The Kings' Mistresses (13 page)

Within weeks, the family arranged for her to move permanently to the convent in the Campo Marzio, where Hortense's aunt Anna Maria Mazzarini, sister of the Cardinal Mazarin, was the abbess, presiding over a community of nuns who, in the Benedictine tradition, were educated, and proud of their learning. This was a place that was familiar to Marie and Hortense from their childhood. Like many Roman noblewomen, their mother had chosen the convent as the best place for schooling her older daughters, and Marie had lived there among the nuns just before leaving Rome. Now, receiving the wayward Hortense into their midst, the abbess was concerned for both her family and her community, but she accepted the task with her usual sobriety and prepared to keep her young niece close to her for a long time. Hortense herself agreed, entering the convent accompanied by Nanon, but only because she was told that the move would be temporary. No sooner was she out of the way than her uncle withdrew his protection of Courbeville and sent him fifty miles outside the city to be incarcerated in a papal fortress in the Mediterranean city of Civitavecchia.

A report of the duchess's seclusion was dispatched to the duke in Paris, where it was also publicized in one of the popular news gazettes. Marie seemed to enter into the spirit of independence her sister had begun to represent. She threw her sympathies with Hortense and first demanded permission from her aunt for her sister's release, and when told that such permission would have to come from the Duke Mazarin, Marie helped her escape (much to the consternation of the elderly abbess, who died just weeks later). Philippe was dispatched to Paris to help spin the story in Hortense's favor, and Marie addressed a letter of appeal to Colbert:

And so the two sisters resumed a shared life in the Colonna household, without, however, the presence of the unhappy Courbeville. Hortense wrote a letter to Flavio Chigi, the nephew of the pope who had received her with Courbeville during her voyage through Tuscany, pleading for his release from the Civitavecchia fortress. Chigi managed to obtain permission for the release, but subsequently Courbeville disappeared without a trace. There is no further mention of him in any of the family memoirs or letters, though rumors persisted about the reasons for his imprisonment and disappearance.
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The sisters turned their attentions to drawing as many visitors as possible to their social gatherings and jointly sponsored theatrical productions, on which they collaborated and in which they sometimes acted or danced. Hortense's presence fueled Marie's fondness for flouting the restrictive conventions of Roman society. The two sisters regularly moved around the city on their own, in open carriages or even on foot. The gazettes reported on their sightings,
and not always favorably: “The constabless and her sister, sumptuously dressed, were mistaken by some Spanish gentlemen for nymphs of the bordello.”
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With Hortense's legal dispute hanging in the balance, there was nothing for the sisters to do but wait, enjoy their own celebrity, and work to make the most of the family allegiances that remained strong, as well as cultivating new ones. The exiled Queen Christina of Sweden declared that she would welcome Hortense as a resident in her palazzo (though she quickly gave in to friends who advised her against such a risky alliance). While she waited for the judges' decision, Hortense often sat for artists who delighted in painting portraits of her, many of them in miniature so they could be easily mailed home to other parts of Europe along with letters describing the pleasures of her company. According to the Amsterdam gazette, her portraits were so coveted that two gentlemen had nearly fought a duel over one of them, until the Prince Colonna intervened. Portraits of the Duchess Mazarin were quickly copied as engravings and sold as prints. In a short time her image became the face of beauty in European painting, “an iconographic success without precedent,” in the words of one art historian.
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Rome was a city that drew artists from all over Europe, and the Colonnas received many of them in the French-style salon gatherings and theatrical productions they hosted. The Colonna palazzo, from the time of Hortense's arrival in 1668, saw even more artists than usual, as the Duchess Mazarin's beauty, and her willingness to sit for portraits, was legendary. Numerous portraits of each sister were produced in the short time—less than four years—that Hortense lived in Rome. Their portraits were hung in private collections known as “beauties series,” which displayed paintings of prominent women alongside mythological ones. Often the two types of image were blended, with the real-life subject dressed as a legendary or mythical woman. The Dutch painter Jacob-Ferdinand Voet produced
portraits of Hortense dressed as Cleopatra; one of these depicts Hortense holding a chalice and a large pearl, evoking a story in which the Egyptian queen dissolves the jewel in a cup of wine to show her disdainful mastery over her great wealth. Hortense was also painted as Aphrodite, an Amazon, an oriental queen, and the goddess Diana. Her face appeared in allegorical portraits of nature, such as the much-copied
Fruit Gatherer
by the French painter Jacques Courtois, known as il Borgognone. Owning one of the “beauties series” quickly became a mark of power and prestige for noblemen at the end of the seventeenth century, and in this way portraits of Hortense and Marie were shipped throughout Europe and England for display in the palaces of powerful families. Lorenzo Colonna was one of the first to commission a series, which he purchased from Voet in 1673, as did the heads of the rival Italian families of Chigi, Altieri, Durini, and Odescalchi. A few years later, similar series were commissioned by nobility outside of Italy. The Duke of Savoy purchased a series of mainly French “beauties,” and the English royal family one of English, but they both included a portrait of Hortense.

