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Before Marie-Antoinette arrived at the guillotine, she amassed an opulent collection of artwork and furniture. And today, in Paris to mark the anniversary of her execution on the 16th of October 1793, some of it goes under the hammer. Of particular note, a pair of green and pink silk slippers which belonged to the queen. Not one of the shoes she dropped while climbing the scaffold, that still resides in a French museum. But there is a framed cotton sleeve of a garment she wore in prison. And a fragment of a patterned silk dress she owned before her arrest. There are portraits and etchings of the king and queen, glassware, candelabras, dinner sets, and, among other historic artefacts, a fork and spoon from St Helena that belonged to Napoleon. All together they are the symbols of a decadent tyranny but they still hold great fascination, and not just to the French. |