History has given us no shortage of legendary queens, but few have been as mythicized ad nauseum, and with such unbridled enthusiasm, as Marie Antoinette. And even though it has been 230 years since her unfortunate demise, there is still apparently no bankable influencer quite like this fallen queen. Let's review.
There was the pearl and diamond pendant from her collection that sold for $36 million at Sotheby's Geneva in 2018 that broke a new auction record, snatching the title away from Elizabeth Taylor's La Peregrina. (Two other pieces also sold for more than $2 million each.) Christie's Geneva followed, in 2021, with a treasure of its own from the queen's coffers: a pair of three-strand bracelets studded with 112 diamonds that sold for $8.2 million. In 2020 everyone wanted to dress like Marie Antoinette (including someone who paid $50,000 for one of her silk slippers). Now everyone wants to decorate like her. In November 2022, two rare pieces of furniture from her collection sold at Christie's Paris for nearly $1 million each, one a Pierre Macret commode in le goût chinois the queen had installed at Château de Compiègne, the other a Georges Jacob fauteuil commissioned in the 1780s as part of an entire pseudo-Etruscan set to remodel her apartments at Versailles.
"Marie Antoinette has always been and will always remain timeless and enduring. It's hard to think of a comparable figure in today’s society who dictates taste to the level that she did in French society," says Mario Tavella, president of Sotheby’s France and chairman of Sotheby’s Europe, who will give the FOMO-stricken another chance in May, when Sotheby's Paris offers up more of Marie Antoinette's furniture. We can also thank famed interior designer Jacques Garcia for the opportunity: In order to fund the preservation of Château du Champ-de-Bataille, the sprawling Louis le Vau-designed Normandy estate he bought in the '90s, Garcia is parting with 75 of the masterpieces (in honor of his age) he had acquired to restore the place to its 17th-century splendor. Five of them definitely belonged to Marie Antoinette while three have been deemed by the house's specialists to have very likely been hers too, which makes this one of the most prolific displays of treasures with M.A. provenance to be featured in a single sale.
"Marie Antoinette was the ultimate tastemaker of her time, and demanded the best of the best in all aspects of her interiors and the wealth of objects that she surrounded herself with," Tavella says. "The resurgence of interest in her furnishings mirrors the increased interest from a new generation of collectors in French decorative arts of the highest quality—and a renewed focus on the importance of craftsmanship."
Don't have a few million to spare? The queen will also enjoy an artistic renaissance this year. If you happen to be in L.A., beginning February 14 the Getty Center will display two sets of extremely important and extremely fabulous Sèvres porcelain vases that were owned by Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
But it can't all be cake, can it? In March, the Musée des Archives Nationales in Paris opens an exhibit that offers a more sobering look at her life, particularly the three years Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI spent at Tuileries Palace, where they were put under house arrest after being forced out of Versailles in 1789. This would be their last stop before prison—and then, well, you know.
And then there is Marie Antoinette, a French-British television production created by Deborah Davis (who wrote The Favourite), which makes its U.S. debut on PBS on March 19. It joins a landscape that has really glittered lately with sumptuous period pieces centered on history's most iconic queens—just in the last year we've watched tales about Queen Elizabeth I (Starz's Becoming Elizabeth), Catherine de' Medici (Starz's The Serpent Queen), Catherine the Great (Hulu's ongoing The Great), and Empress Sisi (Netflix's The Empress). As has become de rigueur for this genre—and a sign of our times—Marie Antoinette will make its own valiant effort to set some records straight.
"She was a very different person from what history clings to. She wasn't a careless ruler with no regard for the French people. She was misunderstood and saw the world through her own lens," says German actress Emilia Schüle, who did plenty of research to prepare for her role as the young queen. "She was much more complex and much more modern. I actually think she really embodies our views today of equality, individuality, and self-determination."
Leena Kim is an editor at Town & Country, where she covers travel, jewelry, education, weddings, and culture.
