Such a gorgeous photo. The way the kid looks up to his dad, it's beautiful. Penn Station, New York City in 1948 by Ruth Orkin.

From the last letter of Marie Antoinette: "Farewell, my good and tender sister. May this letter reach you. Think always of me; I embrace you with all my heart, as I do my poor dear children. My God, how heart-rending it is to leave them forever! Farewell! farewell!"

In her last letter to Elisabeth, MA addressed the accusations of sexual abuse that Charles had been coerced into giving: "Forgive him, my dear sister; think of his age, and how easy it is to make a child say whatever one wishes, especially when he does not understand it."

From the last letter of Marie Antoinette: "I had friends. The idea of being forever separated from them and from all their troubles is one of the greatest sorrows that I suffer in dying. Let them at least know that to my latest moment I thought of them."

'The Last Sleep of Marie Antoinette' by Edward Ward. F. W. Kenyon: "The Widow Capet was brought back to her cell... She wrote a letter to Madame Elizabeth. Then she slept for a short time, and when she woke she remembered she had once been Queen of France."

The David Adjmi "Marie Antoinette" play has its many issues, but I love this line when addressing the inherently public nature of Marie Antoinette, a bit she utters towards the end of the play-- "They should just press me between glass slides."

"This is what I saw; this is what I would I had never seen; this is what I shall never forget as long as I live." –the closing of Louis Larivière’s narrative about Marie Antoinette’s last weeks in the Conciergerie Prison.

Writing in 1794, Marie Antoinette's sister Carolina wrote: "I ought to be forgiven if I hold in detestation a great nation which has … inflicted every conceivable barbarity, ignominy and atrocity on my unhappy sister."

"... awork brimming over with emotion ... one of ineffable gentleness, unspeakable brutality and respectful sweetness, which left us speechless after the final chords." H. Niquet, on Plantade’s ‘Messe de Morts’ in memory of Marie Antoinette. youtu.be/bSsfdgpXi3g?si…

A portrait of André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry by Robert Lefevre. Set to be auctioned by Millon.

"With the passing of their daughter, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, whose memory had been kept green in her person, seemed suddenly to recede into a bygone century, and to take rank in the eyes of the young generation with those of Louis XIV and Louis XV." -Joseph Turquan

E. Daudet: "If she grew hard, it was because her later sorrows [embittered] memories of the past, and these in turn made the present more galling[.] When a sapling is struck by lightning... it very rarely grows into a tree without bearing upon its bark some sign of ravage..."

Good morning! Good news! On the occasion of its 150th anniversary the Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar acquired a special birthday present of sorts - two early-16th-century panels by the Master of Alkmaar depicting four female saints depicted with their attributes. Can you name them?

Watch my new viiiiid youtu.be/_6sBpFp1xcI