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Marie Antoinette stands on the staircase in a red and pink dress, and Oscar stands at her side in a blue and gold squadron uniform.
Peacock feathers extends from Antoinette's luxurious hair ornament. These bird feathers are a symbol of immortality and eternity in Europe, and seem even more meaningful when one considers her life cut short by her execution at the age of 37. The deep red, gold-trimmed costume with detailed embroidery is an interesting contrast to the girlish pink ribbons in her hair.
Pink is often thought of as a color for girls, but it seems that the craze for pink originated at the Palace of Versailles and then spread to Europe in the latter half of the 18th century. It was not until after World War II that pink became established as a feminine color in the U.S. and Japan [reference: Hidemi Horikoshi, Do Girls Really Like Pink? Kawade Bunko, 2019]. In any case, to our current eyes the pink that Marie Antoinette is wearing is an alluring color that evokes a sense of innocence and childishness.
It is known that the glittering squadron uniform donned by Oscar, who stands at her side, was not actually worn in Paris during the French Revolution, the period in which the story takes place. Riyoko Ikeda fully understood this but made the bold choice to adopt the uniform design to make the manga even more appealing. Crossed stars shine in a deep blue fabric like the night sky. Crimson jewels glitter around Oscar’s neck and on the left breast.
The sword in Oscar's right hand and his slender legs are parallel the lines of Queen Mary Antoinette's dress. Together with the lines of their gazes, they form a radiating composition, creating a dramatic effect that eternalizes the moment.
*The work is made up of a set of 2prints
*Signature on prints (handwritten)
In 1967, Ikeda made her debut with Bara Yashiki no Shôjo while she was a student at Tokyo University of Education (now Tsukuba University). In 1972, her Margaret series The Rose of Versailles became a bestseller. In 1980, she won the Japan Cartoonists Association Award of Excellence for The Window of Orpheus. While in her forties, she decided to pursue a career in music, and in 1995, she enrolled in the Vocal Department of the Tokyo College of Music. Since graduating, she has been performing as a soprano singer and has appeared in numerous opera productions. She received France's Legion of Honour in 2009.
A historical romance story set in the Palace of Versailles in Paris during the French Revolution. The imperial princess Marie Antoinette marries into the Bourbon family of France from the Habsburgs of the Austrian Empire at the age of 14. She is escorted by Oscar François de Jarjayes, who is the youngest daughter of the Commander of the Royal Guards, but was raised as a man. The series has attracted a wide audience since it was first published. It was adapted for a play performed at Takarazuka in 1974. In 1979, the title was made into an animated television series.
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Shueisha Manga-Art Heritage has entered into a business partnership with Epson, entrusting them with color management support and printing. The pigment inks used in the company’s inkjet printers are lightfast, preserving the original colors even under lighting that would cause the dye-based color inks used in the original artwork to fade.
On the other hand, original manga artwork is highly prone to fading, especially when it comes to color illustrations created using dye-based markers. Illustrations created for the covers of manga magazines, frontispieces, and comic book covers were not originally intended to be displayed or appreciated as works of art. They were designed to be printed and viewed by readers in magazines and comic books. Illustrations were often colored over copied line art, and in some cases, the characters and backgrounds were cut out and pasted in separately. To transform such illustrations into manga-art, they need to be retouched, such as by correcting discolored areas.
Since 2008, Shueisha has been working to digitally archive manga. Initially, we captured color originals using the EverSmart Supreme II, a high-precision scanner, and in 2015, we began using the Phase One IQ180, a high-resolution digital camera. Since 2020, we have been using Phase One’s Cultural Heritage series. This has allowed us to capture and preserve colors beyond the reproducible range of commercial printing, while also retaining the texture of the paper on which the illustrations were created.
Using this digitally archived data and imaging equipment, we retouch the artwork, restoring the original colors as they were when the illustrations were created. To produce the final print, color is carefully managed at each stage, from the original artwork to the captured data and printing.
For illustrations that were created digitally, we perform color management and printing in the wider-gamut Adobe RGB color space, instead of the sRGB space typically used in commercial printing, resulting in deeper and more vibrant colors.
