Art History Series: The Apartments of Madame de Pompadour

Apartments of Madame de Pompadour, current room in Château de Versailles

As early as March 1745, shortly after the Yew Tree Ball and the official beginning of the relationship between Louis XV and the future Madame Pompadour, she was already living in apartments located above the rooms of Mars, Mercury and Apollo in the Chateau of Versailles. One cannot talk about her without mentioning the Rococo style, which is evident in her rooms. The curved lines of the furniture, soft pastel colours and wonderful damasks everywhere give a feeling of elegance, freedom and lightness. In the apartments in their current form at Versailles, we can find four rooms in a row, unfortunately their current form is a guess, since nothing has been preserved from the representative rooms. What we do know, however, is that her room always smelled of wonderful perfumes, and it was said that even 20 years later, they could still be sensed. The King's previous mistress also owned a “flying chair”, a sort of small lift to save herself the stairs to her apartment, which Madame Pompadour also used until she renovated her apartment and took the mechanism to Fontainebleau.

After 1750, when she ceased to be the king's mistress due to physical reasons and her frail health, instead of sending her out of the palace, the king continued to show her closeness as his friend and advisor, and she moved to another apartment on the ground floor of the palace where her style and taste remain evident. This apartment was in the part of the palace reserved for the royal family across those of the king's daughters, which was not easy given the daughters' open hostility towards her.

Unlike the intimate previous one, this one spans a total of six large rooms, unusually for historical apartments, the service rooms have remained relatively intact including clothing cabinet as well as the room of Madame Hausett - the Marquise's lady-in-waiting. Bathed in sunlight and a magnificent view, this apartment indicated her high status as well as allowing easy access to the important figures with whom she interacted. The walls were in pastel green and pink, suited perfectly with the furniture in the same colors, and one room - extremely intimate - the Red Chamber was covered with an exotic red Chinese lacquer and this is the room in which she consulted with the king.  In this apartment she had enough space to store her vast library and collection of art and porcelain figures.

Madame de Pompadour loved perfume and it was said that her rooms were always scented and that her choice of scents could still be smelled twenty years after she had left the rooms.

Regards,

Julia

Apartments of Madame de Pompadour, current view at Château de Versailles pt.2

Madame de Pompadour's current apartments at Château de Versailles pt.3

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