Laffy Taffy

A history blog dedicated to the early modern period. Mostly 17th and 18th-century Colonial America and France

[ghw-archive]

Silk brocade dress, c. 1780-1785

[xanaxfarts]

Lotus Vessel made of jade with a crouching toad. 17th/18th-century.

[fripperiesandfobs]

Robe à la française ca. 1765

From Cora Ginsburg

[oldpaintings]

Jan van Kessel the Elder (Flemish, 1626--1679)

[diemelusine]

Maria Theresa of Spain, Archduchess of Austria, Queen of France (c. 1660) by Jean Nocret.

[allegorypaintings]

Allegory of Music. Portrait of Madame de Maintenon with the Natural Children of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan

Artist: Antoine Coypel (French, 1661–1722)

Date: c. 1684

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Private collection

[marquislaffytaffy]

"Madame de Maintenon was seated, facing the plain, in a litter chair with three window-panes...The King was standing to the right of her chair, and every second moment he would bend down to explain to Madame de Maintenon what was going on in the exercises. Each time, she would lower her window four or five fingerlengths...the King spoke to no one but her, other than to give out orders...Everyone was astonished and embarrassed and pretending not to notice, but they were watching this more attentively than anything the army was doing..."

Louis de Rouvroy, Duc de Saint-Simon

The Secret Wife of Louis XIV, Francoise d'Aubigne, Madame de Maintenon - Veronica Buckley (pg. 368)

[history-of-fashion]

1830 Louise-Adéone Drölling - Marie-Joseph-Gilbert du Motier, marquis de La Fayette

(Musée de l'Armée)

[wikitrajes]

Painted dish. Talavera, 1651-1675

--------

Plato pintado. Talavera, 1651-1675

Pasta cerámica

Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas, CE00019

[ratatoskryggdrasil]

Baldassare Franceschini (Volterrano), The Chevalier de Lorraine, depicted as Ganymede, late 17th cent. 

[marquislaffytaffy]

The Carousel of 1662

Henri Jules de Bourbon, The Duke of Enghien as the King of the Indians

[roehenstart]

Portrait of Louis XIII by Marie-Victoire Jaquotot.

[roehenstart]

Philippe I, Duke of Orléans. Circle of Pierre Mignard.

[from-a-spiders-web]

[dreamconsumer]

Louis-Auguste de Bourbon (1670-1736).

[nordleuchten]

"inferior in rank to ourselves"

The Viscount de Noailles and myself were dependent upon our parents, and only possessed the income which they assigned to us. La Fayette, on the contrary, although younger, and inferior in rank to ourselves, found himself, by a singular chance, at the age of nineteen years, sole master of his property, and of his person, and the independent possessor of a hundred thousand livres a year.

Louis Philippe, comte de Ségur, Memoirs and Recollections of Count Segur, Ambassador From France to the Courts of Russia and Prussia, Wells And Lilly-Court-Street, Boston, 1825, p. 85. I find such comments on La Fayette always to be very interesting, because whenever La Fayette is discussed in an American context (in other words; most of the time), he always was THE Marquis. But back home in France, in a truely aristocratic society, he was one of many and did not even have the most exhaulted rank. You could even argue that La Fayette, to a degree, was self-made. Sure, he came from a rich and aristocratic family and married into another rich and aristocratic family and therefor had a very privileged starting point, but this alone did not bring him the prestige, fame, respect or recognition that he enjoyed towards the end of his life.

[livesunique]

Château de Maintenon, Maintenon, Eure-et-Loir, France