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Madame de Pompadour (1721-1764), Mistress of Louis XV
François Boucher·1758
Historical Context
Madame de Pompadour at the Victoria and Albert Museum (1758) is one of several portraits Boucher made of Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, marquise de Pompadour — the woman who was simultaneously Louis XV's official mistress, France's most important art patron, and Boucher's most significant client. Pompadour had effectively commissioned Boucher as her personal artist from the mid-1740s, and his portraits of her collectively defined her public image for subsequent history. The V&A portrait, one of at least seven major Boucher portraits of Pompadour, shows her in the intimate but composed manner that suited her role as the civilized face of royal patronage rather than the erotic face of royal desire. By 1758 Pompadour's health was declining and her direct influence over Louis XV was waning, though she retained her political and cultural authority until her death in 1764. The V&A's French decorative arts collection provides an appropriate institutional context for this key image of Rococo court culture.
Technical Analysis
The portrait presents the famous patron with characteristic Rococo elegance. Boucher's handling of the elaborate costume and setting creates a definitive image of 18th-century feminine power.
Look Closer
- ◆Pompadour's elaborate coiffure is rendered with individual curls and powder — a hairdresser's achievement that Boucher treats with the seriousness it deserves.
- ◆Her book or sheet of music identifies her as a cultivated woman of intellectual interests — the attribute of learning in a social portrait.
- ◆The pale green of her silk gown has the same luminous quality as the Munich version but in a different compositional setting.
- ◆Lace at the sleeve edges is differentiated into transparent overlay and opaque underlayer — the complexity of eighteenth-century dress construction made painterly.
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