PARIS — As queen of France for less than two decades, Marie Antoinette was vilified as extravagant and frivolous. Elaborately coifed and plumed, she embodied all the excesses of the French monarchy. The immortal words “let them eat cake” stuck to her glittering veneer, though there is no proof she ever said them.

When she was 37 , her life came to a violent end at the guillotine, a year after the Bourbon monarchy was overthrown by the French Revolution.

Yet for more than two centuries since , Marie Antoinette has been the subject of a relentless fascination and revisionist reinterpretations; she has been cast as a martyr of Christianity, victim of misogyny and xenophobia, patron of the arts, and modern-day princess.

Tracing her journey from detested queen to global idol is a new exhibition, “Marie Antoinette: Metamorphosis of an Image,” staged at the very Paris prison where she spent the last weeks of her life.