| Antoinette Gabrielle Danton | |
| Birth Name: | Antoinette Gabrielle Charpentier |
| Birth Place: | Paris, Kingdom of France |
| Death Date: | 10 February 1793 |
| Death Place: | Paris, First French Republic |
| Death Cause: | Death in childbirth |
| Nationality: | French |
Antoinette Gabrielle Danton (Charpentier; ([1] – 10 February 1793)[2] was the first wife of the French Revolutionary leader Georges Jacques Danton.
Antoinette Gabrielle Charpentier was the daughter of Jérôme François Charpentier, owner of the Café Parnasse or Café de l'École, located since 1773 on the site of the current La Samaritaine store in Paris.She married Georges Jacques Danton on 14 June 1787 at the church of l'Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois à Paris.[3] The marriage resulted in the births of four children:[4]
François-Georges Danton and his exact contemporary Horace Camille Desmoulins (1792–1825) were raised by a wet-nurse from L'Isle-Adam.[10]
On 10 February 1793, while Danton was on mission in Belgium, Antoinette Gabrielle Danton died in Paris giving birth to her fourth son, who did not live. On his return to Paris on 17 February 1793, Georges Danton found an artiste from the faubourg Saint-Marceau, the sculptor Claude André Deseine, who was deaf and mute, and took him (in exchange for a bundle of assignats), to the Sainte-Catherine cemetery where his wife was buried.
In the middle of the night, with the cemetery caretaker's aide, Georges Danton had his wife Antoinette Gabrielle disinterred and her coffin opened, covering her with kisses and imploring her to pardon him for his many sexual indiscretions, and had a death mask taken.[11] The mortuary bust of Antoinette Gabrielle Danton, which caused a scandal when first exhibited in the year of her death, is now visible in the museum in Troyes in Aube.[4]
Georges Jacques Danton remarried Louise Sébastienne Gély (1776–1856)[12] on 1 July 1793. She was a friend of the couple who took care of their children.[4]