Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart de Mortemart, Marquise de Montespan

Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart de Mortemart (1640–1707) was one of King Louis XIV’s most famous mistresses, with whom she had seven children. As her mother was a lady-in-waiting to Queen Anne of Austria, she joined the French court at the age of eighteen, entering the service of the House of Orléans. She married the Marquis de Montespan in 1663 and was introduced to Parisian salons, where she very quickly attracted attention. She met the king in 1666 and very quickly became his official favourite, much to the chagrin of Louise de la Vallière, who eventually withdrew from court. Madame de Montespan then became one of the most influential women, enjoying the king’s trust. Her circle ‘became the centre of the court, of pleasures, of fortune, of hope and of terror for ministers and army generals’, notes Saint-Simon in his Memoirs.

She gradually fell out of favour as Madame de Maintenon’s influence over the king grew; Madame de Maintenon was, in fact, someone Madame de Montespan herself had introduced to the court. The untimely death of another royal mistress, Mademoiselle de Fontanges, hastened her downfall. Madame de Montespan was accused of having her poisoned in 1681, as well as of having been involved in the Affair of the Poisons. The king turned his back on her, but the marquise remained at court until 1691, before retiring to an abbey. She died in 1707.

Roger de Bussy-Rabutin wrote a scathing attack on Madame de Montespan in *La France galante*, which presented itself as a continuation of*L’Histoire amoureuse*: ‘all these fine qualities were overshadowed by the faults of her soul, which was accustomed to the most notorious deceit’.

Bussy-Rabutin’s portrait was not part of the original collection. It was acquired later by the Count of Sarcus. It depicts the Marquise de Montespan in a simple, white, loose-fitting gown, with a light golden cloak fastened by a few precious brooches. A pearl necklace adorns her neck modestly. This simplicity is also evident in the portrait held at the Palace of Versailles. Here, the Marquise de Montespan is dressed in blue, with a slightly more elaborate brooch holding the fabric in place. Around 1675, the Marquise did indeed set a fashion for new styles of dress known as ‘Innocentes’, ‘battantes’, ‘déshabillées’ or ‘négligées’ – dresses designed to conceal her numerous pregnancies.

Public collections contain few authentic portraits of Madame de Montespan. Pierre Mignard painted several portraits of Louis XIV’s favourite. One is held at the Musée Saint-Loup in Troyes (the artist’s birthplace), another at the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle, England, whilst the Palace of Versailles possesses a version from his studio. In the latter two cases, given that the Marquise was blonde, this traditional identification raises questions. In his work *La Vie de Pierre Mignard*, the Abbé de Monville wrote in 1730 that to paint Madame de Montespan, “was not merely to paint a very beautiful person, but to paint nobility, wit and beauty itself”. Paradoxically, her true likeness remains elusive today.

The portrait held at the Château de Bussy is an exact painted replica of an anonymous drawing held at the Musée Condé in Chantilly – unless, of course, the imitation is the other way round. This portrait, in which the Marquise is clearly depicted as blonde, is intimate in style, a far cry from the one painted by Pierre Mignard, which portrays her in all her majesty accompanied by her children. In both the Chantilly drawing and the portrait kept at Bussy, the Marquise’s features are in the same vein as the three-quarter-length portrait engraved by Étienne Picart, known as ‘le Romain’, with a more or less similar blonde hairstyle and a mischievous nose rendered far more effectively in the print.