by Veronika | Filed Under Articles, Muse History
Chapter 1: The Royal Concubines and Maitresses-en-titre: Stratospheric Careers and Slow Fades
From a Striptease on an Ancient Witness Stand to Drinking Pearls: The Courtesan’s Many Graces and Faces
Wherein we explore the lives and inspirational qualities of some of the most powerful women who ever lived: the Conquering Beauties from the 5th through the 17th century: The Royal Concubines, Maitresses-en-titre. Edo-era Geisha, Korean kisaeng, and Italian Renaissance Courtesans.
The revival of courtly love: Diane de Pointiers and Henry II
Diane de Poitiers (1599-1666) was a French woman of impeccable noble lineage, who became the mistress of the much younger – and totally devoted – French king, Henry II, for twenty years. After she was widowed at a young age by a much older husband, but before Henry II was old enough to realistically announce his passion for her, she decided from then on to only wear the colors black and white, and the result was a stylistic revelation: for her chic she was later dubbed by Christian Dior the greatest female fashion innovator of her time (originally “her colors” were green and white, as in the image below, but they now lacked the statement she wanted to make as a widow).
However, the colors she wore not just for aesthetic affect: as she now had no husband or close male relatives to protect her at court, by announcing her permanent widowhood and unimpeachable character, she hoped to avoid court intrigue and any scandals, or the ultimate and unthinkable punishment – banishment from the royal court. She succeeded so well in her guise as a virtuous noble lady who didn’t take lovers that later, when she and the King eventually began their legendary affair, many people really didn’t believe that this was other than a platonic relationship – even though their passionate exertions in the realm of amours had broken several beds in a court where news traveled fast among the staff.
Black and white set off Diane’s alabaster skin (Catherine de Medici, Henry’s real wife, later took to wearing the combination during mourning herself, whereas before the prescribed color for royal French women in mourning had been all white). With the help of these two colors, as well as with the way she put together striking and flattering ensembles, she managed to be, as Dior said, the chicest woman of her time.
In her dress she was careful to show off her trim figure, particularly her narrow waist, maintained all her life by daily three-hour rides when she was home at her palatial estate, Anet; she was an expert equestrian. Her clothes were made of silk, with a decollete black bodice often of velvet or satin, across which she frequently strung two ropes of pearls. Diane wore her dresses tight around her shoulders and the upper arms to the elbows, finally letting her sleeves loosen into more relaxed white muslin the rest of the way down the arm to the wrist. The dresses always fitted tightly about that small waist, around which she usually hung a chain of precious stones, then let the chain hang down across the front of her skirts. For the final step of her toilette, she would always tame her gorgeous reddish-gold tresses by tucking them into a pearl- or diamond-studded snood. This style, as shown in the picture below, ruled her daily court wear; she would model even finer outfits, glittering with priceless gems, for official functions – when, in a great irony, she served as Queen Catherine’s lady in waiting.
As far as being considered unmatched in style and beyond reproach in beauty, it didn’t hurt that she became King Henry II’s paramour, despite the fact that she was nineteen years his senior. While it is true that some courtiers and visitors just found it impossible to believe that Henry II would pick the much older widow as his mistress when he could pick anyone (he was known to find his wife homely, so a royal mistress was a necessity for the young king – that he would need one was almost self-evident), contemporaries’ reports of Diane’s beauty, style, and aesthetic tastes can be found at every stage of her life, from the rosy flush of youth, when she served as one of the famous beauties on horseback in the elite “petite bande” of Francois I, Henry’s father, during court festivities; to the end of her reign as Henry’s consort, upon his death in 1559, when Diane was sixty.
But beyond her well-preserved looks, Diane’s magnetic hold over Henry II stemmed from other factors. She had helped raise him as a very young boy, and been kind to him until a terrible separation basically robbed him of four years of his childhood. His father agreed, as part of a treaty, to leave two of his sons, including Henry II (whom he never expected to rule), in Spain, where they led a miserable existence as prisoners starting at the ages of six and eight. But during those dark times, Henry never forgot the lady with the beauty of a fairy-tale princess and the heart of an angel, especially compared to the lovelessness shown him by the parents who ignored him, and then exiled him to what seemed like hell.
