Portrait of Anne-Geneviève de Lévis-Ventadour, Duchess of Rohan

A member of the French aristocracy and daughter of Madame de Ventadour, governess to Louis XV, Anne-Geneviève de Lévis-Ventadour married twice and had children with her second husband. As the only daughter of the Duke of Ventadour, she inherited all his estates upon his death in 1717.

Her first husband, Louis-Charles de la Tour d’Auvergne, Prince of Turenne, died in battle in 1692, leaving her a widow at the age of twenty-nine, with no children. It was through her second marriage, to Hercule-Mériadec de Rohan in 1694, that she acquired the title of Duchess of Rohan; from this marriage she had several children. As a princess of the House of Rohan, whose members also held the rank of foreign princes, Anne-Geneviève was entitled to continue using the title‘Her Highness’.

The Duchess of Rohan was also a patron of the arts, a passion she shared with the Rohan family. Following her death, an inventory of her Paris residence noted the presence of ‘twelve full-length portraits of the House of Soubise, for several of which Joseph Parrocel painted the backgrounds; they are placed,’ he adds, ‘in the spandrels between the windows’,” as described by Dézallier d’Argenville: (Ch. V. Langlois, *Les Hôtels de Clisson, de Guise et de Rohan-Soubise au Marais*, 1922, p. 153). Also present are portraits of the kings of France, including that of the reigning monarch in the place of honour, signifying the monarchist loyalty of the Rohan family and, consequently, of the duchess (P. Béchu and C. Taillard, Les Hôtels de Soubise et de Rohan Strasbourg, 2004, pp. 95–96).

The duchess’s attire is striking in its opulence: velvet, ermine, pearls and semi-precious stones. The lacework is remarkable, as is the velvety texture of the cloak. In the background, a landscape is barely sketched across half the painting, whilst the other half remains dark, dividing the background of the work rather clumsily.

This portrait was likely painted at a time when she was at the height of her influence at the French court, as a member of the prestigious Rohan family, to whom she had been entrusted with the role of governess to the royal children. It is, in fact, the only known portrait of her from this period of her life. It differs from a better-known portrait of the duchess by Nicolas de Largillière, held at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen. In this portrait, the Duchess of Rohan is depicted, no doubt, after her marriage to the Duke of Rohan, although she still uses the title of Princess of Soubise – the second woman in French history to hold that title.

Marie Mzykova, ‘The Collections of Sychrov National Castle: The Rohan Portrait Gallery’, Sychrov National Castle, Liberec District National Committee, Czechoslovakia, 1985.