Summary
18 October 2012
A pair of Marie Antoinette's slippers and a garment she wore while in prison were auctioned in Paris to mark the anniversary of her execution. Among the 80 lots on offer were portraits and etchings of the queen and her ill-fated husband King Louis XVI.
Reporter:
Christian Fraser
A pair of Marie Antoinette's slippers she wore while in prison.
Listen
Click to hear the report
Report
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 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.
Listen
Click to hear the vocabulary
Vocabulary
- guillotine
machine used for execution, cutting off heads
- amassed
collected
- opulent
luxurious or expensive
- execution
putting a person to death
- goes under the hammer
is sold at an auction
- scaffold
platform of the guillotine
- fragment
very small piece
- etchings
pictures created by scratching away the surface of something
- artefacts
ancient, man-made object
- tyranny
powerful or severe government regime
