This beautiful Mignard portrait of Madame de Montespan hasn’t been seen since it was stolen from an auction house many, many years ago. I was lucky enough to come across it inside an old book about Mademoiselle de Montpensier and took a couple of photographs so that I could share it with you all.
"You'd find it easier to be bad than good if you had red hair," said Anne reproachfully. "People who haven't red hair don't know what trouble is." - Anne of Green Gables.
I am a middle class housewife, History geek, Versailles obsessive, Paris lover, historical fiction writer, Victorian Prostitute re-enactor, Art History graduate, committed vegetarian, GIN taster, curry lover and Pimms addict living in the deepest darkest West Country with my family.
I'm a member of the Romantic Novelists' Association, Whitechapel Society and London Historians and also a reviewer for the Historical Novel Society.
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Ah, darn….just I’m hoping to get to bed, I find another of your interesting pages. I learned about Montespan in a rather outrageous (but glossy and chock full of good pictures) bio of Louis XIV by Nancy Mitford. If it weren’t for all the good graphics in it, I’d make it a doorstop.
I’ll have to come back, nite!
Thank you! I adore Nancy Mitford’s books about French history – I wish that she had written more. I’ve always been disappointed that she seemed to really dislike Marie Antoinette though.
Regarding Nancy Mitford, I could never take her seriously as a historian and even less as a political scientist. As brief examples of her off-the-cuff stuff, when I came across certain statements of hers, tinged with aristocratic British bigotry and disdain, like “(Marie-Thérèse)…had black teeth from eating too much chocolate and garlic (?)….” or…”(Louis XIV nose) only became Jewish when he was old (?!)”… I not only marvelled at the fact someone could still drop nuggests like these in mid-20th century without blushing, but wondered if she knew which century she was living in at all.
But, I suppose, she was addressing those to whom such things are as good as a wink and a nod.
Salut!