Sartorial Transgression as Socio-political Collaboration: Madame and the Hunt
2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 82; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/00233609.2013.815270
ISSN1651-2294
Autores Tópico(s)European Political History Analysis
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size SummaryIn 1671, Elisabeth Charlotte von der Pfalz left her home of the Palatinate to take up residency at the royal French court as the new wife of Philippe d'Orléans, the brother of King Louis XIV. While much current scholarship approaches her as an outsider in France, this hypothesis is challenged by contemporary depictions of Elisabeth Charlotte, and the particular nature of their intersection with the ambitions of the wider Bourbon monarchy. Such displays were inspired by Elisabeth Charlotte's engagement with the pursuits of the royal hunt, which during the decade of her arrival in France became a key arena for the enactment of monarchical authority. Elisabeth Charlotte adopted signs of the hunt, predominantly through the dressing of her body, to position herself within emerging discourses over the nature and limits of royal power. The subsequent production of permanent representations of her idiosyncratic dress, in painted portraits and through the print medium, functioned to further materialise the connection between her image and the mechanisms of Bourbon influence. As such, the implications of images of Elisabeth Charlotte in hunt dress extend beyond the concerns of her personal narrative, to offer an understanding of the relationship between individual will and collective agency and the organisation and distribution of power at the royal Bourbon court.Notes1. »Il y a tous les soirs des bals, des comedies et des mascarades à Saint-Germain. Le Roi a une application à devertir Madame, qu'il n'a jamais eue pour l'autre«, Madame de Sévigné to Madame de Grignan, 13 January 1672 in Roger Duchêne (ed.), Correspondance, vol. I, Paris, Gallimard, 1972, p. 386.2. In her later years, Madame was indeed, on occasion, distanced from the inner-circle of the Bourbon court. The initial rupture occurred more than a decade after her arrival. Rather than a problem of cultural miscommunication, it resulted from a breakdown in the mutually held ambitions and beliefs shared by Madame and Louis XIV. Heedless of her prolonged favour at court, the most established scholarship on Madame presents her as an outsider, having inherited a methodology that approaches court culture through a series of oppositional binaries in response to the work of the Norbert Elias, the twentieth century's most influential writer on the systems of the early modern court (Norbert Elias & John L. Scotson, The Established and the Outsiders. A Sociological Enquiry into Community Problems, F. Cass, London, 1965 and Norbert Elias, The Court Society, trans. Edmund Jephcott, Blackwell, Oxford, 1983). This approach also relies on the growing, though fledging, development of national consciousness in later seventeenth-century France as a result of Louis XIV's programme of centralisation. The influence of this new awareness has been overstated, particularly in relation to the status of foreigners, as addressed in the work of Guy Rowlands. (Guy Rowlands, »Foreign Service in the Age of Absolute Monarchy: Louis XIV and His Forces Étrangères«, War in History 17, No 2, 2010, pp. 141–165.) Lastly, Madame's own sense of identity was strongly attached to her German heritage, and her letters often promoted what she considered her Germanic sensibilities over values she deemed quintessentially French. This attitude presents her with an expedient defence of her position after she came into conflict with Louis XIV's regime. Prior to this, Madame occupied an enviable position at court, though she had always voiced her opinions in a forthright manner, and in public, from the moment of her arrival. When first presented to her household, for example, she announced in the presence of the King that she had never consulted a doctor and had no need for one; she preferred to take fresh air and exercise for her cure. News of this radical opinion spread through the network of the French nobility and was reported by the marquise de Sévigné, who was impressed by the new Madame's independent thinking. (The marquise de Sévigné to Madame de Grignan, 2 December 1671, Rochers. Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sévigné, in Roger Duchêne (ed.), Correspondance, vol. I, Gallimard, Paris, 1972, p. 386.) Despite her contemporaries’ willingness to acknowledge Madame's opinions, modern scholars frame her as an alien other, rather than as an invested member of the Bourbon court, or more simply, as German rather than French. While this perception of Madame's history differs from my own, as a body of research, it provides a valuable insight into Madame's experiences. The most influential scholarship on Madame has been undertaken by J.P. Yarrow and William Brooks, working both together and separately. The title of Yarrow's article, ‘Fifty Years an Alien’ (P.J. Yarrow, »Fifty Years an Alien: Elisabeth Charlotte, Duchess of Orleans, 1671-1722«, Seventeenth-Century French Studies 17, 1995, pp. 111–124) clearly establishes their position, as does Brooks’ »Madame Palatine, ignorée en France«, Littératures classiques 76, 2011, pp. 123–132. Madame's most effective biographer remains Dirk Van der Cruysse (Madame Palatine, Princess Européenne, Fayard, Paris, 1988).3. Madame de Sévigné commented that besides the hunt, there is little to say on the subject of Madame. Madame de Sévigné to Madame de Grignan, 30 June 1680 in Correspondance, vol. II, p. 994. Madame's other great love was the theatre. William Brooks, The Dramatic Criticism of Elizabeth Charlotte, Duchesse D'Orléans: With an Annotated Chronology of Performances of the Popular and Court Theatres in France 1671-1722, Reconstructed from her Letters, E. Mellen Press, Lewiston, 1996.4. It is recorded that Madame took the opportunity to petition the King as they travelled to and from the hunt together. In a letter of 28 October 1679 to Sophia of Hanover, Madame mentioned that while riding with the King, they discussed the Hanoverians, as Madame was championing their cause at court. Madame to Sophia of Hanover, 30 August 1679 in The Letters of Madame: The Correspondence of Elizabeth-Charlotte of Bavaria, Princess Palatine, Duchess of Orleans (ed. and trans. Gertrude Scott Stevenson), vol. I, Chapman and Dodd, London, 1924, p. 23 and p. 27.5. Suggestions range from: a violation of normative gender roles, Claude Pasteur, La Princesse Palatine: Une allemande à la cour de Louis XIV, Tallandier, Paris, 2001, p. 21 and Elise Goodman, The Cultivated Woman: Portraiture in Seventeenth-Century France, Gunter Narr Verlag, Tübingen, 2008, p. 126; to personal expression, Jennifer Jones, Sexing la mode: Gender, Fashion and Commercial Culture in Old Regime France, Berg, Oxford and New York, 2004, p. 24; physical comfort, Arvéde Barine, Madame, mére du Régent [Madame, mother of the Regent], Hachette, Paris, 1909, pp. 112–113; ease, William Brooks, Artists' Images and the Self-descriptions of Elisabeth Charlotte, Duchess of Orleans (1652-1722), the Second Madame: Representations of a Royal Princess in the Time of Louis XIV and the Regency, Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston, 2007, p. 133; freedom from sexual politics, Dirk van der Cruysse, Madame Palatine, Princess Européenne, Fayard, Paris, 1988, p. 194; and a means to fulfil her personal relationships, Daniel des Brosses, La Palatine: L'incorrigible épistoliére aux 60 000 lettres [the Palatine: the incorrigible writer of 60,000 letters], AkR, Paris, 2004, pp. 34–35.6. William Beik, »The Absolutism of Louis XIV as Social Collaboration«, Past & Present, vol. 188, no. 1, 2005, pp. 195–224.7. Madame recorded her intention to send a copy of the painting to her half-sister, Louise. Madame to the Raugravine Louise, 1 January 1696 in Briefe der Herzogin, vol. I, pp. 54–55.8. Brooks discusses three in Artists' Images, pp. 134–139, while another version was sold by Sotheby's London, on 9 November 2000 [lot 99], 24 by 18cm; 9 1/2 by 7in, oil on paper, laid on panel. The sitter was mistakenly identified as Madame's son Philippe, duc de Chartres.9. In a letter of 1719, Elisabeth Charlotte mentions that Elle painted two half-length portraits of her, and that both originals were owned by the princesse de Conti. She notes that one depicted her in hunting habit and is larger than half-length, and it is likely that this counts amongst one of the three-quarter length portraits which survive to the present. This letter does not discount the existence of a full-length