The portraits of Hortense in Voet's and in many other “beauties series” stand out in one dramatic respect: she is always painted against a sky, in a natural, unenclosed background, unlike the others, where the subjects are placed against an indoor wall. The representations of Hortense in these paintings contributed to the public image of the Duchess Mazarin as a free spirit, a defier of convention, and a woman whom walls simply could not contain. Her public quickly came to think of her as an escape artist of sorts. In the span of just a few years she had conducted an impressive series of breakouts from the familiar spaces used in those days to incarcerate women: family fortresses and convents. In her memoirs she was precise about the moments when she had to be physically prevented from leaving these places, just as she took care to explain exactly
how she managed to escape them. In Rome, where for a time she was “locked up as if I were in prison” at her aunt's home, she refused to stay away from the windows until dragged away by her aunt's confessor, who “performed the errand so insolently that tears came to my eyes.”
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As Hortense's escapades became popular fodder for conversations, letter correspondences, and news gazettes, her itinerary seemed exhilarating, even when it was told as a kind of warning to young women of the many forces that were firmly in place to contain a woman's liberty. Every attempt to arrive at a compromise with her husband created new suspense. Would he send her money? Would he permit her to find shelter with new protectors? Could he even prevent her escape if he wanted to? Throughout her stay in Rome, her money problems progressively worsened. She consulted alternately with Marie and with Philippe, who had settled in for what he hoped would be an extended visit to Rome at his own residence on the grand Roman avenue called the Corso. Both were forbidden by directives from France to house Hortense.

While Hortense's activities were causing tongues to wag, Marie was attracting attention by taking the lead in the palazzo's cultural offerings. After the death of the liberal Pope Clement IX in December 1669, theater and spectacle were once again discouraged in Rome, and public masking was forbidden. But in the Colonna household, newsletters claimed, “the French liberty” continued.
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Although concerts and public performances had to be held indoors, Marie rose to the occasion, and during the 1670 carnival season she personally arranged a theatrical production that included a ballet in her private theater, and in which both she and her sister danced. During the preparations for this production, Marie was reported to be almost frenzied in her energy and enthusiasm. Both sisters were competitive, argued frequently, and once even came to blows over the organization of the spectacle. The end result, however,
was greatly admired and received much attention in part because of the novelty, in Rome, of the participation of women in the dance. A newsletter reported the event: “This play came out quite delightfully, and even more because it was adorned by three beautiful ballets, in one of which Madam Colonna danced, together with the Duchess Mazarin, another lady, and cavaliers, all in very gallant costumes; and it is a very unusual thing to see women on the stage in Rome.”
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The event would be the apex of Marie's cultural career in Rome, though she continued to sponsor musical and theatrical performances that received considerable attention, including, much later, a public serenade outside Queen Christina's home in 1671. But relations with her family were strained. Hortense was renting living quarters but her financial situation was worsening. So when Philippe suddenly received word that King Louis had arranged a marriage for him and was ordering him to return to court, Hortense decided to accompany him to face her husband directly in an attempt to arrive at a financial settlement and a separation supported by a contractual agreement.

