the rest of her life. The Diamond Necklace

Affair was a year-long scandal in which the queen was charged with conspiring to obtain the

infamous necklace—known as the "Slave's Collar"—that Louis XV had ordered for Madame du

Barry. The most well-known piece of jewellery in France, a diamond necklace with 647 perfect

diamonds totaling over 1.5 million livres, was created by Parisian jewellers Boehmer and

Bassange7. It had been ordered by Louis XV for Madame Du Barry, but he later changed his

mind due to the jewel's price. The necklace was presented to Louis XVI in 1778 for his queen,

but he declined it along with the noble. But by 1785, Madame de La Motte had succeeded in

convincing Rohan that the queen had her heart set on this pricey bauble, whose acquisition
7
Hunt, Lynn Avery, and Sarah Maza. “The Diamond Necklace Affair Revisited (1785-1786): The Case of the
Missing Queen.” Essay. In Eroticism and the Body Politic. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.
 12

would guarantee the cardinal's political fortune. A purchase order that the queen had properly

approved and signed was produced.The item was given to Rohan and the countess on the

evening of February 1st, 1785, and then given to a man claiming to be the queen's valet. The

necklace, which Rohan was meant to pay for over several years in instalments, was soon

dismantled, and the diamonds were sold on the Parisian and Londoner underworld markets. The

Diamond Necklace Affair served as a theme and repertory for the voluminous and especially

vicious anti-Marie Antoinette writing that started to appear in 1789 especially accusing her of

political corruption and pro-austrian sentiments in french courts.

Political Pornography and Imagery

Political pornography and caricatures in pamphlets featured Marie Antoinette and her

private life often due to reasons pertaining to her Austrian heritage, lack of consummation and

heir after marriage and interfering in public sphere. In the Queen's 1793 trial, which included

allegations of numerous extramarital affairs, including incestuous ties with her own children,

these pamphlets were also a major point of discussion.

Dictionary definitions of the erotic in the eighteenth century included the concept of love.

The Encyclopedie states that the term "erotic" also had associations with delirium and an

excessive craving for physical pleasure. the Encyclopedie do not contain the word "pornography"

but in 1769, Retif de la Bretonne published Le Pornographe, a rambling work that was equal

parts novel and tract.Retif was making a play on the original Greek definition of pornography by

writing about prostitution and connecting this to the issue of women in public throughout the
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eighteenth century (le publicisme des femmes). Rousseau extended Montesquieu's general

criticism of women's propensity for self-display in public and its corrupting consequences on

masculine virtue into a general rejection of women's exploitation of their sexuality to affect

public affairs. Thus, the great thinkers of the Enlightenment themselves developed the link

between feminine eroticism and the body politic, arguing that the latter was primarily corrupted

by the former. Female eroticism was particularly unsettling because it eroded the boundaries

between the private and public spheres; eroticism was the invasion of what was fundamentally a

private domain.

Due to female immorality, social hierarchy, and the outdated ancien régime ideas, Queen

Marie-body Antoinette's became the leading example for the nation's degradation. The

illustrations from Marie-Antoinette of Austria's Vie privée, libertine, et scandaleuse, which were

published anonymously in 1793, show this. In one image, the queen is seen fondling princesse de

Guémenée, one of her ladies-in-waiting, while in the other, she is seen conversing with both a

man and a woman while wearing a plumed cap8.During the Revolutionary era, lesbian

representations were a common motif used to morally and politically disenfranchise women,

particularly in pictures that targeted prominent old-order women like the queen and other female

aristocrats9.

8
Hunt, Lynn Avery, and Lynn Hunt. “The Many Bodies of Marie Antoinette: Political Pornography and the Problem
of the Feminine in the French Revolution .” Essay. In Eroticism and the Body Politic, 115–23. Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2009.
9
Nacol, Angela Rene. “Visions of Disorder: Sex and the French Revolution in a Suite of Erotic Drawings by
Claude-Louis Desrais.” Thesis, Texas Christian University, 2008.
 14

Figure 4. Anonymous, engraving of Marie-Antoinette in embrace with a man and a woman from Vie privée,

libertine, et scandaleuse de Marie Antoinette d’Autriche, 1793, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.

