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Madame Pompadour On my walk through the National Gallery I was lucky enough to happen upon a tour group just as they were viewing this painting of "Madame de Pompadour". Her story was so fascinating that I had to stop and listen to the whole thing.

The painting shows the one-time mistress of Louis XV in the last year of her life. Born Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson in 1721, she married in 1741 and became royal mistress and Marquise de Pompadour four years later. She was a patron of the arts and letters and a leader of fashion who exercised considerable influence on the public policy of France.

Madame de Pompadour, as she was called, died at age 42 shortly after this portrait was begun. The king, in his grief, required it to be finished and finished it was! The artist, François-Hubert Drouais, dressed another (much younger) woman in the gown and completed the dress and arms (which if you will notice, do not exactly match the rest of the body) He took the face of Madame from another painting and inserted it into the portrait, thus completing a stylized view of the lady which was finished just one month after her death in 1764. In the right light you can see the edges of the hole that was cut in the canvas to insert the face. Drouais's painting is the last of numerous portraits of the sitter by some of the best-known painters of the day, including Boucher and Carle van Loo.



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