Artful Adultery.(Madame de Pompadour)

Did Madame de Pompadour lose the French Empire? In 1756, King Louis XV's notorious mistress helped spark the disastrous conflict that led to its demise by championing France's break with Protestant England and Prussia in favor of the Roman Catholic countries. During the seven ensuing years of war with England, she sent maps to military commanders, marking suggested troop movements with the black beauty spots women glued to their faces. France went on to lose territories in Africa, Asia and the Americas; French troops were ridiculed for their lack of bravery and competence, and the state's military planning was called into serious question. Afterward, English cartoonists lampooned Madame de Pompadour mercilessly; one showed the king melting down France's treasures into weapons while she worked the bellows. Enlightenment philosopher Denis Diderot wondered, "What has remained of this woman, who has wasted so many men and so much of our money... who has overturned Europe's political system?"

Two major exhibits in London this fall try to tease out an answer. "Madame de Pompadour: Images of a Mistress" at the National Gallery (through Jan. 12) and the Wallace Collection's "The Art of Love: Madame de Pompadour" (through Jan. 5) are concerned primarily with how she transformed herself from the plain Mademoiselle Poisson first into a femme fatale and later into a power broker and patron of the arts. The National Gallery exhibit emphasizes her tireless manipulation of her image in works of art; the other is mainly a treasure trove of the lavish rococo furniture, sculpture and porcelain from Sevres and Meissen that she commissioned.

Both exhibits whisk the viewer into the colorful world of Pompadour's imagination. Her relationship with the king began at a Versailles costume ball in 1745, to which her patrons won her an invitation after making sure her husband was abroad. Guests gossiped that a "yew tree" (the king) was paying particular favor to the "hunter goddess Diana" (Pompadour). Over the next two decades Pompadour sought desperately to keep the attention of the depressive and easily bored Louis XV and enhance her power over his advisers. She put on ...