Bildnis der Madame de Pompadour

Boucher painted this in 1756, the year the Seven Years' War broke out, a war Madame de Pompadour had a real hand in starting after helping steer France into its surprising new alliance with Austria. She was Louis XV's mistress, but by now her influence was political, and the portrait is how she wanted that understood. She sits not among jewels but among books, sheet music, a drawing in her lap and a letter half written, the props of an educated woman at the centre of things. Her spaniel rests at her feet. When the picture was shown at the Salon the following year, critics grumbled that Boucher had made her far younger and lovelier than she really was. She was 34, and often unwell.