The Queen of Louis XVI King of France at the Guillotine, 16 October 1793

An idealized portrait of Marie Antoinette at the moment of death. Unlike the pale, aged woman the contemporaries observed, this later print memorialized a beautiful, absolutely pure, woman. While in life she had been assailed as a lesbian, a pedophile, and an adulteress with men, here she is being depicted as nearly a saint. Indeed, a great problem that the revolutionaries had was that, as they executed those they thought guilty, they also referred them to martyrdom and ultimately to a good chance for rehabilitation.