Let Them Eat Macarons? Dissonant heritage of Marie Antoinette at Petit Trianon

ABSTRACT

Through an analysis of the Petit Trianon, the historic house museum at the Château de Versailles associated with Marie Antoinette, the present article invites reflection over the topic of dissonant heritage (Tunbridge and Ashworth 1996) in connection with heritage commodification. The aim of this study is to heighten awareness of the difficulties which historic house legacies face in postmodern society through heritage analyses placed in the context of museology, art history and popular culture. This is achieved by building upon curatorial approaches and their reception by visitors, within an assessment of the 2008 restoration ethos of the Estate of Marie-Antoinette, and in parallel with a process of heritage commodification indirectly related to a twenty-first century Hollywood biopic of the last Queen of France - Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette (2006). Competition surges between official and popular discourses of heritage (Groote and Haartsen 2008), all dealing, however, with the power of the same clichés engraved onto the French ‘collective memory’ (Halbwachs [1950]1980). This article highlights issues that arise when curatorial interpretation and visitor perceptions find themselves under the auspices of postmodern visual culture, thereby setting traps for heritage authenticity (Ashworth and Howard 1999).

KEYWORDS:

• Marie Antoinette
• Petit Trianon
• dissonant heritage
• cliché
• macarons

Acknowledgments

This article draws on data collected during my doctoral research with Plymouth University at the Château de Versailles. Special thanks to the Department of Tourism (PU), in particular my thesis supervisors and colleagues Dr Graham Busby, Professor Paul Brunt and Dr Charlie Mansfield, as well as Architecture Professor Robert Brown and Art History Professor Daniel Maudlin. At the Château de Versailles, to Jérémie Benoît (Estate of Marie-Antoinette Head Curator), Philippe Baudin (Heritage Architect), Pierre-Xavier Hans (Eighteenth–century Decorative Arts Curator), and last but not least, Marie-Laëtitia Lachèvre (Head Librarian). For image-reproduction permissions, I am grateful to curator Yves Carlier and Géraldine Bidault at Château de Versailles; and to Jim Löfgren at Östergotlands Museum. Finally, I would like to thank IJHS, its editor, Professor Laurajane Smith, and the two anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The developed conceptual model (Figure 1) translates Marie Antoinette’s identity as ‘image versus role’ and it does not identify the image of Marie Antoinette with the image of the site, the latter being only incidentally used as supporting evidence in proving the artificial construction of the former.

2. Art history knowledge was evaluated through the visitor discourses of the survey at the Petit Trianon. The respondents were given the opportunity to identify whether their ‘acquaintance’ with the historical character of Marie Antoinette had been facilitated by (school) history books, novels, films, and/or art exhibitions and publications.

3. Figure 1 is based on visitor groups referring to a majority of the public.

4. In the context of other heritage sites connected to Marie Antoinette’s tragic end and violent death – such as La Conciergerie in Paris – theories on trauma and commemoration rather than dissonance, apply. In the case of the Petit Trianon were selected only the relevant theories connected to dissonance arisen from contrasting ideologies.

5. Military guards impose a strict atmosphere of respect inside the Mausoleum. Also, there are still newlyweds who visit ‘Uncle Lenin’ in the tradition of the former Soviet Union, despite the fact that today’s Russian Federation is a multi-party system. By contrast, Lenin’s statue was promptly removed from public squares in former Eastern-Bloc countries, such as in Bucharest, Romania, following the 1989 revolution, which was observed by the author, a Romanian native (who also visited Moscow in 1987).

6. Marie Antoinette began the project of transformation on the gardens as early as 1774 when becoming queen. Her last day spent at the Petit Trianon was 5 October 1789. In art history, the Estate of the Petit Trianon (Architect Richard Mique and Enlightenment artist Hubert Robert) is considered to represent an iconic model of late eighteenth-century French cultural landscape.

7. The opening of the museum was orchestrated to coincide with the Universal Exhibition held in Paris that year.

8. Pierre de Nolhac became head curator of Château de Versailles in 1892, and retired after hosting the famous World War I Treaty in 1919.

9. This complex topic makes the subject of further analysis (see Maior-Barron 2018).

10. But these boards are very rarely read by the majority of visitors, according to my own observations and confirmed by heritage architect Philippe Baudin (personal communication, 22 April 2011).

11. The ground and first floors which are part of the usual individual visit, emphasise the feel of Marie Antoinette’s home, whilst the last two floors display also other ownership periods, being accessible only with guided tours.

12. For details of the wider context of art exodus from the Petit Trianon and the Palace of Versailles as well as retrieval policies, see Maior-Barron (2018).

13. Ladurée was chosen by Sofia Coppola to be the confectioner for her biopic of the last Queen of France; the firm associated themselves with the film in their advertising, moreover launching the Marie-Antoinette macaron in 2006.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Denise Maior-Barron

Denise Maior-Barron former Erasmus Heritage Masters student of Professor Peter J. Howard, obtained her PhD from Plymouth University, UK in collaboration with the Chteau de Versailles, France. Having taught at the School of Architecture, Environment and Design (PU), she is currently Visiting Research Fellow with the Plymouth Business School in the Department of Tourism and Hospitality (PU) and a Reader at the Huntington Library, California, USA. Her research focuses on authenticity vs. commodification in the context of critical cultural heritage and tourist consumption studies, with an emphasis on rehabilitative history and popular-culture myths in the social imaginary.