Marie-Antoinette: a walk through the life of a queen

0 Comments | AFP, March, 2008

PARIS (AFP) — Feckless child-queen or tragic victim of history's march? From the nursery to the scaffold, a major Paris exhibition on Marie-Antoinette takes a look at the divisive French monarch through hundreds of belongings and artworks associated with her life.

Starting with her childhood in the imperial household in Vienna, the show charts Marie-Antoinette's arrival in 1770 at the court of Louix XV, aged 14, her coming of age as France's young queen, her fall from grace and tragic end.

"So much has been said about Marie-Antoinette, so many legends and books, that it has become hard to separate true from false," said Pierre Arizzoli Clementel, director of the Chateau de Versailles, which helped put on the show at the Grand Palais in Paris.

Opening...