Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, marquise de Pampadour
(Encyclopaedia Britannica)
born Dec. 29, 1721, Paris
died April 15, 1764, Versailles, Fr.
byname Madame De Pompadour, also called (1741–45) Jeanne-Antoinette
Le Normant D'étioles influential mistress (from 1745) of the French
king Louis XV and a notable patron of literature and the arts.
Early years.
Her parents were on the fringes of a class gaining in
importance, speculators in the world of finance. Some of these people
made immense fortunes, but many ended in the gutter if not in
prison. Her father, François Poisson, involved in a black-market
scandal, had to flee the country in 1725; his beautiful wife and two
small children were then looked after by a more fortunate colleague,
Le Normant de Tournehem. Both children were clever, and the girl was
fascinating; she was educated to be the wife of a rich man. In those
days rich men, even if they came from a low class, were interested
in art and literature, and they expected their wives to share these
interests.
By the time Mademoiselle Poisson was of an age to marry, she could
hold her own in any society and had made friends with many
distinguished men, including Voltaire. Le Normant de Tournehem
arranged a match for her with his own nephew, Charles-Guillaume Le
Normant d'Etioles, a rising young man; they had a little girl,
Alexandrine. Madame d'Etioles became a shining star of Parisian
society and was admired by the King himself. In 1744 Louis XV's
young mistress, the Duchesse de Chateauroux, died suddenly. She was
soon replaced by Madame d'Étioles, who obtained a legal separation
from her husband and was created marquise de Pompadour.
Nineteenth-century historians thought that Madame de Pompadour had
complete ascendancy over Louis XV. These post-Revolution writers
were concerned with portraying the Bourbon monarchs as poor
creatures; it is now generally admitted that Louis XV was a much
more able man than he has been painted. Shy and introspective, he
had difficulty in communicating with people whom he did not know
well. Madame de Pompadour acted as his private secretary, but,
although she gave the orders, the decisions were made by the King.
She began her reign at Versailles modestly. She was lodged in a few
rooms under the roof; she set out to make herself agreeable to all
those who counted for anything in the palace, beginning with Queen
Marie (Maria Leszczynska). Marie could hardly have been a more
unsuitable wife for the handsome, artistic, sensual, and
pleasure-loving Louis XV. Eight years older than he, she
was preoccupied with the welfare of her father (a deposed king of
Poland), with childbearing, and with religion. After giving birth
to an heir to the throne (and eight or nine other children between
1727 and 1737), she let the King understand that she had no wish to
remain sexually intimate with him.
After five romantic years in her attic, Madame de Pompadour moved
downstairs to a regal apartment. Louis XV now began to take other
mistresses, but Madame de Pompadour was more firmly established than
ever before; favours, promotions, and privileges could be obtained
only through her good offices.
Artistic and political collaboration with Louis.
Her collaboration with the King was twofold, artistic and political.
The artistic side was wholly successful. On her suggestion, her
brother was appointed director of the King's buildings and created
marquis de Marigny; the brother, the sister, and Louis XV, working
in perfect harmony, planned and built the École Militaire and the
Place Louis XV (now the Place de la Concorde) in Paris, most of the
palace of Compiègne, the Petit Trianon Palace at Versailles, a new
wing at the palace of Fontainebleau, and the exquisite Château de
Bellevue, as well as many pavilions and summer houses. He and his
mistress patronized all forms of decorative art: painters,
sculptors, cabinetmakers, and craftsmen worked under the royal eye;
the famous porcelain factory was built at Sèvres. Madame de
Pompadour's 20 years of power marked the very apogee of taste in
France. The protector of most of the authors and the editor of the
Encyclopédie, she would have liked to do for literature what she did
for the arts, but the King had no literary interests and disliked
the intellectuals whom he knew.
The political collaboration between the King and his mistress was
much less successful than the artistic, mainly because the French
politicians and generals of the day were of such poor calibre. The
Duc de Choiseul, by far the ablest of the ministers, was Madame de
Pompadour's protégé. He was brought in to implement the famous
Reversal of Alliances, which allied Francewith its old enemy Austria
against the German Protestant principalities. This was a
statesmanlike conception, but it was unpopular and led to the Seven
Years' War, disastrous to France. Frederick the Great crushed the
huge, incompetently led French and Austrian armies, while the
English were driving the French out of Canada. All these defeats
were laid at the door of Madame de Pompadour. She fell prey to
melancholy, and soon after the end of the war she died, in the
spring of 1764, probably of cancer of the lung, in her apartment at
Versailles. One of her last actions was to get Louis XV's support
for the revision of the Calas case, a gross miscarriage of justice
in which Voltaire was interested.
Voltaire said of her:
I mourn her out of gratitude . . . Born sincere, she loved the King
for himself; she had righteousness in her soul and justice in her
heart; all this is not to be met with every day.
Nancy Mitford
