Nineteenth-century Paris still retained traces of medieval Paris. Its streets were rough and uneven, nowhere near as smooth as those of Versailles. Sketching in a jolting carriage was no easy task, yet Jacques-Louis David managed it. With a pencil, he drew Marie Antoinette's final portrait as she sat in a prison cart on her way to Revolution Square before her execution. Any artist on the streets of Paris could have drawn such a portrait made purely of lines.
A woman's hair was precious, and unless there was a special reason, they would not cut it lightly. Yet Marie Antoinette's hair had been cut off at the time, so that when the blade fell, it could cleanly sever her head. All condemned prisoners had to expose their necks on the guillotine, so their hair had to be cut above the hairline at the nape.
Before setting out for the execution ground, the glamorous Queen Marie had her hair hacked off carelessly. She could only cover it with an ugly cap, yet some strands still curled upward irregularly. This detail appeared in David's sketch.
Besides that hideous cap, she wore a plain dress. Even though her figure remained slender and her breasts had not sagged, this attire stood in stark contrast to the days when she had worn elaborate makeup and splendid, noble finery.
Madame de Pompadour might have been the godmother of the Rococo style, but no one embodied the spirit of the eighteenth century better than Marie Antoinette. This rose born in Austria truly blossomed at Versailles. She had still been a child when she first married into France, and sometimes had to go northwest of Place Louis XV to learn the piano and adapt to life at the court of France.
Perhaps when she occasionally grew tired of playing