painting, however. In the letter, Madame is explicitly concerned with half-lengths, cataloguing what she calls ‘original half-length portraits' with reference to a woman trying to pass a half-length copy as an original work. She uses the term ‘original’ to mean a work by the artists who designed the composition, not in the sense of a prime original work. Half-lengths were frequently sent by Elisabeth Charlotte to her relatives, and it is only in this context that she discusses the Elle portrait. Madame to the Raugravine Louise, 15 October 1719 in Briefe der Herzogin, vol. IV, p. 270.10. The print itself provides evidence that it was made after an extant image, as it depicts the composition of the Elle portrait in reverse, an outcome of the printing process when a pre-existing work is transferred to the print medium. Moreover, the print depicts sartorial styles associated with the 1670s and early 1680s, suggesting it was made after an early version of the composition. The surviving painted portraits display later fashion trends, indicating that they were subsequent adaptions of an existing composition, updated to represent the fashions of the age they were commissioned in, which was a common occurrence. Brooks credibly postulates that the surviving paintings date from the 1680s. Brooks, Artist's Images, p. 136. He notes that the wig of the Charlottenburg version is of this era. The Bonnart print references earlier fashions, however. In the print, Madame's wig is higher, an earlier style than the flatter wigs of the 1680s. Additionally, her shoe is narrow and tapered, unlike the broader, squarer shoes of the 1680s. Her coat sleeves are narrow and cuffed with flair, a style associated with the 1670s before sleeve widths began to bloom and also rise. The sleeves in the Elle versions are unusual for hunting garb, but refer to modes of dress associated with the formalisation of court attire. The cravat depicted in the print is the heavier lace of the 1670s. Furthermore, the print shows Madame's coat buttoned from the collar, a style of the 1670s, and not from the waist as it began to be in the 1680s. The shirt sleeves in the Bonnart refer to an earlier style than those in the Elle paintings. All this would seemingly indicate that the Bonnart refers to an earlier full-length portrait (possibly of the latter 1670s or very early 1680s) and that the three-quarter versions were made subsequently and updated accordingly. For commentary on changing styles in dress, see the classic text: Millia Davenport, The Book of Costume, Crown Publishers, New York, 1948, p. 518, pp. 531–532 and pp. 638–639.11. William H. Forsyth, »The Medieval Stag Hunt«, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 10, No 7, 1952, 203–204.12. Gervais-François Magné de Marolles, La Chasse au Fusil [Hunting with a rifle], Théophile Barrois, Paris, 1788, p. v.13. »Il n'est pas icy question d'une science méchanique: ce n'est nullement une passion que cet art de venerie, c'est une virtue. Il faut que tous y soient reglez, que tout y aille reglement, jusques aux valets et garcons qui suivent la chasse.« Jean de Ligniville, Les Muettes et veneries pour le chevreuil [The pack and the hunting of deer], Antoine Chatrlot, Nancy, 1655, p. 368.14. The hunt as a symbolic act of governance was in keeping with the concept of kingship in the early modern period. Evelyne Patlagean, »De la Chasse et du Souverain«, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 46, 1992, p. 257. Nature was connected with the passions in the early modern worldview, whereas culture was deemed the responsibility of a lucid monarch. Jeffrey Merrick, »The Body Politics of French Absolutism« in From the Royal to the Republican Body: Incorporating the Political in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century France, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1998, pp. 23–24.15. Pierre Le Petit, and Jacques Langlois, Sébastien Mabre-Cramoisy, & Damien Foucault, Ordonnance de Louis XIV. roy de France et de Navarre, sur le fait des Eaux & forêts: Verifiée en Parlement & chambre des Comptes, le 13. aoust 1669 [Ordinance of Louis XIV, King of France, on the state of water and forests: confirmed by Parliament and the Chamber of Accounts on 13 August 1669], Pierre Le Petit, Jacques Langlois, Damien Foucault, & Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, Paris, 