POMPADOUR (Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Dame Le Normant d’Étioles, Marquise de) (Paris, 1721 - Versailles, 1764.) Favorite of Louis XV. His father, François Poisson, had started out as a driver in the food service. Noticed by the Pâris brothers, he had rendered great services in Provence, at the time of the plague, but, charged as food commissioner for the supply of Paris during the famine of 1725, had been accused of false markets and forced to go into exile. for eight years before being rehabilitated in 1739. During his estrangement, his wife, Madeleine de La Motte, miraculously beautiful had had, among other lovers, the farmer general Le Normant de Tournehem, a bachelor and art lover. The latter, after having taken care of the education of the two children of his mistress, Jeanne and Abel, made the first marry, as soon as she was twenty, his nephew Charles Guillaume Le Normant d'Etioles, also a farmer general. , to which he gave the Château d'Étioles.
The young lady of Étioles was, says the hunting lieutenant Leroy, "above the ordinary height, slender, well-to-do , supple, elegant; her face was a perfect oval, her hair rather light brown than blond... Her eyes had a particular charm, which they perhaps owed to the uncertainty of their color”. She had "a perfectly well-shaped nose, a charming mouth, very beautiful teeth...a delicious smile...the most beautiful skin in the world". She was also cultured and very artistic. Everyone praised her charm, her wit, her talents as a musician, her taste for bold novelties.
Sure of her power of seduction, she undertakes to get noticed by Louis XV, lets him know that she loves him, declares to anyone who will listen that she will only cheat on her husband with him, flutters around him dressed in pink and in a blue phaeton when he hunts in the forest of Sénart. Her hopes were realized after the death of Madame de Châteauroux, at the marriage of the Dauphin, in March 1745, and she was officially presented at Court in September. The royal family and many courtiers, angry that the function of favorite was taken away from the nobility and fell into financial commonness, were immediately very hostile to him and, at Versailles as in Paris, songs were sung which were called fishes. .
But it is precisely one of the powers of the new favorite to be an ambitious daughter of the reigning Finance. Supported by Pâris-Duverney, she was given the Marquisate of Pompadour and showed herself to be adept at distracting the perpetually bored king, at brightening up his household and his meetings. She was his mistress only until 1750. Suffering from tuberculosis, the harassing court life ruining her health and spoiling her face, she had the wisdom to step aside to remain the confidante, the devoted friend, the animator of pleasures of Louis XV, whose love affairs she even favored. In return for this, she “reigns” for twenty-one years.
Public opinion criticizes her environment, her expenses, which are enormous. With her govern, true occult ministers, in addition to Pâris-Duverney, the brother of this one, Mont martel, whose advances are necessary for the war, the diplomacy and the Court, the Tencin brother and sister and the marshal of Richelieu . It makes and unmakes ministers, generals and ambassadors. In 1745, she caused the disgrace of Orry, who was hostile to the Parisians, in 1749 that of Maurepas, guilty of having spoken a few words to the king about his political role and of having led a campaign of harsh libels against her. She sided with Machault d'Arnouville, Machault d'Arnouville, Orry's successor to the general control, supported him against the clergy and pushed Bernis*, Choiseul, the Prince of Soubise and many others to power. She played an important role in the reversal of the alliances of 1756 against Frederick and prepared, with the help of the Dauphine, Bernis and Choiseul-Stainville, ambassador to Rome, the Treaty of Versailles with Marie-Thérèse of Austria, who knew how to flatter her. . Enemy of the Church, which held it against her, she sided with the magistracy against the clergy, with the philosophers and the Jansenists against the Jesuits*. Only one minister escaped her completely, at least until the assassination attempt on Damiens in 1757:the Comte d'Argenson*, a rough "friend of the family" who, like Machault, tried to exploit the affair to get her ousted. . Both are disgraced.
Sensitive to her unpopularity, she punished mockery with imprisonment, if necessary, but at the same time sought to win over public opinion by flattering men of letters and by associating with writers. She thus received Quesnay*, Crébillon, Duclos, Marmontel, Montesquieu*, Rousseau* (whom she had Le Devin du village represented at the court of Fontainebleau and at Bellevue where she played a role), d'Alembert* and Voltaire* who, thanks to her and in spite of the prejudices of Louis XV, becomes historiographer of the king, academician, gentleman of the room. Finally, it worked to cushion the blows struck by the courts and the clergy against the Encyclopédie*. Voltaire was to write after his death:She thought as it should, no one knows it better than me” and he added:
I had an obligation to her, I mourn her out of gratitude. »
A woman of taste, she may not have had the influence on the arts that has sometimes been attributed to her. The Pompadour style was in full bloom, before she became the king's mistress. But it exercises real patronage through numerous commissions from Gabriel, Boucher, La Tour, the engraver Cochin, the cabinetmaker OEben. Artists have multiplied his portraits; Boucher, Nattier, Carle Van Loo, Drouais, La Tour, Lemoyne, Pigalle.
She advised the king to become the main shareholder of the Sèvres factory and, in 1746, had the survival of the building management that her uncle Tournehem had held by her brother Abel Poisson, Marquis de Marigny*. The latter, trained by Soufflot and Cochin, proved to be active and worthy of praise, contributing to the neo-antique reaction against Rococo and developing the Place Louis XV (Concorde), the Champs-Élysées, the boulevards in Paris. P>
. She herself spends millions of pounds on buildings, which she buys or has built, and which will go to the king:her hotel in rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs (former Hôtel Pontchartrain), the Hôtel d'Évreux ( l'Élysée), Crécy (near Évreux), Champs (on the Marne), Sèvres, La Celle-Saint-Cloud and her favorite Bellevue, a gift from the king, where she gives refined parties and plays comedy in her brimborion of theater decorated in the Chinese style.
An omnipotent adviser, she did not fear the influence of the boarders with the king, venal girls of modest origin, from the king's bachelor paddock which was the Parc- aux Cerfs de Versailles, but she must defend herself against audacious grand ladies, royal whims who dream of taking the king from her Mesdames d'Esparbès, de Gramont, de Forcalquier, de Choiseul-Romanet, de Cois-lin, Mademoiselle de Romans — from a more modest background, this one — and many others.
Still all-powerful, she died at the age of 42 of a chest inflammation, after having shown great courage and piety during her illness. She will be buried in the Capucines convent not far from Place Vendôme. Contrary to legend, the king mourned her. She left her brother more things than cash.