Benedetta Craveri: "Madame Du Barry’s Enduring Legacy"
January 25, 2017
Alex Gordon Lecture in the History of Art, Benedetta Craveri, Università degli Studi Suor Orsola Benincasa, Naples
After Louis XV’s death, in 1774, his last mistress, Madame Du Barry, retired to her chateau in Louveciennes and morphed from a scandalous maîtresse en titre into an unobjectionable society lady. With her companion the Duke of Brissac, she shared liberal ideas, philanthropic causes, a love of nature and the arts, and an atrocious end on the scaffold.