ポンパドゥール夫人

By 1759 Madame de Pompadour had been Louis the Fifteenth's mistress for over a decade and, by then, was less his lover than his closest adviser and the manager of his court. Boucher had painted her many times, and this was the last of the series. She stands in a garden in a pink silk gown, and Boucher lays that pink over a grey underlayer so thinly that the whole dress takes on a silvery shimmer almost impossible to catch in reproduction. Nothing here is idle. At her feet sits her spaniel, Ines, a sign of loyalty, and behind her a small sculpture shows Friendship consoling Love, a careful hint that her real bond with the king had outlasted the affair. The setting recalls the park at Bellevue, the country house she built and shared with him. She died five years after this was painted, worn out at 42, still running much of the business of the French court from her rooms at Versailles.