Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour (December 29, 1721 ā April 15, 1764) was the official cheif mistress of Louis XV from 1745 until her death. She claimed that at the age of nine, she was taken by her mother to a fortune teller and told that she would someday reign over the heart of a king. Apparently, her mother believed the prophecy and accordingly nicknamed her āReinetteā (meaning ālittle queenā). At adolescence, her mother took personal charge of her education at home by hiring tutors who taught her to recite entire plays by heart, play the clavicord, dance, sing, paint and engrave. She became an accomplished actress and singer, and also attended Parisās famous Club de l'Entresol. The marquise had many enemies among the royal courtiers who felt it a disgrace that the king would thus compromise himself with a commoner. She was very sensitive to the unending libels called poissonnades, a pun on her family name, Poisson, which means āfishā in French.
The Marquise de Pompadour was an incredibly intelligent and accomplished woman. She was responsible for the development of the manufactory of SĆØvres, which became one of the most famous porcelain manufacturers in Europe and which provided skilled jobs to the region. Reinette had an eye for architecture and design, planning buildings such as the Place de la Concorde and the Petit Trianon. She had a keen interest in literature and was a close friend of philosophes of the Lights, like Voltaire throughout her life. Her influence over Louis increased markedly through the 1750s, to the point where he allowed her considerable leeway in the determination of policy over a whole range of issues, from military matters to foreign affairs. Ther reasons for the Marquiseās influence over Louis were many: she decidedly established a cordial relationship with Marie LeszczyÅska, the Kingās wife ; she also put all of her effort into bringing fun into the Kingās melancholy life ; she threw dinner parties for him and put on plays that exalted him and of course, she was a woman of verve and intelligence with whom the King sensed an intellectual equal.
In her later years, although they had ceased being lovers, the King and Jeanne remained very close friends, and Louis was devoted to her until her death from tuberculosis in 1764 at the age of forty-two. Even some her enemies admired her courage during the final painful weeks. Voltaire wrote: āI am very sad at the death of Madame de Pompadour. I was indebted to her and I mourn her out of gratitude. It seems absurd that while an ancient pen-pusher, hardly able to walk, should still be alive, a beautiful woman, in the midst of a splendid career, should die at the age of forty two.āĀ (source of the text)Ā
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