True Pleasures by Lucinda Holdforth

signature smell and, at last, the climactic mouthful. There’s a discipline as well. You can’t eat too many of these sweets, or too often. If you did you would soon reach a horrible surfeit. They offer simple pleasures, perhaps, but represent complex experiences, created with utmost care.
    Pompadour nurtured French craftsmanship. She revived the Gobelins carpet and furniture factory in Paris, restoring its reputation and commercial success. She was instrumental in setting up the famous porcelain factory at Sèvres. She once planted a winter garden of china blossoms scented with perfume – laughing with delight when her lover the King, deceived by the ruse, bent over to smell a flower.
    Pompadour was not without her strenuous detractors. Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau – the man who brought us ‘the noble savage’ – vehemently denounced the rococo and the high civilization it represented.
These throngs of ephemeral works
, he thundered,
which come to light every day, made only to amuse women and having neither strength nor depth, fly from the dressing table to the counter
.
    These
ephemeral works
weren’t, however, antithetical to the Enlightenment spirit of progress; they reflected it.Pompadour’s aesthetic vision was bound up in the values and virtues of reason, learning, tolerance and good humor. One of the many ironies of the French revolution is that the reformist temperament was nurtured and came to flower in the very heart of aristocratic France. Pompadour herself owned two telescopes, a globe and possibly a microscope. As well as scientific journals, her library numbered over 3,000 volumes covering poetry, history, geography, novels and philosophy.
Philosophe
Dr Quesnay was her physician, and she steadfastly supported Voltaire, the single greatest figure of the Enlightenment. Pompadour is believed to have written the entry on
rouge
in the
Encyclopédie
. It was widely claimed that Louis XV plotted the path of the Seven Years War on maps laid out in Madame de Pompadour’s bedroom: critics said she used her
mouches
, or beauty spots, to mark out the key events.
    Rousseau and others regarded the rococo purely in light of the decadence and despair caused by the excesses of the court. Diderot reserved particular venom for Pompadour’s favorite artist.
Boucher’s elegance
, he lectured,
his affectation, romantic gallantry, coquetry, facility, variety, brilliance, rouged flesh tones, and debauchery will captivate dandies, society women, young people, men of the world, and the whole crowd of those who are strangers to true taste, to truth, to right thinking, to the gravity of art
.
    I like to ponder that term:
the gravity of art
. It’s a perfectly valid idea, of course, but I’ll take the levity of art every time. Diderot was right, however, about the French gift for
facility
,
variety
,
brilliance
. No one could walk down this street without being struck by the French gift for selling beauty.
    Pompadour herself was a master at image-making – andimage renewal. The early portraits portray the glamorous mistress, at her toilette or in a leafy bower. The later paintings show a change. In the Louvre there’s a portrait of Pompadour by Quentin de La Tour. There she is in her patterned silk dress with her globe and viola, volumes of the
Encyclopédie
, architectural drafts and letters. She is the late thirties woman of education and influence, although she still shows us her pretty ankle. Also in the Louvre is a wonderful sculpture by Pigalle:
Madame de Pompadour en amitié
. It portrays La Pompadour as a mythic virgin – a muse perhaps, or a temple priestess. It announces her changed but still privileged relationship with the King – from mistress of his heart, to companion, guide and trusted confidante. She created her own image, and periodically reshaped and updated it. In modern parlance, she re-branded herself. And see, as the rue du Faubourg