Hoping to use her to gain influence at court, du Barry arranged for Jeanne to marry his brother, created a fake birth certificate establishing noble lineage and lowering her age by three years, and introduced her to the king, who was instantly smitten. In 1763, she became the mistress of Jean-Baptiste du Barry, a procurer who ran a casino and who set her up as a courtesan, or high-class prostitute. Royal mistresses had always been selected from nobility or, at least, as in the case of Madame de Pompadour, from serious money.īorn Jeanne Bécu, Madame du Barry was the daughter of a seamstress and a friar who were not married. Madame du Barry was presented at court as the king’s favorite in 1769, five years after the death of her predecessor, Madame de Pompadour. The neutral dress sets off the sitter’s pink sash and flowers, her rouged cheeks, the yellow festoon on the stone wall and the wreath of parti-colored flowers in her hand. The handling of the lace around her collar and sleeves, her powdered hair, the gray feathers sprouting from her crown and the satin dress itself, all in close tones of silvery white set off by the blue-gray sky, is consummate. The portrait, in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, is one of several that Vigée Le Brun painted of Madame du Barry. When Madame du Barry opened it, she saw her lover’s severed head. Wrapped in a white cloth stained with blood, it rolled across the floor of her salon. One of the people below tossed something heavy through the window. Ten years after this portrait, Madame du Barry opened a window of her chateau outside Paris to investigate the source of loud shouting. That was the year in which Madame du Barry, who had been the favorite mistress of French King Louis XV, struck up an amorous relationship with the Duke of Brissac, a military commander prominent among the courtiers at Versailles. Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, widely regarded as the most accomplished female painter of the 18th century, painted this gorgeous portrait of Madame du Barry in 1782.
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