The Nine Day Queen 🤍
Paul Delaroche, one of the most popular French painters of the early 19th century, was born #OnThisDay in 1797. His monumental painting 'The Execution of Lady Jane Grey' depicts the final moments of Britain's shortest reigning monarch, Lady Jane Grey, who was executed at only seventeen years of age.
Delaroche’s choice of British subject matter reflects the French fascination with English culture in the 1820s and 1830s. Contemporary French viewers would have been alert to the parallels between Tudor history and relatively recent events in France after the Revolution of 1789, most obviously, the similar fates of Lady Jane Grey and the French queen Marie-Antoinette, who had faced the guillotine in 1793. Delaroche turns an event from British history into a compelling visual spectacle that also served as a commentary on France’s recent and bloody .
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