Box containing souvenirs of the royal family's captivity Inc - Lot 105

Box containing souvenirs of the royal family's captivity Included in three coaster plates. PLATE I. SKIN GLOVE THAT BELONGED TO THE DAUPHIN PLATE II. MEETING OF FOUR HORSES OF HAIR PLATE III. WIRE STRAPPED BY MARIE-ANTOINETTE & FRAGMENTS OF TENTURE PAPERS Height: 25 cm Width: 22 cm Provenance: - Duchesse de Tourzel (1749-1832), governess to the children of France, preserved in her descendants. Exhibitions: - "Marie-Antoinette et son Temps", Galerie Sedelmeyer, 1894, p. 23, nos. 15, 18 and 19; - "La reine Marie-Antoinette et sa cour", Bibliothèque de Versailles, May-June 1927, p. 54, no. 284. - Commemoration of the French Revolution", Paris Musée Carnavalet, 1939, p. 66, n°451, 505 and 510 - "Marie-Antoinette Archiduchesse, Dauphine et Reine", Château de Versailles, May 16 to November 2 1955. PLAQUE I. A GANT DE PEAU AYONNEMENTU AU DAUPHIN found by concierge Richard in the Queen's cell at the Conciergerie, after her departure for the scaffold; recovered by Fouquier-Tinville with the letter addressed to Mme Elisabeth, seized after 9 thermidor, by Courtois; returned in 1815 to Louis XVIII and given as a souvenir to Mme de Tourzel. Rosalie Lamorlière(1), who was a servant at the Conciergerie during Marie-Antoinette's captivity, recounts the queen's last days under the dictation of Lafont d'Aussounne, and evokes this glove: "She wore, hidden in her corset, the portrait of the young King and a curl of her hair wrapped in a small glove of yellow skin that had been used for the child, and I noticed that she often hid near her miserable girt bed to kiss, weeping, these objects. She was searched several times at the Conciergerie, and her watch, suspended from her neck by a beautiful chain, was brutally snatched from her. However, a few days before her death, she still owned the locket containing the portrait of the young King. I don't know what will have become of it"(1) p. 94 And in her conversation with Madame Simon-Viennot, Rosalie provides a previously unpublished addition: "When daylight came, that is, around eight o'clock in the morning, I went back to Madame to help her dress, as she had instructed me, and, having signaled me to stand in front of her bed to prevent the gendarme from seeing her body... The gendarmerie officer approached us at once, and, standing by the bolster, watched the Princess change. Her Majesty immediately put her kerchief back on her shoulders, and, with great gentleness, said to the young man: "In the name of honesty, Sir, allow me to change my linen without a witness. I cannot consent," replied the gendarme abruptly; "my orders are to keep an eye on your every move. The Queen sighed, and put on her last shirt with all possible care and modesty. The disturbance caused by the gendarme's brutality prevented me from noticing whether the princess still had M. le Dauphin's medallion; but I was pleased to see that she was carefully rolling up her poor bloody shirt; she enclosed it in one of her sleeves as if in a scabbard, and then squeezed this linen into a space that she saw between the old paper cloth and the wall."(2) p. 90-91 Finally, the underglaze plaque presents a text printed from Rosalie Lamorlière's statements, tracing the glove's journey after the Queen's death, from its discovery in the cell to its transmission to the royal family's faithful: When the Queen left the Conciergerie for the scaffold, she gave the concierge Richard the testament letter she had written, asking him to forward it to her sister-in-law, Madame Elisabeth. Then, immediately after Marie-Antoinette's departure, Richard inventoried the contents of the cell; he found the little glove, collected it and took it and the letter to Fouquier-Tinville. Fouquier-Tinville did not pass the letter on to Madame Elisabeth, but kept it and the glove in his cabinet. The Commission appointed Courtois as rapporteur; this Conventional had to deal with Fouquier-Tinville's role. He went to his cabinet, visited his papers, found Marie-Antoinette's will and the glove, and kept both items with him. In 1815, he still had them. Persecuted at the time, constantly under house arrest and ill, he thought he could obtain some favors by returning Marie-Antoinette's last letter and the little glove. As soon as this was done, M. Decaze, in the Chamber of Deputies, and M. de Chateaubriand, in the Chamber of Peers, read the letter. The little glove, in memory of Mme Tourzel's devotion to the royal family, was given to her by the King." (1)Rosalie Lamorlière, La dernière prison de Marie-Antoinette, [preface to