Pompadour, Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson

views updated

Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson Pompadour

1721–1764

Royal Mistress

Trained for a Cultivated Life.

The girl that was to mature into France's most important eighteenth-century royal mistress, Jean-Antoinette Poisson, grew up the daughter of a financier, at the time a profession notorious for its shady business dealings. Her father was exiled from France for a time when the young Jean-Antoinette was only four years old for taking part in a shady venture, but once he recovered his position he brought his daughter up to take her place in Parisian society. Interested even at this early age in art and literature, she associated with such important literary figures as Voltaire before she married Normant d'Etioles. She soon had a daughter with d'Etioles, but also felt herself increasingly drawn toward court circles at Versailles. In 1744, when Louis XV's mistress died, she came to the king's attention. She was soon established at court as the maitresse en titre, that is, the official royal mistress. She separated legally from her husband and received the title Marquise de Pompadour from the king. For the next twenty years, her influence shaped Versailles' society.

The King 's Secretary.

Judgments about Madame de Pompadour's role in government have fluctuated since the eighteenth century. During the nineteenth century, for example, many historians judged her a wicked and cunning figure who dominated her lover, Louis XV. French historians, in particular, were anxious to treat the Bourbon monarchs of the eighteenth century as weak, dissolute, and corrupt figures in order to justify the Revolution that occurred after 1789. More recent reassessments of Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour have shown that the king was a far abler monarch than once assumed. Shy and retiring, he acted through his mistress Madame de Pompadour, but she did not form royal policy. Instead the king decided on matters of state and acted through the more dynamic Pompadour, who was often able to win over many French nobles to the king's position. As royal mistress she became the king's private secretary. At first she was installed in a few small rooms high in the Palace of Versailles, but she soon set about ingratiating herself to members of the royal family and even to the king's wife, Marie-Antoinette. In this way her influence grew, and she eventually moved to grander lodgings within the chateau. By this time, Louis XV had moved on to other mistresses, although the connection between the two remained close until Pompadour's death in 1764. During the later years of her life she became an essential fixture in the court, influencing the awarding of royal contracts, offices, and favors.

Fashion and Artistic Patronage.

Madame de Pompadour was a woman of impeccable artistic tastes with a keen eye for fashion. At the time in which she rose to influence over court society, royal sumptuary regulation was still in force, although Louis XV's enforcement of these laws was lax. In her choice of fabrics and other items of dress Pompadour frequently violated sumptuary law and encouraged other members of the court to do the same. Her dresses were among the most luxurious ever crafted in the eighteenth century, and she sat frequently for portraitists to record them. For many years she was the most important figure of fashion in France, giving rise to the style of high-piled hair that still today bears the name "Pompadour." She also inspired the wearing of "pompoms," ball-like concoctions of feathers that were worn atop the head in place of hats. Her influence also reinvigorated France's cloth industry. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries the fabric industry in France had entered on hard times, and Pompadour used her influence with the king to re-establish production throughout the country. Printed fabrics, rich brocades, and other elegant cloth had been prohibited, in part, because these fabrics often needed to be imported from abroad. Madame de Pompadour thus encouraged Louis XV to buy royal manufactories for the production of these luxury cloths, the most famous of which was the industrial centered at Jouy near Versailles. The printed fabrics that were produced there became known as toile du Jouy and were widely prized throughout France. Their exotic motifs with design elements drawn from Chinese or Arabic art as well as their scenes of everyday life were imitated throughout Europe. Pompadour also used her influence with the king to have her brother named director of the king's works, and together with the king and her brother, she promoted the classical style prized in France in the mid-eighteenth century. Under her influence, the small palace of the Petit Trianon was begun at Versailles, and her brother also laid out the Place Louis XV, now known as the Place de la Concorde in Paris. A noble design, its regal and austere lines became the backdrop for the execution of thousands of French men and women in the Revolution, in what was ironically, a grand repudiation of the culture of aristocratic privilege upon which Madame de Pompadour had risen.

Later Years.

Although her literary and artistic patronage was largely successful, the king's favorite mistress dabbled more and more in politics in her later years, eventually to disastrous effect. Her party at court supported France's involvement in the Seven Years' War, a conflict that resulted in the loss of many of France's colonial possessions. In the wake of the war, powerful figures at court blamed Pompadour for the king's policy decisions, and the final years of her life were thus spent in relative seclusion in her apartments in Versailles. She contracted an illness, most likely lung cancer, and died in 1764 at the age of 42. Despite the relative cloud that had hung over her at the time of her death, the king mourned the passing of his favorite mistress and she was lauded by literary figures and French thinkers of the time as a force of kindness and justice at Versailles.