Madame de Pompadour: The Queen of Arts in Portraits

Madame de Pompadour, born Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, rose from a prophesied future to become the chief mistress of King Louis XV and a dominant patron of the arts. A fortune-teller predicted she would win the king's heart, leading her mother to train her in theater, music, painting, and engraving. She married into the d'Étiolles family at 19, lost both children in childhood, and established a salon frequented by intellectuals like Voltaire. In 1745, she met the king at a masked ball and became his mistress, moving into Versailles. As a patron, she supported architects, furniture makers, and artists like François Boucher, who painted her multiple times. She also practiced gem carving, developed the Sèvres porcelain manufacturer, protected Physiocrat economists, and defended Diderot's Encyclopédie. Her portraits, by artists such as Jean-Marc Nattier, Maurice-Quentin de La Tour, and François-Hubert Drouais, served as political communication. Boucher's tapestry series 'Setting of the Sun' (1753) depicted her as the nymph Tethys with Louis XV as the sun, causing a stir at the Salon. She died in 1765; Boucher became First Painter to the King only after her death.