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Madame de Pompadour (New York Review Books Classics)
When Madame de Pompadour became the mistress of Louis XV, no one expected her to retain his affections for long. A member of the bourgeoisie rather than an aristocrat, she was physically too cold for the carnal Bourbon king, and had so many enemies that she could not travel publicly without risking a pelting of mud and stones. History has loved her little better.Nancy Mitford's delightfully candid biography re-creates the spirit of eighteenth-century Versailles with its love of pleasure and treachery. We learn that the Queen was a "bore," the Dauphin a "prig," and see France increasingly overcome with class conflict. With a fiction writer's felicity, Mitford restores the royal mistress and celebrates her as a survivor, unsurpassed in "the art of living," who reigned as the most powerful woman in France for nearly twenty years..
Price: $6.90
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Madame de Pompadour: A Life
A riveting new biography of the legendary French queen wedding at Versailles to Louis XVI, the French court, boredom, hypocrisy, loneliness, allies, enemies, extravagant entertainment, scandal, intrigue, sex, birth and bereavement, lovers, peasant riots, the fall of the Bastille, the attack on Versailles, confinement in the Tuileries, escape and capture, mob rule in Paris, imprisonment, the guillotine. Marie Antoinette is a biographer's dream, and Evelyne Lever's account of the life of the inimitable (and last) French queen is a sumptuous, addictive delight. From Marie Antoinette's birth in Vienna in 1755--the fifteenth child of Austrian Archduchess Maria Theresa and Holy Roman Emperor Francis I--through her turbulent and unhappy marriage to Louis XVI, the turmoil of the French Revolution, her trial for high treason (during which she was accused of incest), and her final beheading, Lever draws on a variety of resources, including diaries, letters, and firsthand accounts, to weave a gripping, fast-paced historical narrative that reads like expertly crafted fiction. .
Price: $3.84
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Dreaming with His Eyes Open: A Life of Diego Rivera (Discovery Series)
What confidence and ambition it requires to approach a biography of Diego Rivera, the larger-than-life Mexican muralist who in recent years has been reduced, in some circles, to being known as Frida Kahlo's evil husband. The myths and mysteries begin at his birth, in 1884. His mother seemed to die just after Diego, a firstborn twin, emerged, and her body was laid out for burial, until an old servant insisted she was still breathing. She recovered fully (Diego's twin died at age 2). This macabre event was but the first in a fabulously eventful life. Under the brutal regime of the dictator Porfirio DÃaz, whose legacy included human slavery on an unprecedented scale, Mexico City became "The Paris of the Americas," with imperial palaces, European music, and decorations by artists who had studied under Ingres. "It was in this exuberant, chaotic, and occasionally dangerous world that Diego Rivera grew up," writes Patrick Marnham, who casts a spell of such strangeness, beauty, and black humor that the reader is utterly hooked by the end of the first few pages. Marnham repeats and analyses all the fables Rivera spun about himself and his family; he describes Rivera's enchantment with Italian fresco cycles and his friendship and rivalry with Picasso in Montmartre in the 1920s; he reports Rivera's countless amorous conquests; and he presents the supposedly feminist view of Rivera as a monster of appetite, arrogance, and authority. Marnham also does an excellent job of picking apart the personal, political, and artistic threads of the disastrous brouhaha over Rivera's Rockefeller Center murals. In prose that is poetically rich and frequently tinged with not-so-gentle irony, he has written a thoroughly believable book about an all but unbelievable life. --Peggy Moorman.
Price: $19.63
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Madame de Pompadour: Mistress of France
This biography of the legendary mistress of King Louis XV offers dramatic insight into the life of one of the most enchanting, powerful, and feared women to grace the world's stage. Groomed from an early age to assume the role of a rich man's mistress, Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson underwent several transformations before she caught the heart of the king himself. Although accustomed to the king's extramarital relationships, the court was shocked at the sudden ascension of the low-born Mademoiselle Poisson. The newcomer, however, wasted no time in establishing herself as the king's sole confidante and, ultimately, his indispensable partner in affairs of state. The critically acclaimed author of Philippe, Duc d'Orleans, Christine Pevitt Algrant traces Madame de Pompadour from her modest beginnings in early-eighteenth-century Paris to her reign as the undisputed mistress of Versailles. Filled with photographs, and evocative and insightful in its telling, Madame de Pompadour is a seductive portrait of one of the most fascinating and influential women of the age. .
Price: $5.50
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Madame de Pompadour: Images of a Mistress
As mistress to King Louis XV from 1745 until her death in 1764, Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, marquise de Pompadour, was portrayed in an impressive array of paintings, engravings, sculpture, and other media. Most of these representations were made under her careful supervision and control, as she sought to maintain her place at the king's side and to develop authority and influence at the royal court and in national politics. To this end, the marquise summoned the greatest artists of the day, including Boucher, La Tour, Van Loo, Nattier, Drouais, Falconet, and Pigalle. This beautiful book is the first scholarly biographical study of Madame de Pompadour in fifty years. Eminent historian Colin Jones places these pictures within the historical framework of art, culture, gender, and politics, considering all aspects of Madame de Pompadour's unprecedented power. He also shows how she utilized her image as a means of retaining her royal lover's affection, as her relationship with him passed from sexual infatuation to platonic friendship. This book accompanies an exhibition at the National Gallery, London from October 16, 2002 to January 12, 2003..
Price: $50.00
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