1669. The ordinance was also printed: Daniel Jousse, Commentaire sur l'ordonnance des eaux et forêts, du mois d'août, 1669 [Commentary on the water and forestry ordinance of August 1669], Debure Pere, Paris, 1672.16. Tamara L. Whited, Forests and Peasant Politics in Modern France, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2000, pp. 22–24.17. Philippe Salvadori, La chasse sous l'ancien regime [The hunt during the Ancien Regime], Fayard, Paris, 1996, p. 21, p. 23 and pp. 28–29.18. Christian Bouyer, La Princess Palatine: Belle-Soeur de Louis XIV [The Princess Palatine: sister-in-law of Louis XIV], Pygmalion, Paris, 2005, p. 192.19. Daniel Reytier, »Un service de la maison du Roi: les Écuries de Versailles (1682-1789)« in Daniel Roche & Daniel Reytier (eds.), Les écuries royales: du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle [The royal stables from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century], Association pour l'académie d'art équestre de Versailles: Château de Versailles, Paris, 1998, p. 61.20. Madame to Sophia of Hanover, 10 October 1673 in Eduard Bodemann (ed.), Aus den Briefen der Herzogin Elisabeth Charlotte von Orléans an die Kurfürstin Sophie von Hannover [The letters of Elisabeth Charlotte, Duchess of Orleans, and the Electress Sophia of Hanover], vol. I, Hahn, Hannover, 1891, p. 4. Scott-Stephenson reproduces more of this letter in Letters of Madame, vol. I, p. 23.21. Madame to Sophia of Hanover, 27 November 1675 in W.L. Holland (ed.), Briefe der Herzogin Elisabeth Charlotte von Orléans [The Letters of Elisabeth Charlotte, Duchess of Orleans], vol. IV, Literarischer Verein, Stuttgart, 1867–1881, p. 493.22. Madame to Sophia of Hanover, 14 December 1676, in Aus den Briefen, vol. I, pp. 11–12.23. »La cour s'en va à Fontainbleau; c'est Madame qui le veut« Madame de Sévigné to Madame de Grignan, 26 July 1675, Correspondence, vol. II, p. 23.24. Jones, Sexing La Mode, p. 22.25. John Locke, in John Lough (ed.), Locke's Travels in France, 1675-9 as Related in his Journals, Correspondence & Other Papers, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008, p. 173.26. The skirt of the female garb was the major deviation from the male kit.27. In a letter of 1702, Madame confirms that when at a royal residence, formal court dress was required in order to appear before the King and the royal family. Madame to the Raugravine Louise, 9 August 1702, in Briefe der Herzogin, vol. I, p. 306.28. Clare Crowston, Fabricating Women: The Seamstresses of Old Regime France, 1675-1715, Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2001, p. 41.29. Madame wrote: Wie auch die robe ballantes, die kan nicht leyden, finde e seine impertenente tracht, laß niemandts mitt dießer tracht zu mir [Robe battantes [the mantua] I abhor and will not even admit to my presence]. Madame to the Raugravine Louise, 12 April 1721, in Briefe der Herzogin, vol. VI, p. 76.30. Duc de Saint-Simon, Mémoires de Saint-Simon, Arthur Andre' Gabriel Michel de Boislisle, Léon Lecestre and Jean Georges Léon Michel de Boislisle (eds.), vol. XII, Hachette, Paris, 1879–1919), p. 220.31. »Man sicht zu cammermagtisch in dem manteau auß, umb es zu lieben konnen. Die weitte rock, so man überall tregt, seindt mein aversion, stehet insolent, alß wen man auß dem bett kompt.« Madame to the Raugravine Louise, 6 December 1721 in Briefe der Herzogin, vol. VI, p. 301.32. Iris Brooke, Dress and Undress: the Restoration and Eighteenth Century, Methuen, London, 1958, p. vii.33. The ‘warrant coats’ were instituted through an ordinance of December 29, 1664. Antoine D'Aubray, ‘29th Decembre 1664: Ordonnance du Roy, portant Reglement les passemens, dentelle..’, Traitè de la Police, vol. I, Delamare, Paris, 1719, p. 378. Louis XIV strictly regulated their adoption. In November 1687 the duchesse d'Uzès had stripes added to her royal justaucorps. The King was so furious that a symbol of royal privilege had been maimed for the sake of fashion that he fined the draper who had sold her the fabric and the dyer who had manipulated it for her, and then ordered that the offending garment should be burnt and decreed that from that time, no such fabric would ever be sold in France. Marquis de Dangeau, Journal du marquis de Dangeau [Journal of the Marquis of Dangeau], vol. II, Firmin Didot Freres, Paris, 1854, p. 67.34. Pamela Cowan, A Fanfare