The Kings' Mistresses (10 page)

Lorenzo was not discouraged. He continued his lavish attentions to his new bride, attentions that were usually closely connected to
the ostentatious display of his own prestige. At the end of August he paraded Marie, seated in an elegant carriage, across the city accompanied by a cavalcade of twenty horsemen. On August 29 and again on September 13, he organized an evening concert and serenade for his wife, with more than thirty instruments playing in the courtyard of their palazzo.

Later that year, in November 1661, Queen Marie-Thérèse of France gave birth to a son, and the Colonnas were among those invited to watch the lavish celebrations produced for the French community in Rome. Marie herself was acutely aware that she was expected to produce a strong Colonna succession, and she had rewarded the family's hopes by becoming pregnant almost immediately but had miscarried in the second month, “which made people all over Rome say that the constable had married an incurable woman and that I would have greater need of doctors than of midwives.”
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By the summer of 1662 she was pregnant again. This time her husband forbade her to ride on horseback, which he believed had precipitated the miscarriage. Marie reluctantly agreed to go about only by sedan chair or carriage.

This did not mean, however, that she would agree to miss her favorite outings, which in those early years in Rome often meant going on a hunt for the boar and deer that proliferated in the countryside and were protected for the amusement of noble hunting parties. Opportunities for some of the diversions familiar to Parisians—theater, dance, music—were scarce under the rule of Pope Alexander VII, who was a lover of monumental art and architecture but had banned all public theater. On his desk he kept a marble skull, designed by Bernini, as a reminder of the inevitable futility of human endeavor. When Marie's brother, Philippe, arrived in Rome, he was immediately treated to a hunting outing in the country with his new brother-in-law. Marie insisted on joining the party: “Even though my pregnancy did not permit me to ride
a horse, I still was able to enjoy all the entertainment, because the hunters make the hunt pass fairly often by some covered wagons of a sort which they make for such purposes. I was safe there, since even the most furious boars could not tip them over.”
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As a girl in France, Marie, along with her sisters, had learned to ride. Though not as important for ladies as for gentlemen, equestrianism was part of a young noblewoman's education, particularly in France, where girls learned to ride both sidesaddle and astride, and where the ladies often accompanied the men on hunting expeditions. Even sidesaddle, a good rider could keep up with the hunting party, thanks to the horned sidesaddle, designed by Catherine de Medici to permit the rider to lock her leg firmly around a saddle horn while still keeping both legs to one side. Marie was adept at riding both ways, and she loved the speed of the hunt. This was a pleasure that she shared with Lorenzo, himself a renowned equestrian who was proud of his stables and owned a large stud farm outside of Rome that he visited frequently. So he indulged his young wife's passion for hunting, except during pregnancies.

Marie's first child, Filippo Colonna, was born on April 7, 1663, to the great joy of the family. After the requisite forty-day confinement, Marie was put on display in a magnificent bed that Lorenzo had commissioned on the occasion of her first pregnancy. It was a wonder of baroque art, designed by Paul Schor, who in collaboration with his mentor, Bernini, had been producing elaborate decorative and monumental objects for the churches, squares, and palazzi of Rome in response to the huge demand created by the city's prosperity and the festivals and renovations that had come in its wake. In November 1661, just after Marie's miscarriage, Schor and Bernini had created a stunning spectacle of decorations and fireworks in front of the French church of Saint Trinita dei Monti in Rome, commissioned to celebrate the birth of a son to Louis XIV and Marie-Thérèse. But the bed created for Marie Mancini
Colonna was a more durable artifact and quickly became one of the sights that visitors to the city wanted to view. Marie took great care to describe the bed in her memoirs. It was a vision out of a fairy tale, in the shape of a giant gilded seashell floating on waves and drawn by four seahorses mounted by mermaids. The bed was framed by a giant canopy of gold brocade held up at the ceiling by an array of cherubs carved of wood and gilded. Marie lay as resplendent as Venus on this marvelous creation. Benedetti's letters to France describing the spectacle were gushing: “If Venus had been a dark haired goddess one would have thought that it was she herself in her seashell. It is certain that neither the bed of Cleopatra and Antony nor that of Venus and Adonis were equal to this one.”
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In the Parisian salons that Marie had left behind, hostesses typically would receive their guests while lying on a bed. Marie's was over the top. Visitors coming to pay their respects to the new mother and her son marveled at this vision of the goddess on her seashell-turned-chariot. The bed would become an emblem of Marie's triumph as mother, patron of the arts, and host to the elite of Roman society. Later generations of the Colonna family would invite visitors to Rome to view the bed, which became one of the sights highlighted in early guidebooks written for young English travelers on the grand tour of the Continent.

