Marie Antoinette

This engraving preserves a lost portrait of the young twenty-year-old queen and was issued the year after Louis XVI was crowned king. Initially popular with the French public, the young Austrian princess made a memorable impression at her husband's coronation in her extravagant dress designed by the exclusive Parisian couturière, Rose Bertin, which embraced the latest trends in French fashion, and also for her famous pouf hairdo. Yet rumors still plagued Marie Antoinette's existence at the court, particularly with regard to intimate life with her husband, since after five years of marriage, she had still not fulfilled her primary duty of producing a child, and more important, a male heir to the throne.