Figure 5. Vinck, Carl de, Ma Constitution : [estampe], 1859-19.

Author:
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Other revolutionary prints make it clear that the political and the sexual, and particularly

the pudendum, are related. For instance, the queen's genitalia are designated res publica, Latin

for "republic," but also a pun meaning "public thing," "public king," as well as "pubic thing," in

Ma Constitution , which is undated but most likely dates to 1791. The phrase "Ma Constitution''

alludes to both the physical constitution of an individual as well as the political constitution of

France, which would be approved in September 1791.As a result, it implies that a setting that

results in a political constitution maintains and encourages the libertine personalities of the queen

and her fictitious lover, General Lafayette, leader of the National Guard. The sculpture relief on

the stand to the right, which depicts an ejaculating penis, highlights Lafayette's amorous function

as a putto, a symbol of love associated with Venus, knocks the king's crown off the globe of the

world10. The design of Ma Constitution and the royal emblemata may be an allusion to the

sensational frontispiece of the secret illustrated pamphlet Les Fureurs uterines (1791), in which

that artist dared to show the queen's and Lafayette's enflamed genitalia.Without a monarch, Ma

Constitution's world (lamonde) is now reportedly ruled by the queen, also known as a femme du

monde, a prostitute in the seventeenth century (the relationship between queen and prostitute

being repeatedly noted). Additionally, the artist played on the similar pronunciation of the words

mont and monde to make a reference to the queen's "mons veneris'' or "mountain de Venus."

Lafayette reaffirmed the queen's supremacy over the world by vowing devotion to her nation.

Such authority violated the morality created by the political and public sphere, which establishes

what is legal and illegal, permitted and forbidden.

10
Nacol, Angela Rene. “Visions of Disorder: Sex and the French Revolution in a Suite of Erotic Drawings by
Claude-Louis Desrais.” Thesis, Texas Christian University, 2008.
 16

Figure 6. Anonymous, The Two Are But One (Les deux ne font qu'un), French, 18th century.

Moreover, King Louis XVI was not frequently made fun of in print during the early years

of the French Revolution. It wasn't until the evening of June 20, 1791, when Louis and his family

sought to leave Paris for a Royalist stronghold where he intended to start a counterrevolution,

that public opinion started to swing more strongly against him11. Louis and Queen

Marie-Antoinette subsequently became popular targets for French caricaturists, who frequently

portrayed them as animals with human heads in an attempt to reverse anthropomorphize them.

Here, the royal couple is represented as a bipedal entity with opposing forces. The queen has the

body of a hyena and wears a lavish headdress made of ostrich feathers and serpents which is a

play on her Austrian lineage whereas the king has the body of a pig with horns of cuckold

referencing the queen's numerous cases of alleged adultery.

11
“The Two Are But One (Les Deux Ne Font Qu'un).” Metmuseum.org. The Elisha Whittelsey Fund. Accessed
October 17, 2022. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/393244.
 17

Figure 7. William Holland,​F

​ rontispiece to Reflections on the French Revolution, 1790.

Interestingly, the publication of Edmund Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution on

November 1st, 1790, sparked an incredible number of reactions, including the creation of this

print the very following day. William Holland, the publisher of this caricature, and many other

print publishers in England at the time were keen to capitalize on the dramatic events,

particularly those taking place in England12. Edmund Burke is shown bowing down before Marie

Antoinette, the Queen of France, in this caricature, which was recently credited to Frederick

George Byron. Burke's attention is riveted on Marie Antoinette, who is clad in garments

reminiscent of Greek goddesses and standing on a cloud.Burke is made fun of for his adoration

of Marie Antoinette in Reflections on the French Revolution. The famous paragraph, which

starts "It is already sixteen years since I met the Queen of France" and concludes "I thought ten

thousand swords must have rushed from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened

12
Holland, William. “Frontispiece to Reflections on the French Revolution, 1790.” 4 frontispiece to reflections on
the French Revolution. Accessed October 16, 2022.
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/obl4he/frenchrevolution/4_frontispiece_to_reflections_on_the_french_revolut
ion.html.
 18

her with insult - But the period of Chivalry is gone," is selected for the caricature. Burke sent a

manuscript of this piece to British statesman and pamphleteer Philip Frances some months

before it was published, and Frances responded, "All that you say of the Queen is pure foppery."