Despite her persistent view of Rome as a second-rate urban center, the new Princess Colonna soon began to devote her attention to enhancing the city's cultural life. She also entered into the political as well as the artistic interests of her family. This meant that in her new role she would not always be viewed as supporting the interests of France and King Louis. In fact, though Lorenzo was cordial with the French king, in Rome the Colonnas had closer ties to the Spanish faction, while the rival Orsini family was more closely allied with the French. Marie's position at times was delicate: On the one hand, she made no secret of her French disdain for some of the
more repressive Roman customs, particularly regarding limitations on the freedom of women. She dismissed those who criticized the liberties of her French lifestyle and encouraged other Roman noblewomen to join her in “considering Rome as Paris,” urging them to come out from “behind the windows and blinds that limit a woman's pleasure.” On the other hand, as the Constabless Colonna, she was often in direct competition with the French in Rome. In alliance with her husband, she quickly became a fierce defender of the family's high status, sensitive to the slightest social misstep made by diplomatic envoys from France. Before undertaking their missions in Rome, emissaries from the French court had to be briefed on dealing with her.

In the cultural arena, the Colonnas' tastes were decidedly French. By 1660 Lorenzo had already established a reputation as a collector and patron of art. Once Marie arrived in Rome, the two of them worked together to build a collection that would become one of the most famous in Europe. Their favorite painters were from the community of French artists residing in Rome and led by the celebrated Claude Lorrain, already a mature artist in 1660 and known for his particular mastery of the relatively new genre of landscape painting. A few months after the marriage, Lorenzo commissioned a painting from Claude depicting the story of Cupid and Psyche, a popular tale that was often used as a wedding theme, telling as it does the story of the god of love arranging to have his beloved wafted to a dream castle for their married life together. The story had a particular resonance for the Colonna couple. Marie was like Psyche, taken from her home to join a husband she had never seen. Claude chose as his subject an early moment in the story, when Psyche, overwhelmed by the long aerial voyage that has transported her to the land of her new husband, is resting by a stream and staring into the distance. Behind and above her, like a vision she is not yet aware of, looms the magnificent palace that is her new home. Its architecture is a composite of the facade of the Colonna residence
in Rome and the walls of their country estate in Nemi. Claude worked on the drawings for the painting for two years, finally completing it in 1664, just after the birth of the Colonnas' second child, named Marcantonio after his illustrious ancestor. Two years later, Claude produced a companion piece, a painting depicting a later moment in the Cupid and Psyche romance, when Psyche, exiled from the enchanted castle for having disobeyed her husband and wandering in the wilderness, is saved from drowning by sympathetic gods of nature. In the myth, Psyche learns to obey her husband and joins him in eternal happiness. Was this painting intended as an admonishment to Marie?

By 1666, the harmony that the Colonna couple had found in the first years of their marriage was already weakening. Lorenzo had mistresses, which in itself was not a transgression that would have seriously damaged most aristocratic marriages. But one of his affairs was with a prominent noblewoman, his wife's social equal, and this Marie found particularly humiliating. In 1665 Christina Paleotti, daughter of one of the wealthiest families in Rome, gave birth to a girl whom, everyone knew, Lorenzo had fathered. In November of that same year Marie delivered their third son, Carlo. Soon after, Marie told her husband that she wanted to break off conjugal relations for good and establish a
separazione di letto,
or separation of beds. In her memoirs, she wrote only that she feared the health risks of another pregnancy, and having produced three sons, her husband had no cause to be concerned for the family succession. Her third delivery had been a difficult one. Though later she would remember that her husband had rushed to be with her for it, as he had promised her he would, she also recalled that the experience had frightened her and made her decide that she had given him enough:

