Framing Ambition: The Interior Politics of Mme De Pompadour

Abstract

The scope and scale of Mme de Pompadour's patronage of the arts is infamous. Focusing on just three of her residences – at Versailles, Bellevue and at the hôtel d'Evreux in Paris – this essay attempts to show not what she bought, but what it meant. Exploiting both textual and visual sources, the essay explores the different ways in which Pompadour was manifest in her interiors: as intimacy and movement at Versailles, as spectacle at Bellevue, and finally as spectator at the hôtel d'Evreux. Tracing a path through her patronage from her arrival at Versailles in 1745 until her death in 1764, an argument is made for understanding her purchases and commissions as constituting a sustained effort to achieve a legitimate cultural and political identity in the face of often bitter criticism.