Marquise de Pompadour

La Tour's great portrait of the Marquise de Pompadour, begun in 1748 and completed by 1752, is one of the iconic images of the French Rococo and one of the masterpieces of European portraiture. Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour, was the official mistress of Louis XV from 1745 and the most powerful woman at Versailles, shaping French cultural policy, architectural patronage, and diplomatic alliances for two decades. The portrait — a very large pastel — shows her surrounded by books, musical scores, and artistic implements, asserting her identity as a patron and intellectual rather than merely a royal mistress. La Tour worked on the portrait for several years, producing numerous preparatory studies, and the finished work in the Musée Antoine-Lécuyer is a fragment of the original composition; the full-length version at the Louvre was made in parallel. This Saint-Quentin version represents the most concentrated expression of La Tour's mature technical powers.

Large-scale pastel on paper, with La Tour's richest and most complex layering technique. Books, musical scores, globe, and prints are each rendered with different surface qualities, showcasing the medium's ability to differentiate textures. The figure herself is built up through dozens of overlapping strokes that give the face an almost sculptural solidity.