Her majesty the War Queen

At the end of the reign of her husband, Elisabeth’s beauty had vanished and her health was very poor : a bout of an illness that was  probably rheumatic fever damaged her heart irreparably, and in 1825 she was advised to go south for the winter. She went to the Naval base Taganrog on the Sea of Azov, where Alexander joined her. He had slight fever, for which he took only purgatives and kept on working. Within a few days, he was no longer able to leave his room, he died apparently of Typhus on november 19 1827.

‘Don’t abandon me now, I’m all alone in this world of sorrows,’ Elisabeth wrote pathetically to her unloving mother-in-law.'His smile proved to me that he is happy and that he sees things more beautiful than here on earth. My only consolation is that I will not survive him long.' Elizabeth was now too weak to go back to St. Petersburg for the funeral and decided to stay for some time. When the journey finally started, she felt very sick and they had to stopped at Belev in Tula. In the early hours of May 16, 1826, a few months after her husband’s death, Elizabeth was found dead in her bed. She had died of heart failure. Her remains were buried in St. Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg.    source The Grand Dukes/ArrayedinGold

The goddess was deeply angered, and on the summit of Mount Cynthus she spoke to her twin children. ‘See, it will be doubted whether I, your mother, proud to have borne you, and giving way to no goddess, except Juno, am a goddess, and worship will be prevented at my altars through all the ages, unless you help me, my children. Nor is this my only grief. This daughter of Tantalus has added insult to injury, and has dared to put her children above you, and has called me childless, may that recoil on her own head, and has shown she has her father’s tongue for wickedness.’

- Ovid, Metamorphoses (x)

ART HISTORY MEME || [2/2] museums: Vatican Museums - Vatican City, Italy