Burke's support for the Queen was quickly made fun of by caricaturists attempting to turn people

against him and his views on the Revolution.

Figure 8. Anonymous, A cartoon of Marie Antoinette as a harpy, tearing up The Declaration of the Rights

of Man with her claws.

In political smears, Marie Antoinette is frequently portrayed as a harpy. Greek

mythology's harpy is typically pictured as having a bird's body and a woman's head. The

narrative of Phineas, a prophet condemned by Zeus for misusing his gift, is where the character

of the harpy first appeared. Phineas was made to sit before a feast of food, but he was unable to

eat because harpies kept stealing it from his hands. Harpies were consequently connected with

women and came to stand for cruelty and greed. It depicts a political caricature showing Marie
 19

Antoinette as a harpy, her claws trampling The Declaration of the Rights of Man13. This

medallion eschews the conventional Declaration of the Rights of Man being torn up by Marie

Antoinette's cartoon harpy claws.The bird-woman harpy showed the Queen as a hideous creature

with the appearance of a dragon. Such a representation equates the Queen with the harpy myth,

making her out to be a nasty and insatiable person.

Conclusion

Following her downfall, Marie Antoinette has gained notoriety, and the French

Revolution has come to be associated with her name. While Marie Antoinette clichés have been

used to appeal to modern audiences in cultural products like movies and magazines, the debate

over women in politics is still important today. Even though it is out of date, the Revolution and

Robespierre's criticism of Marie Antoinette as a horrible, public lady still apply to modern

women in politics. Our conversations continue to center on issues related to appropriate gender

roles, particularly for "political" or "public women." The Marie Antoinette trial, which was

overseen by Robespierre, was used as a tool to help him solidify his own power and to advance

The Terror's Cult of Domesticity, with Marie Antoinette being portrayed as the quintessential

wicked woman and being punished as such. Ultimately, her gendered body has been the topic of

disputes in the past and present, including whether it is too feminine, not feminine enough,

masculine, over-sexed, not sexed enough, maternal, or not which is especially visible through

royal art and public caricatures.

13
Antonia Fraser, Marie Antoinette: The Journey (New York: Anchor Books, 359), 2002
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Bibliography

Dobie, Madeline. Trading Places: Colonization and Slavery in Eighteenth-Century French

Culture. Cornell University Press, 2010.

Holland, William. “Frontispiece to Reflections on the French Revolution, 1790.” 4

frontispiece to reflections on the French Revolution. Accessed October 16, 2022.
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/obl4he/frenchrevolution/4_frontispiece_to_reflectio
ns_on_the_french_revolution.html.

Hunt, Lynn Avery, and Lynn Hunt. “The Many Bodies of Marie Antoinette: Political
Pornography and the Problem of the Feminine in the French Revolution .” Essay. In
Eroticism and the Body Politic, 115–23. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
2009.

Hunt, Lynn Avery, and Sarah Maza. “The Diamond Necklace Affair Revisited
(1785-1786): The Case of the Missing Queen.” Essay. In Eroticism and the Body Politic.
Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.

Nacol, Angela Rene. “Visions of Disorder: Sex and the French Revolution in a Suite of
Erotic Drawings by Claude-Louis Desrais.” Thesis, Texas Christian University, 2008.

“The Two Are But One (Les Deux Ne Font Qu'un).” Metmuseum.org. The Elisha
Whittelsey Fund. Accessed October 17, 2022.
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/393244.

Vigée-Lebrun, , Elisabeth. “Marie-Antoinette (La Reine En Gaulle).” Kronberg: Hessische

Hausstiftung, 1783. National Gallery of Art, . Washington, D.C.

Anonymous, engraving of Marie-Antoinette in embrace with a man and a woman from Vie
privée, libertine, et scandaleuse de Marie Antoinette d’Autriche, 1793, Bibliothèque
Nationale, Paris.

Vigée-Lebrun, , Elisabeth. “Marie Antoinette with a Rose.” Lynda and Stewart Resnick, 1783.

National Gallery of Art, . Washington, D.C.