Of course, returning to Paris would also allow her to see her children. None of her many contemporary observers left the slightest suggestion that she had been judged badly for abandoning her four young children when she fled Paris. Leaving her husband was thought to be the serious transgression, and more broadly, so was leaving her “house,” which included children and extended family, each of them tightly embedded in a web of mutual dependency. She had tarnished her name, and by extension that of her children, by disrupting that network. But she was not expected to feel a strong emotional attachment to her children, nor they to her. This does not mean that she felt none, and certainly some women of her milieu—including Marie, as we shall see—did express strong emotions for their children. But on this point, in her memoirs, Hortense was almost silent, though she always claimed that her
principal motivation for bringing suit against her husband was to preserve the Mazarin fortune for the sake of her children.

So we cannot know with certainty her feelings as she set out on the road once again with her brother, this time bound for Paris. She may have been thinking of her children, who in 1670 were ages eight, seven, five, and four, and wondering about how they may have changed in her absence. She certainly was thinking of her husband and wondering how he might be persuaded to receive her with some favor, although on this point she was not optimistic. He had welcomed the news of her return to Paris with a relish that was not reassuring. Her best hope was to win the king's sympathy, if not that of the legal courts, where her case was still being reviewed.

But the trip would not be a speedy one. Philippe was not particularly eager to meet his bride-to-be, for he was entering into this arranged marriage with little enthusiasm, and he recognized that in the king's mind the union was a way to rein him in, to introduce some moderation and order in his life. The two travelers took their time, so much so that the extraordinary length of the voyage (which ultimately took six months) itself became a subject of public gossip and seemed to be an act of defiance. They eventually arrived in Nevers (Philippe held the title of Duke of Nevers), a small but ancient stronghold in the Loire Valley in the center of France, on the main route north from Lyon to Paris. There, brother and sister settled in to enjoy the hospitality that was their due. This was too much for Duke Mazarin. Their delay, in the ducal castle perched over the crossroads of France, where the travelers could contemplate at their leisure the different routes that lay before them, seemed to taunt him. He heard reports of late-night banquets, and dancing, and theater. Summoning his lawyers, he obtained a warrant from the Grand Chamber of Paris for the forcible arrest and return of his wayward wife. The document was delivered to the City Council of Nevers by Duke Mazarin's captain of the guards, escorted by a
band of armed soldiers. The city fathers, offended by this show of force, promptly refused. Their defiance was endorsed by the king, who sent his own orders that the Duchess Mazarin was not to be molested.

Hortense's husband was stunned. From the fortress of Vincennes on the edge of Paris, where as grand master of the artillery he had spent much of his time since his wife's flight from their home, Armand-Charles considered his options with growing rage. Early one morning he set out for the Mazarin palace, carrying a hammer, a knife, and a bucket of black paint. Upon entering the palace, he went directly to the long galleries on the second floor, which housed the magnificent collection of paintings and sculpture that Cardinal Mazarin had left to the couple as part of their inheritance. There he had to wait for the sleepy curator to unlock the giant doors. What happened next sent shock waves far beyond the confines of the palace, where distraught servants tried in vain to calm their master's fury as he mutilated the prize art collection that was the envy of Europe. Hortense's friend later in life, the writer Charles de Saint-Evremond, described the frenzy: “He chose to focus his attack on this sex that he desired but sought to escape, threw himself on the most prominent parts and was so carried away that one saw, in the fury of his blows, that those cold and insensible marbles had at some point inflamed him, and that his repentance was perhaps taking revenge upon the errors of his imagination.”
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