« Ah ! Mignard que vous louez bien ! » : Le secret et le sacré dans le portrait de Madame de Maintenon

Abstract

This article offers a new interpretation of the portrait of Madame de Maintenon, in which Pierre Mignard depicted the secret wife of Louis XIV as Saint Frances of Rome. Celebrated in its time as a witty conceit, the portrait has been taken at face value, neglecting the intricacy of its iconography in relation to the equivocal status of the sitter. By combining art historical and church historical approaches, we shed light on the function of the portrait in the political and religious context of the court of Louis XIV. The study of little-known sources on Maintenon’s devotional practices allows us to reconstruct the agenda behind its creation. We argue that the artist played with the conventions of portraiture, using the analogy between the secret spouse and the saint to produce more than just a historiated portrait, but rather a ‘visual parable’. As a strategic intervention in Maintenon’s public image at a critical junction, it dissimulated her status as wife of the king while projecting a specific image of her religious persona in relation to the world.

Keywords

• court
• French monarchy
• Louis XIV
• Madame de Maintenon
• painting
• portraiture