RMN Grand Palais. In late 1789, the royal family was moved from Versailles and placed in captivity in Paris. Following a grueling two-day trial, Marie was found guilty of crimes against the state and followed her husband to the guillotine on October 16, 1793. It is not possible to visit the Temple tower where the family was imprisoned.

Scientists used DNA from royal relatives (as well as a lock of Marie’s hair) to conclusively match it to a sample taken from Louis-Charles’ preserved heart, proving once and for all that the doomed-dauphin had not escaped. In 1778, Vigée Le Brun was invited for the first time to paint a portrait of Marie Antoinette, who was suitably impressed. This is very help full for my project thank you. Marie Antoinette’s first child – Madame Royale Marie Thérèse. © RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY.

This wound up starting a trend among French noblewomen. However, when you get off the subway at station “Temple” you are at the right location! In 1785, by order of Louis XVI, the office of royal households commissioned this important portrait of Marie Antoinette from Vigée Le Brun, the first woman to attain the rank of painter to the king. Marie Thérèse is all alone. Their second son, Louis-Charles, was born in 1785. She was a master of technique, a daring colourist, and a lively portrayer of character who used studio props such as bright red shawls, turbans, plumed hats and ribbons to dramatic effect. After his death, Louis Charles became the new dauphin of France. When he died in the Netherlands in 1845, his death certificate and gravestone both identified him as Louis XVII. Stripped of all the finery that had for so long defined her, Marie was treated horrifically by her jailers. Now, however, she was asked to create something different: something that would restore Marie Antoinette’s image as a loving mother and guarantor of dynastic continuity. In the meantime, her father's eldest surviving brother proclaimed himself King of France as Louis XVIII. Marie Antoinette and her Children is unusual among them, as it was commissioned not by the queen herself, but rather by the office of the Bâtiments du Roi, the equivalent of our Department of Canadian Heritage. The summer of 1786 marked a turbulent time for French politics. Viewers familiar with Versailles might recognize, in the left background, the famed Hall of Mirrors: a tribute to Louis XIV, the first absolute monarch of France. Your email address will not be published. He had virtually no contact with other people and was not informed of the execution of his mother (16 October 1793) and his aunt Madame Elisabeth (10 May 1794). — was just 14. Less than two years later, in June 1795, 10-year-old Louis-Charles died, likely from tuberculosis worsened by his mistreatment. Find out what you can see and do at the Gallery in Ottawa, what’s new online, and where the collection is on view worldwide. The painting did not, of course, save Marie Antoinette from the guillotine. But later on, the mother and her children were separated. After that, she became a mother to three other children; Louis Joseph, Louis Charles, and Sophie Hélène. Being the elder daughter of her parents, Thérèse was given the title Madame Royale. Louis-Auguste was crowned as the King of France in 1774 at the age of 19.

The French nobleman was just 15, while Marie Antoinette — one of the youngest daughters of Austrian Empress Maria Theresa and Holy Roman Emperor Francis I. Sophie Hélène was the last and the least-surviving child of her doomed parents. The personal contents were placed in a box and weren't revealed until more than 100 years after the president's assassination. Rumours rose that this women was the traumatized Marie Thérèse, who had swapped places with another lady during the French revolution. But not artistically. Lucy Worsley discovers that the doomed Queen was much more than a passive victim and uncovers the myths and secrets that led her to the guillotine. She spends the last years of ther life in Schloss Frohsdorf, near Vienna.