Luxembourg Palace Reflections
by Kathy Bassett
Title
Luxembourg Palace Reflections
Artist
Kathy Bassett
Medium
Photograph - Photography - Digital Fine Art
Description
Smaller formats. In 1715, the palace became the residence of Marie Louise Elisabeth d'Orleans, Duchess of Berry (1695-1719). The widowed Duchess was notoriously promiscuous, having the reputation of a French Messalina, relentlessly driven by her unquenchable thirst for all pleasures of the flesh. The Luxembourg palace and its gardens thus became stages where the radiantly beautiful princess acted out her ambitions, enthroned like a queen surrounded by her court. In some of her more exclusive parties, Madame de Berry also played the leading part in elaborate "tableaux-vivants" that represented mythological scenes and in which she displayed her appetizing young person impersonating Venus or Diana. According to various satirical songs which scurrilously evoked her amours the Lady of the Luxembourg hid several pregnancies, shutting herself up from society when about to give birth. Her taste for strong liquors and her sheer gluttony also scandalised the court.On 21 May 1717, Madame de Berry received Peter the Great at the Luxembourg. She welcomed the visiting Tsar splendidly dressed in a magnificent sack-back gown which showcased her voluptuous bosom as well as her mischievous face but also helped conceal her growing corpulence for she was then in an "interesting condition".
On 28 February 1718, the Duchess of Berry threw a magnificent party for her visiting aunt, the Duchess of Lorraine. The entire palace and its gardens were elaborately illuminated. The lavish banquet was followed by a masked ball. Madame de Berry made a dazzling appearance before her guests. She was then in the full splendor of her youthful beauty and pride and acted as if she were the very incarnation of the goddess of love, mirth, beauty and sensual pleasures.However, just over one year after this magnificent moment of festive glory, the Luxembourg palace became the stage of a shameful tragicomedy which ended in the harrowing demise of the haughty princess. The tempestuous life of Madame de Berry, the "Venus of the Luxembourg Palace", soon met a premature end. On 2 April 1719, after a grueling four-day labour, shut up in a small room of her palace, the young widow was delivered of a stillborn baby-girl, supposedly fathered by her lieutenant of the guards, the Count of Riom. Ill-prepared by her debauchery and raucous behavior, Berry's delivery was extremely troublesome and almost killed her. The Church refused her the Sacraments thus adding moral infamy to the physical tortures of the labouring woman. Saint-Simon wrote a very sarcastic description of this scandalous childbirth. Hoping to regain her health and undeceive the public that she had been confined, Madame de Berry left Paris and the Luxembourg palace. She died in her castle at La Muette on 21 July 1719 and, according to Saint-Simon, was found to be again pregnant.In 1750, the palace became a museum the forerunner of the Louvre, and was open two days a week until 1779.[15] In 1778, the palace was given to the comte de Provence by his brother Louis XVI. During the French Revolution, it was briefly a prison, then the seat of the French Directory, and in 1799, the home of the Snat conservateur and the first residence of Napoleon Bonaparte, as First Consul of the French Republic
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April 5th, 2014
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