Massacres de Septembre.. The violence behind my Collection no.7: Part I
The fate of strong women has always been the basis for my work, but I could not imagine that I would become like Alexander McQueen when he created his collection called Highland Rape - turning violence into an artistic image..
Among the thousands murdered during the French Revolution, one of the most notorious cases was that of the death of the Madame de Lamballe, friend of Marie-Antoinette. The fury of the new order of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity vented itself upon her frail form in a manner of extreme violence..
One day, two years ago, I came across an essay about her last days during the September Massacres, and these words touched my heart so much that at that moment I understood what times I wanted to 'go' and I already knew who my next heroine would be.. Her monstrous and ostentatious murder put an end to the time of the Ancien Régime. Evaluating and looking at all this, I thought: what would I create for her.. for her Last Judgment?
"She, not knowing whom to believe, gave no reply, but raised her hands to her head, and made a step towards the door. Then, drawing herself up, added, 'I have nothing more to say; it is indifferent to me if I die a little earlier or later; I have made the sacrifice of my life.' The judge, watching her, then said, 'Let Madame be set at liberty.' The Princesse was not aware of the sinister meaning of these words, but she seems to have gathered little hope from them. As she was led to the door her friend again whispered frantically, 'Cry "Vive la nation!" and you may be saved yet!' but it is doubtful if she even heard him. The supreme effort had been made, and her senses were now mercifully failing her. The door was thrown open, the ghastly sight outside met her eyes, and with a cry of 'Fi horreur!' or, as others say, 'I am lost!' she fell back into the arms of the two savage ruffians behind her. They seized and pulled her forward: even now a few cries of 'Grace! Grace!' mingled with the hoarse roar of hate, but they were quickly quelled by shouts of 'Death to the disguised lackeys of the Duc de Penthièvre!' It is said two of these were slain, and the rest fled. One of her murderers, brought, long years after, to some tardy justice, described her as 'a little lady dressed in white' - a haunting phrase - standing alone a moment above the carnage: then, as she was dragged into the centre of the court - yard, a man struck at her with his pike, thrusting it through that crowning glory of her beauty, her fair and abundant hair. Down fell the rippling masses of it, and with them a letter in the Queen's writing, which she had concealed there: the ruman's hand, too, unsteady with drink, wounded her on the forehead, and blood trickled from the eut. At sight of it, like wild beasts mad for slaughter, ail rushed and flung themselves upon her; she was thrown upon the heap of corpses by the gate, stabbed through and through, herhead eut off, every scrap of clothing torn from her, exposed, 'naked and beautiful, as God made her,' says a French writer; her heart wrenched out, and mutilations horrible and inhuman inflicted upon her body.."
"The sentries at the gates of the fortress were greatly excited, being better informed. Tidings had reached them to the effect that a vast crowd of the inhabitants of the faubourgs was approaching, that one of their leaders was carrying on a pike the head of the murdered Princesse de Lamballe, her hair streaming in the blast, and that her nude, mutilated corpse was also being brought along. The assassins, drunken with blood and with wine, wanted to enjoy the hideous triumph of showing Marie Antoinette these ghastly remnants of her dead friend, the bloody head and the desecrated body of the woman with whom (according to popular belief) the Queen had so long had unchaste relations.."
to be continued..
