Word: pompadour
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...Francisco's Boucher was painted for Mme. de Pompadour, passed to an English collection in the 19th century and moved westward again to America. Sweet and cool as a sundae, the canvas shows the best of Boucher's easy sensualism. Because his temperament accorded perfectly with his time and place, and because of his decorative genius, Boucher was showered with honors, made Peintre du Roi and Director of the Paris Academy. His fame perished in the French Revolution-to be eventually restored by posterity. Curiously, his Diana is not Diana at all, but Jupiter, who seduced Callisto...
Madame de Pompadour, by Nancy Mitford. A life of Louis XV's dazzling mistress, done up in rich literary brocades by a fine British writer (TIME, June...
Madame de Pompadour, by Nancy Mitford. A life of Louis XV's dazzling mistress, done up in rich literary brocades by a fine British writer (TIME, June...
Madame de Pompadour, by Nancy Mitford. A life of Louis XV's dazzling mistress, done up in rich literary brocades by a fine British writer (TIME, June...
Unlike other historians, Author Mitford believes that "sincère et tendre Pompadour" (Voltaire's description) did all she did for love of the King, not because she was ambitious. Her weakness-a terrifying one for a royal mistress-was that she was "constitutionally incapable of passion." "She tried to work herself up to respond to the King's ardors by every means known to quackery"-diets of vanilla, truffles and celery, "elixirs" guaranteed to "heat the blood." Nobody knows how far she succeeded, but Louis adored her even when he had turned for his pleasure to what...