France Around Town: Madame de Pompadour
The royal culture of 18th century France in many ways defined the future of modern fine dining rituals and tableware, with the establishment of porcelain factories at Vincennes and Limoges, and the creation of their first dinner service for Louis XV.
“Anecdote has it that one evening in February, 1755 the [dinner] service sat waiting in boxes around the royal dining room. The king planned to unveil it ceremoniously by involving guests in the ritual. He gathered the nobility before the group of crates. Everyone in attendance was asked to open one and unwrap a celestial ‘masterpiece’. This spectacle of the marvelous dinner plate nicely captures the excitement around the art of the table when the full porcelain service first became the must of the fashionable dinner party.”*
I had the great pleasure of taking this seminar from Professor Alden Gordon as a senior at Trinity College, and am thrilled to have the opportunity to revisit the topic of such an enchanting, pivotal character in history, and the adornments of the world in which she lived.
Meet Madame de Pompadour...
The
Trinity Club
of New York City
invites you to a
Faculty Lecture
"Explore the Private Worlds of Madame de Pompadour"
The Marquise de Pompadour, official mistress of King Louis XV of France from 1745 to 1764, led two lives—a public life at court and an entirely different private life in her own residences. Some of her houses were intended to be refuges in the event she outlived the king and had to retire. This lecture will illustrate the palaces and decoration of her apartments at the court at Versailles and her private houses at Bellevue, the Hermitage at Fontainebleau, and the Chateau de Menars.
with
Alden R. Gordon '69, P'05, '10, '12
Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of Fine Arts
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
6:00 - 8:00 p.m.
Hosted by Stephanie Borynack Clark '96
Wally Findlay Galleries
124 East 57th Street
New York, NY
RSVP here.
Office of Alumni Relations
please visit www.trincoll.edu/alumni or call (860)297-2400.
Footed plate for Louis XV’s “service bleu céleste.” Vincennes Manufactory. 1754-5. Boughton House. *Source www.wondersandmarvels.com
Madame de Pompadour’s private apartments
Thursday, May 10, 2012
