Spectroscopy reveals passages in Marie Antoinette’s letters

Abstract

Entire passages were at some point crossed out from letters exchanged between French queen Marie Antoinette and the Swedish count Axel von Fersen, her rumored lover, during the height of the French Revolution. Someone clearly did not want those passages to be seen. A team of researchers has now uncovered both the redacted contents and the probable identity of the censor ( Sci. Adv . 2021, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abg4266 ). Researchers led by Anne Michelin from the Sorbonne’s Research Center for Conservation examined the letters using X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy. They found that the consistent copper-to-iron ratio between the inks in some of the original letters could be used to decipher the redacted text, which included words like “adore” and “madly.” Historians had hypothesized that the count’s great-nephew censored the letters to protect the von Fersen family’s reputation. But after analyzing the overlying redaction inks and comparing their composition to the inks