Madame de Pompadour

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Madame de Pompadour, portrait by François Boucher circa 1750

Madame de Pompadour, (1721 – April 15, 1764) was a well known courtesan and the famous mistress of King Louis XV of France.

Early life

Madame de Pompadour was born Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson in 1721 in Paris. It is suspected that her biological father was the rich financier Le Normant de Tournehem, who became her legal guardian when her official father was forced to leave the country in 1725 after a scandal and she lived with her mother and sister. She was intelligent, beautiful and educated; she also learned to dance, engrave and to play the clavichord.

She was married in 1741 (at the age of 19) to Charles-Guillaume Le Normant d'Etiolles, nephew of her guardian. With him, she had two children, a boy who died the year after his birth in 1741, and Alexandrine-Jeanne, born August 10, 1744, and nicknamed "Fanfan."

Contemporary opinion supported by artwork from the time considered Poisson to be quite beautiful, with her small mouth and oval face enlivened by her wit. Her young husband was soon mad about her and she reigned in the fashionable world of Paris.

The King's mistress

Poisson caught the eye of the monarch Louis XV in 1745. A group of courtiers, including her father-in-law, endorsed her as courtesan to Louis XV, who was still mourning the death of his second mistress, the Duchess of Châteauroux. [1] Jeanne-Antoinette was invited to a royal masquerade ball in February 1745 that celebrated the marriage of the king's son. By March she had become a regular visitor and kings mistress, and the king installed her at Versailles. He also bought her Pompadour, the first of six residences. In July, Louis made her a marquise, had her legally separated from her husband, and on September 14 she was formally presented at court.

Mme de Pompadour, pastel by Maurice Quentin de La Tour, shown at the Paris Salon, 1755 (Louvre Museum)

Madame de Pompadour was an accomplished woman, with a good eye for Rococo interiors. She had a keen interest in literature. She had known Voltaire before her ascendancy, and the playwright apparently advised her in her courtly role. Contrary to popular belief - and contemporary opinion - she never had much direct political influence, but she supported Belle-Isle and endorsed the Duke of Choiseul to the king. However, she did wield considerable power and control behind the scenes, which was reflected when another of the king's mistresses, Marie-Louise O'Murphy, attempted to replace her around 1754. The younger inexperienced O'Murphy found herself married off in an arranged marriage to a lesser noble, and out of the royal court's inner circle.

Choiseul encouraged the basic shift in French foreign policy away from Prussia and towards France's hereditary rival, the Austrian Habsburgs. This alliance eventually brought on the Seven Years' War, with all its disasters, the battle of Rosbach and the loss of New France (Canada). However, Pompadour persisted in her support of these policies, and, when Bernis failed her, brought Choiseul into office and supported him in all his great plans: the Pacte de Famille, the suppression of the Jesuits, and the peace of Versailles that lost Canada. She also discreetly endorsed Diderot's Encyclopédie project.

Her memorial portrait finished in 1764 after her death, but begun from the life, by her favorite portraitist, François-Hubert Drouais

Pompadour was a woman of verve and intelligence. She planned buildings like the Place de la Concorde and the Petit Trianon with her brother, the Marquis de Marigny. She employed the stylish marchands-merciers who were turning Chinese vases into ewers with gilt-bronze Rococo handles and were mounting writing tables with the new Sèvres porcelain plaques. Numerous other artisans, sculptors and portrait painters were employed, the court artist Jean-Marc Nattier, in the 1750s Francois Boucher, and later Francois-Hubert Drouais (illustration, right). Drouais renders her demurely at traditional lady's work with her tambour and embroidery silks, among luxurious fittings that include a Sèvres-mounted table with a goat's mask in the latest goût Grèc. She is not young, but there is freshness and sparkle to everything about her. There is no sign that she is ill and about to die.

Pompadour suffered two miscarriages in the 1750s, and she is said to have arranged lesser mistresses for the king's pleasure to replace herself. Although they did not sleep together after 1750, Louis XV remained devoted to her until her death in 1764 at the age of 42. At the time she was publicly blamed for the Seven Years' War.

See also

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