White, Pink, and Pompadour

Few people in eighteenth-century Europe devoted more resources to the representation of skin than the Marquise de Pompadour. From the time that she became the official mistress to Louis XV, Pompadour commissioned numerous portraits designed to highlight her famed white and pink complexion. One of the curious features of these portraits is that the ideas they attach to skin are not limited to the human body. Pompadour's skin is also represented by way of analogy to other materials, such as flowers, porcelain, imported textiles, and even the materiality of art itself. These material analogies shed light on the often contradictory ways that white skin was conceived in France in the middle of the eighteenth century. Organic analogs, such as flora, suggested an understanding of whiteness rooted in the order of nature. Manufactured objects of comparison, such as fabrics, however, pointed to an awareness of whiteness as something that was partly constructed. By attending to the conflicting symbolism of these materials, we can begin to appreciate how objects both shaped and destabilized the meaning of white skin at a moment when white identity remained in flux.