The Architecture of Luxury by Condello Annette

Author:Condello, Annette.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.
Published: 2014-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

Charges of Excess

Architectural luxury is not without moral dimension and charges were soon laid against Marie-Antoinette and Francois de Monville. That their seemingly rustic hors dœuvres were in reality luxurious entertainment venues fuelled criticisms of excess, especially as many in France were then in essential need of food and shelter. Apathetic to the country’s financial crisis and the acute food shortage amongst her populace, Marie-Antoinette nonetheless spent copiously on her hamlet – mocking peasants, their lifestyle and their hovels. Around 1787, revelation that France’s treasury was bankrupt compelled her new nickname: ‘Madame Deficit’.96 Another source of moral sanction was the popularly held belief that Marie-Antoinette’s acts within her architectural hors dœuvres were ‘unnatural’. Known for her promiscuity, the queen was charged for ‘having an immoral affair with a cardinal’97 in 1785. The ensuing scandal ‘tarnished and discredited the French crown’.98 The ultimate consequence of Marie-Antoinette’s behavior is legendary.

Francois de Monville’s repute as a playboy who lavishly entertained guests at Desert de Retz eventually led the revolutionary bureaucracy to condemn his private retreat as an objetde luxe - consequently and ironically, the Broken Column actually began to decay. As to de Monville himself, like Marie-Antoinette, his sybaritic lifestyle and promiscuity attracted attack in the Reign of Terror. Of the charges laid against him, two are most relevant to our concern with luxury. De Monville was accused of sybaritisme, meaning aristocratic corruption. He was also charged with Anglomania;99 his enthusiasms for English culture, as most flagrantly displayed at his English-inspired garden, had now become intolerable. In 1794, shortly after Marie-Antoinette’s execution, de Monville was imprisoned. Although he would escape the guillotine, by the time of his prison release he was financially ruined.

The Desert de Retz and the Petit Trianon were extravagant, unnecessary and superfluous. Architectural hors dœuvres such as these were no less luxurious than the palaces or grand houses they out-laid. This quality was enhanced by their stylistic exoticism – although English in appearance, their designs were the products of French hands. Today, Francois de Monville and Marie-Antoinette’s luxurious constructions have not been forgotten; both were recently remembered in films. Thomas Jefferson’s visit to the Broken Column prompted James Ivory to include the house in his biographical vignette, Jefferson in Paris (1995), and the Petit Trianon emerged, inevitably, as an important setting in Benoit Jacquot’s Farewell, My Queen (2012). One wonders if these centuries’ old iconic specimens of spatial luxury still resonate as such in our world, one where luxury is now mass-produced and no longer the exclusive provenance of royalty and aristocrats.

Both Ketcham and Goetz report on the views of eighteenth-century historical figures who considered the queen and the aristocrat as immoral. The reason for this is because the hors dœuvre spaces they used for entertaining led to criticisms of excess because there were no building facilities for the destitute (or food). Arguably, some of the architectural hors dœuvres were permissible and tolerable and were subsequently morally sanctioned because Marie-Antoinette and de Monville’s actions were ‘unnatural’.

The queen also spent copiously on her hamlet, apparently apathetic about the country’s financial crisis.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.