Born on July 15, 1737, Louise-Marie was the last of the children of Louis XV and Marie Leszczynska. She was only eleven months old when, with her elder sisters Victoire, Sophie and Thérèse, she left Versailles for the faraway the Abbey of Fontevraud. That is to say she knew of no other world than the […]
Sophie Philippe Elisabeth Justine is the most elusive of the daughters of Louis XV and Marie Leszczynska. Born in 1734, one year after Victoire, Sophie was shipped to the Abbey of Fontevraud with her and their two younger sisters, Thérése, two years old, and baby Louise, only eleven months old! Madame Sophie, even after her […]
Now that we have become more familiar with the elder daughters of Louis XV and Marie Leszczynska, we can better appreciate this beautiful series by Nattier. It is typical of the artist’s allegorical portraits. First we have Madame Elisabeth, Duchess de Parma as Earth. A woman of power. Then her twin, Madame Henriette, as Fire. […]
Yet another daughter of Louis XV and Marie Leszczynska. Though she was born in 1733, and thus only one year younger than her sister Adélaïde, Marie-Louise-Thérèse-Victoire was raised quite differently. What had happened? Budget troubles already. If Madame Victoire and her three younger sisters had grown up in Versailles, each princess would have required her […]
After the twins Madame Elisabeth and Madame Henriette, Louis XV and Marie Leszczynska had another daughter, Marie-Louise, and two sons, Louis-Ferdinand and Philippe. Marie-Louise and Philippe both died in childhood, an all too commonplace tragedy at the time. Louis-Ferdinand, the eagerly awaited Dauphin, would be the father of the future Louis XVI. The next royal […]
Anne-Henriette de France, thanks to her beautiful portrait by Nattier with a viole de gambe (cello), sparked the idea of this series on the daughters of Louis XV and Marie Leszczynska. She was born on August 14, 1727, minutes after Madame Elisabeth. The sisters, as is obvious from their respective portraits, were fraternal twins. They […]
On August 14, 1727, Marie Leszczynska, Louis XV’s Queen, gave birth for the first time, to twin girls, the first born being Marie-Louise-Elisabeth, known as Madame Elisabeth, or simply, as the King’s eldest daughter, Madame. Louis XV, who was only seventeen, had of course been hoping for a male heir, but he was nonetheless delighted […]
I stumbled upon this gorgeous post by Judith at Paris Atelier on Chenonceau, the “Château of the Ladies”. Memories of France’s great Renaissance ladies, Queen Catherine de Médicis, her rival Diane de Poitiers, her daughter-in-law Mary Queen of Scots (and of France) are indeed forever attached to the place. But Chenonceau did not sink into […]
Talleyrand, the Bishop turned diplomat extraordinaire, said of Queen Marie Leszczynska that “her virtues had something sad about them that failed to inspire sympathy.” That has remained the judgment of history, which remembers her as a dour, charmless, rather stupid but innocuous figure. This is, in my opinion, most unfair. True, Maria Karolina Zofia Felicja […]
Sometimes I love music on websites, sometimes I find it distracting and hasten to turn it off. So I have long hesitated before putting this blog, or my website, to music. I would choose something from the 17th or 18th centuries (no, not the soundtrack to Sofia Coppola’s Marie-Antoinette.) So what is your take on […]
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