Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King (59 page)

The triumphant figure of Louis XIV depicted on a warhorse outside Maastricht, which he besieged successfully in June 1673; a new militaristic image as his plans for conquest increased.

As European opinion turned against Louis XIV and his military ventures became less successful, here were numerous satirical attacks on him. An anonymous engraving of 1693, ‘Louis Retreats with his Seraglio', shows him with a column of ladies behind him.

Louise de La Vallière, the virginal young girl whom Louis made his mistress and who bore him several children; no one described her as beautiful but everyone found her appealing.

Louise de La Vallière as a huntress: despite her seemingly frail physique, Louise was an accomplished rider, something which made her an ideal companion for the King.

Athénaïs de Rochechouart de Mortemart, Marquise de Montespan, who was the King's
maîtresse en titre
for seventeen years; her beauty, including the curling hair admired by Madame de Sévigné and her large blue eyes, dazzled contemporaries. By Louis Elle Ferdinand II.

Athénaïs reclining in front of the gallery of her château at Clagny; her frequent pregnancies meant that she adopted elegant and languorous loose clothing to conceal her figure.

Athénaïs by Pierre Mignard.

The Appartement des Bains where Madame de Montespan and the King relaxed, with a marble bath and couches, depicted on a fan.

Satirists were happy to mock Athénaïs's voluptuous figure as it thickened with age; she is seen here feasting with Louis XIV and attendant goblins and devils. By Joseph Werner.

Angélique de Fontanges became the King's mistress at the age of eighteen when he was forty; she died two years later after a traumatic experience in childbirth. Some people thought she was the most beautiful girl ever to come to Versailles - ‘like a statue’ - but she lacked intelligence.

Françoise de Maintenon, shown as an attractive young woman whose dark hair and dark eyes were much admired; she also loved fine clothes, contrary to later sneers that she was a prude who always dressed in black.

Madame de Maintenon with two of Athénaïs's children to whom she acted as governess in a secret house in the rue de Vaugirard: the Duc du Maine, her favourite, and the Comte de Vexin, who died young.

Engraved frontispiece to the satire
Scarron
appearing to Madame de Maintenon,
1664; the middle-aged playwright whom she married at the age of sixteen and who died nine years later here regards his widow in all her court finery with dismay.