for the Sun King: Unfolding Fans for Louis XIV, Third Millennium, London, 1988, pp. 35–36.35. Louis XIV adopted the flame habit as early as 1655. Jean Baptiste Colbert, Lettres, instructions et memoires de Colbert [Letters, instructions and memoirs of Colbert], vol. I, Pierre Clément, Pairs, 1861, p. cxxii. The royal flame habit and the Orléans blue equivalent are depicted in portraits of the duchesse de Bourgogne, listed under ‘Pierre Gobert’, in Claire Constans, with Jean Pierre Babelon, Les Peintures, vol. I, Editions de la Re'union de muse'es nationaux, Paris, 1995.36. The length of Madame's train is suggested in a print depicting her in habit de chasse by Antoine Tourvain entitled Madame en habit de chasse, now held in the print collection of the Bibliothèque nationale de France [Hennin, 7921]. Diana de Marly gives Madame's train at 9 ells. De Marly, Louis XIV, 89. Madame's contemporary Bussy-Rabutain claims that Madame's train was 7 ells. Roger de Bussy-Rabutin, Correspondance, L. Lalanne (ed.), vol. IV, Charpentier, Paris, 1860, p. 447.37. Harold Donaldson Eberlein, The Rabelaisian Princess, Brentano's, New York, 1931, pp. 181–182.38. Matt Cartmill, A View to a Death in the Morning; Hunting and Nature through History, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1993, p. 64 and Bénédicte Ottinger, Tableaux de chasse: Peintures du musée de la Vénerie [Pictures of the hunt; paintings from the musée de la Vénerie], Somogy editions d'art, Paris, 2001, p. 106.39. This event is recounted by Dangeau. Dangeau, Journal, vol. VII, p. 349. At this time Madame was still wearing her hunting habit all day (Saint-Simon, Mémoires, vol. XII, p. 220), and Madame to the Raugravine Louise, 2 August 1702, in Briefe der Herzogin, vol. I, p. 302.40. There are a number of versions of this composition which survive to the present, two of which are held in the collection of the châteaux de Versailles.41. Contemporary writers deal with the complexities of seating with great enthusiasm. The marquise de Sévigné notes that Madame was afforded an armchair in the presence of the English Queen (Mary of Modena). The point is significant enough for her to make twice, in two separate letters. Madame de Sévigné to Madame de Grignan, 14 January 1689 and 17 of January 1689 in Correspondance, vol. III, p. 473 and p. 475.42. A seating chart is provided in Henri Brocher's, Le Rang et l'étiquette sous l'Ancien Régime [Rank and etiquette during the Ancien Regime], Alcan, Paris, 1934, p. 28. Such conventions were open to debate and courtiers continually negotiating their status, meaning that acts of seating were of an ongoing concern at the Bourbon court. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie with Jean-François Fitou, Saint-Simon and the Court of Louis XIV, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, Chicago University Press, Chicago, IL, 2001, pp. 23–29.43. Cárlos de Arellano, »Cartas originales de don Cárlos de Arellano al Gran Duque de Lerma« [The original documents of don Carlos de Arellano the Grand Duke of Lerma], in El marqués de la Fuensantana del Valle (ed.), Colección de documentos inéditos para la historia de España [Collection of unpublished documents concerning the history of Spain], vol. CXII, Imprenta de José Perales y Martinez, Madrid, 1895, p. 456. [Bibliothèque nationale de France, Fonds français 16631, fol. 388].44. Roger de Piles, L'idée du Peintre Parfait, pour servir de Règle aux jugements que l'on doit porter sur les Ouvrages des Peintres [The concept of Ideal Painting to serve as a guide to evaluate the work of artists], David Mortier, London, 1707, p. 67.45. André Félibien, Entretiens sur les vies et sur les ouvrages des plus excellens peintres anciens et modernes [Account of the lives and works of the greatest artists past and present], vol. I, de l'imprimerie de SAS, Trévoux, 1725, p. 94 and pp. 97–100.46. In June 1680, the Mercure gallant reported of Madame: Vous savez que c'est un Amazone à cheval et qu'il est peu d'hommes qui aient plus de vigueur qu'elle dans cet exercise [You know that she is an Amazon on horseback and that few men have the same vigour for the hunt as she], C. Blageart, Paris, 1680. Many prints of Madame that connect her to the activity of the hunt also appear at this time, Brooks, Artists' Images, pp. 139–155.
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