Angélique Victoire de Durfort, Comtesse de Chastellux (2nd December 1752-14th November 1816) depicted in a wonderful sculpture by Louis Simon Boizot. This piece currently lives in the Louvre.
Angélique was daughter of Aymeric Joseph de Durfort, Duc de Civrac, and his wife Anne-Marie de La Faurie de Monbadan, and was sister to the Marquise de Donnissan and Jean-Laurent de Durfort-Civrac, Duc de Lorge. Thanks to the high standing that her parents enjoyed at court, both the Dauphin and his sister Madame Victoire were her godparents and she would later become a lady in waiting to her godmother at Versailles and her country estate, Bellevue.
In 1773 she was married to Henri Georges César, Comte de Chastellux and bore him three children: César Laurent, marquis de Chastellux who was born in 1780, Louise Pauline de Chastellux in 1781, who married Joseph Élisabeth Roger, Comte Damas d’Antigny, and finally Gabrielle Joséphine Simone de Chastellux in 1783, who married Jean Baptiste Auguste Madeline de Percin, marquis de la Valette Montgaillard.
Madame la Comtesse became lady in waiting to Madame Victoire in 1786 but promptly threatened to leave in a bit of a strop when she learned that she wasn’t going to be made a Duchesse. Luckily the entreaties of Victoire and her sister Adélaïde changed her mind and she remained at court.
Don’t you love her haughty look? I wonder what she and Marie Antoinette thought of each other? I think that I can imagine!