Marie's views on this subject were decidedly foreign to Lorenzo. They were influenced by the aspects of her French upbringing that he found most annoying: the feminist streak in those salon conversations of which she was so fond, and that inspired her to exhort Roman women to a greater degree of independence from their husbands. Her ideas on pregnancy and motherhood were influenced, too, by the readings and storytelling of her youth that remained popular among female readers long into adulthood, fairy tales and legends that relentlessly focused on fertility, pregnancy, and the power and danger that came to women through their capacity to bear children. Like the husbands in these tales, Lorenzo had indulged his pregnant wife, sometimes to his regret (as when he allowed her to go riding), other times to his satisfaction (as when he rushed to be with her for the birth of a son). Marie understood the importance of fertility in a noble marriage and the control this could give her over her husband. She also was apprehensive about the loss of power that their
separazione di letto
would generate for her. But in this era when one out of ten women could expect to die in childbirth, she also believed strongly in her own right to a long life after becoming a mother. Her older sister Laure-Victoire, who had been so welcoming to her younger siblings when they first arrived in France, had died at twenty-two after the birth of her third child. Marie was determined not to let this be her own fate.

Later, in her memoirs, Marie lucidly acknowledged the consequences she faced as a result of this decision. She wrote that others
were quick to profit from her new “political sterility” with respect to Lorenzo and his family. While she was pregnant with her own third child, she had learned of Lorenzo's illegitimate daughter. And so, jealousy reared its ugly head in this marriage that had enjoyed a period of conjugal peace and collaboration. Lorenzo would quickly prove himself to be even more prone to that passion than his wife was.

Still, the public face of the Colonna couple continued to be a fairly harmonious one, particularly in the cultural sphere where they had enjoyed their most spectacular mutual successes. From 1663 to 1667 Marie and Lorenzo spent every carnival season, running from the day after Christmas to the beginning of Lent, in Venice, where they were deeply involved in promoting theater and spectacle. Beginning in 1667 they turned their attention to producing theatrical performances in the palazzo, which became the centerpiece of the dramatic arts in Rome. During the reign of the severe Pope Alexander, theater was banned in the holy city, but when Clement IX succeeded him in 1667, a new era of public art and spectacle was initiated. Not only did Clement permit plays to be produced, but he also wrote them himself and was often in the audience. The exiled Queen Christina of Sweden, who had made her principal residence in Rome since dramatically renouncing the throne and converting to Catholicism, presided over a second theater and hosted intellectual discussions among (mostly male) scientists and philosophers at her residence close to the Vatican. Queen Christina's gatherings provided lively competition for Marie's salon-style conversations grouping men and women, artists, writers, and travelers.

Their long seasons in Venice had established both Marie and Lorenzo as important patrons of theater, with six operas over three seasons dedicated to them. The couple personally supported the most famous opera singers of the day, one of whom, Antonia Coresi,
was close to Marie personally, serving as her maid for ten years. The young singer was brought with her husband, the musician Nicolo Coresi, to live in the Colonna household and remained there until Marie herself left. Marie referred to her proudly in describing the operas in which she sang, singling out Cesti's opera
Titus,
which was dedicated to Marie. The theme of the opera, which tells the story of the Emperor Titus, who must give up his true love to make a royal marriage, had a special resonance for Marie. In France, Jean Racine would write the play
Berenice
on the subject in which Marie's famous words addressed to Louis XIV would be echoed by the rejected title character: “Sire, you are emperor, and yet you weep?” She later wrote, “They put on wonderful operas in Venice, among them the
Titus,
to which I went often. I was no less attracted by the sweetness of the voices and by the acting of the players—particularly that of a musician of His Royal Highness called Cavagnino, and of one of my maids who performed admirably—than by the beauty of the work, which earned the applause of everyone and which was assuredly among the most beautiful that have ever been seen.”
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