Marie- Caroline de Bourbon-Siciles, aka the Duchesse de Berry was born in Naples the daughter of the Crown Prince Francis Duke of Calabria and Marie Clementine of Austria, niece of Marie Antoinette. At the time of her birth in 1798 Napoleon was charging his way through Italy forcing the family to flee to Palermo and later pushing them into Sisily.
Marie-Caroline found her way to France after her marriage to Charles Ferdinand, Duc de Berry son of Charles X. Louis XVIII was in power and without an heir Sixty years old and a widow he declared his nephew his rightful heir to the throne. Charles Ferdinand needed a wife, although he had many mistresses and children in France and England. The two were married in Notre Dame de Paris on June 17, 1816.
Their marriage would be short when her husband Charles was stabbed as they left the Opera by a Bonapartist. She was two months pregnant at the time. While on his deathbed he revealed his wife was pregnant and also that he had illegitimate children. In September of 1819 De Berry gave birth to a son, Henri “the miracle child” in the Tuileries. Following his death she would move into the Palais des Tuileries into a set of rooms in the Pavillon de Marsan.
In 1830 after the Three Glorious Day in July the family was forced to exile as Charles X was ousted. De Berry believed her son Henri who now took on the self appointed title Henri V should be the king of France. Trying to gather enough support from other legitimate royal family members that she was trying to boost as she exiled to Italy. Gathering an army she quietly returned to France hoping to meet thousands of men who would help her fight for the monarchy. Arriving in Marseille only a small group of sixty men stood up to fight.
As word spread that she had returned she was a wanted woman.In Nantes she hid in the home of Madame Duguigny across from the chateau of the Duke of Brittany. De Berry met her match in Simon Duetz who had learned of her hiding place and reported to the police who arrived to arrest her. Needing a place to hide she crawled up into the chimney, a great place to hide until one of the men lit a fire. Forcing her out she was arrested on November 7, 1832 and placed into jail.
The plot thickens when she announces she is pregnant. The exiled royal family got word and turned their back on her. While she said she had secretly wed Hector-Lucichese-Palli, the dates weren’t adding up and was exiled from France to Palermo and her children were left with Madame Royale, daughter of Marie Antoinette in Goritz.
Her final years were spent between the Chateau in Brunnsee, Austria and in Venice. A large supporter of the arts, she and her first husband had collected over 1000 works of art that she slowly sold off to help fund her life that was mostly spent alone in those later years. On April 16, 1810 she died in Austria at 71 years old.
The Palais des Tuileries may be gone, but the Pavillon de Marsan still stands and is now part of the Musée des Arts Decoratifs on the northwest end of the Louvre. Named for the Countess de Marsan who was the governess of Louis XVI & XVIII. She would live in the pavillon that would later take her name before the Duchess de Berry. Today you can walk through the museum and the Marsan that was rebuilt in 1874 and imagine de Berry spending her days painting and supporting the arts.
A little farther through the museum is a room dedicated to de Berry with a large painting of her by Alexandre-Jean Dubois-Drahonet dominating the room. She stands in a green gown in her lavish room and large windows. The room itself is filled with a few of her personal pieces including her Psyché mirror, toilette and fauteuil gondole. The room also features furniture from the period including the lovely bed by Francois Baudry. With the curved lines of the nacelle that were popular during the Restoration and light woods bending the sheets of veneer to master the form. Presenting his work at the 1827 Exposition he won a bronze medal presented to him as seen in the painting by the Duc d’'Angoulême, the Duchesse de Berry’s brother in law. My favorite thing in this room may be the wallpaper with its column and draping fabric that was just as much a work of art as anything else. Find all these treasures in one of my favorite museum’s permanent collections in the rue de Rivoli end of the Louvre.