However, one thing he was given to read in the Spanish prison were chivalrous tales. In that context, it is easy to understand that he had been enthralled both by Diane and by legends of chivalry since boyhood. Diane became his lady in the tradition of courtly love, and he committed himself to her as his
knight and beloved until his death, although she refused the official title of maitresse en titre, even after their relationship was consummated. She also made an enemy of the queen every time Henry II offered to wear her colors in a jousting tournament, a symbolic gesture which signaled the lady for whom the knight was about to fight.
By playing on agent symbols of the moon and the moon goddess that her name suggested (Diana was the moon goddess, as well as the goddess of the hunt, in ancient Roman mythology), as well as on the medieval legends of knights and their ladies that her Henry so loved and was practically obsessed with, Diane deepened her spell over him. Partly because of Diane’s shrewd self-mythologizing, the younger (and much less seductive) Catherine didn’t have a chance, even though she had unfortunately fallen in love with Henry, despite the fact that she repulsed him. Though she had no official title, the court and the common people followed Henry’s lead in paying tribute to Diane – that is, except for her enemies; French courts are always breeding grounds for different fighting factions.
Indeed, when the court rode into Lyons after Henry’s coronation, it was Diane’s hand they kissed, Diane’s colors of black and white they all wore as they acted out charming tableaux and entertainments, many having to do with the goddess Diana (as Catherine was there, of course this was extremely humiliating, but to her credit, she was not in the habit of making scenes). Diane was even greeted by a true courtesan (see my note below about the ridiculous titling of Diane herself as such), Louise Labe, a local celebrity in her profession who was also a poet fluent in French and Italian. She had planted in her garden the interlaced “HD” initials that Henry and Diane had adopted as their own emblem and waited for them to pass by so she could deliver a sweet poem she’d written in honor of the King’s moon-bright mistress. Part of it insists,
“But you will never lose your beauty
For, good princess, the sun from which you
Receive your divine radiance
Is far greater than the one
Which sets alight Phoebe’s [the moon's] doomed brow.”
Apart from all such pageantry and official functions, Diane and the King seemed to be happiest at her chateau Anet, once one of France’s most splendid palaces, especially lauded for the taste of its interior artwork and its gardens, all of which Diane masterminded (the chateau was nicknamed “Dianet”).
At Anet and at the court Diane also gave Henry the best advice she could give him on making decisions, as his father, Francois I, had made it clear he didn’t like him and had not properly prepared him for the role. She even forced him to go to the bed of the wife he loathed to produce an heir, perhaps comforted by the knowledge that he would return after the perfunctory act with Catherine to spend the rest of the night with her. Diane was a muse both during and after her lifetime. She was painted and sculpted by countless artists and helped to found a French school of painting and crafts, and she also cultivated Henry’s appreciation for the arts. While alive, she also was a muse for court poets, including the great Ronsard; posthumously she appears as a character in the classic French novel, La Princesse de Cleves and in a novel by 19th century demimonde enthusiast, Alexander Dumas. Most recently Salvador Dali painted his image of her and Lana Turner portrayed Diane in a 1950’s movie.
Above all, however, it was King Henry II who paid tribute to Diane as his ultimate, undying muse in the troubadour’s tradition of courtly love, until he died – before her – of an untimely wound garnered in, ironically, a jousting tournament based on the tenets of medieval knights’ warfare. In the remaining years until her own death, she grieved for him sincerely but with dignity at Anet (Catherine had banished her from the court). Meanwhile, little did Louise Labe know that her prediction would prove true, driving rivals to whisper accusations of sorcery – or maybe even worse, daily dips in her Turkish baths at Anet – as the reason that at sixty she was still a very attractive woman.
Although she has almost always been labelled a courtesan in subsequent historical accounts, it is hard to see the logic in this when Diane slept with only two men her whole life: her husband, and after his death, the King, her lover for twenty years. But she was one thing, beyond a doubt: a muse who knew how to keep the lifelong love of a much younger King against all odds.
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