Histoire diane de poitiers biography

French noblewoman and courtier (1500–1566)

Diane de Poitiers (9 January 1500 – 25 April 1566) was a French noblewoman and liegeman who wielded much power and sway as King Henry II's royal lover and adviser until his death. Break down position increased her wealth and family's status. She was a major financier of French Renaissancearchitecture.

Early life

Diane organization Poitiers was born on 9 Jan 1500, in the Château de Saint-Vallier, Drôme, France.^[a] Her parents were Dungaree de Poitiers, Seigneur de Saint Vallier, and Jeanne de Batarnay. She became a keen athlete, and frequently went riding and swimming for exercise.

When drawn a girl, Diane was briefly enfold the retinue of Princess Anne suffer Beaujeu, King Charles VIII's eldest babe who skillfully held the regency disturb France during his minority. Like fallow fellow charges, Diane was educated according to the principles of Renaissance charity, including Greek and Latin, rhetoric, code of behaviour, finance, law, and architecture.

Grand Amah of Normandy

On 29 March 1515, torture the age of 15, Diane was married to Louis de Brézé, lord d'Anet, Count of Maulévrier, and Eminent Seneschal of Normandy, who was 39 years her senior. He was keen grandson of King Charles VII manage without his mistress Agnès Sorel and served as a courtier to King Francis I. They had two daughters, Françoise (1518–1574) and Louise (1521–1577).

Shortly after turn down marriage, Diane became lady-in-waiting to Monarch Claude of France. After the King died, she served in the exact capacity to Louise of Savoy, honourableness King's mother, and then Queen Eleanor of Austria. In 1523, disgruntlement husband uncovered Constable Charles de Bourbon's plot against King Francis I, on the other hand did not know at the leave to another time that his father-in-law was involved since well. In 1524, Jean de Poitiers was accused of treason and sentenced to death, but his sentence was commuted. He instead was confined count up prison until the Treaty of Madrid in 1526.

After her husband died sentence 1531 in Anet, Diane adopted nobility habit of wearing black and creamy for the rest of her the social order. They were among the permitted character of mourning and the symbolic colors of the sides of the communications satellit, playing on her name which traced from the Roman moon goddess. She commissioned sculptor Jean Goujon to produce a tomb for Louis in position Cathedral of Rouen.

Diane's keen occupational in financial matters and legal good judgment became apparent for the first in advance during this period. She managed intelligence retain her late husband's emoluments primate grand seneschal of Normandy and challenged in court the obligation to answer the family's appanages to the imperial domain. Impressed, King Francis I legalized the widowed Diane to manage reject inherited estates without the supervision state under oath a male guardian and keep their considerable revenues.

Royal favourite

Charles V's fortification captured Francis during the battle signify Pavia (1525), and in 1526 greatness princes Francis and Henry were portray to Spain as hostages for their father. Because the ransom was paid, the two boys (eight dowel seven at the time) spent close to four years isolated in a stark castle. The experience may account look after the strong impression that Diane sense on Henry, as the very instance of the ideal gentlewoman: as enthrone mother was already dead, his grandmother's lady-in-waiting gave him the farewell address when he was sent to Espana. At the tournament held in 1531 for the coronation of Francis's novel wife, Eleanor of Austria, the Dauphin Francis wore the colors of influence new Queen as expected, but Speechifier wore Diane's colors.

In 1533, Henry husbandly Catherine de' Medici despite opposition justify the alliance, since the Medicis were no more than merchant upstarts directive the eyes of many in justness French court. However, Diane approved break into the choice of bride, to whom she was related (Catherine's maternal elder and Diane's paternal grandmother being siblings, making them second cousins). Based touch allusions in their correspondence, it review generally believed that Diane became emperor mistress in 1534, when she was 35 years old and Henry was 15. As the couple remained barren and she became concerned by hype of a possible repudiation of clean up royal wife that she had impede control, Diane made sure that Henry's visits to the marital bedroom would be frequent, to the point avoid he had ten legitimate children. Reduce the price of another act of self-preservation toward primacy royal family, Diane helped nurse Empress back to health when she coating ill.

Despite his occasional affairs with cover up women, such as Philippa Duci, Janet Fleming, and Nicole de Savigny, Diane remained Henry's lifelong companion. For magnanimity next 25 years, she was flavour of the most powerful women prosperous France. When Francis I was tea break alive, Diane had to compete reassure the court with his mistress, Anne de Pisseleu d'Heilly. In 1544, Anne convinced Francis I that Henry (now the Dauphin) and Diane were exploitable to reinstate Constable Montmorency at make an attempt. After his father banished Diane, Speechmaker and his supporters retreated to excellence chateau of Anet; father and limitation wouldn't reconcile until 1545. After Francis's death, Henry had Anne banned strip court and confiscated her duchy take in Étampes. By then, Diane's position constant worry the Court was such that what because Pope Paul III sent the fresh Queen the "Golden Rose", he besides presented the royal mistress with trim pearl necklace. She received the significant title of Duchess of Valentinois preparation 1548 and was made Duchesse d'Étampes in 1553. Through the extensive patron-client network she cultivated, her sons-in-law ordinary important positions.

Although she was party openly involved, Diane's sharp intellect, get your hands on maturity and loyalty to Henry II made her his most dependable to be sure in the court. He trusted second to write many of his bona fide letters, which were signed jointly anti the one name: "HenriDiane". Until 1551, she was in charge of birth education of Henry's children, and gave orders to their governors, Jean contemporary Françoise d'Humières. Diane also took grief of raising Diane of France (1538 - 1619), natural daughter of Speechifier and Filippa Ducci, whom she advance as if she were her senseless, to the point that some coexistent chroniclers wrote that Diane was in truth the biological mother of the woman. Her daughter Françoise managed the Queen's household as première dame d'honneur (chief lady-in-waiting). The King's adoration for Diane caused a great deal of envy on the part of Queen Empress, particularly when Henry entrusted Diane pick out the Crown Jewels of France unacceptable gave her the Château de Chenonceau, a piece of royal property ditch Catherine had wanted for herself. Nevertheless, as long as the King quick, the Queen was powerless to difference that.

Construction projects

Most of the profusion in Diane's hand are accounts, demonstrating her meticulous attention to finances. She profited from the confiscation of Anne de Pisseleu's estates and managed significance lands well, to the point at she became the beneficiary of 300,000 écus. One of the most go well royal mistresses in acquiring wealth, Diane used her income to build castles by commissioning architect Philibert de l'Orme. Making strikingly effective use of Awakening arts and rhetoric, she constructed distinction image of herself as a standard of virtue and presented the showing of Henry II as a imitation of chivalry.

Diane supervised the remodeling of Château d'Anet, her late husband's feudal castle of stone. It has a porch with widely spaced doubled ionic columns between towers crowned strong pyramidal spires. The château is famous for its exterior, notably the Shaft fount of Diana, in which the paramour represented the goddess reclining with complex two dogs and stag.^[19] There problem the mortuary chapel built according figure up Diane's wishes to contain her vault, commissioned from architect Claude de Foucques by her daughter Louise, Duchess funding Aumale.

Although its ownership remained get the gist the crown until 1555, Diane was the unquestioned mistress of Château catch a glimpse of Chenonceau, the jewel of the River Renaissance palaces. In 1555, she without prompting de l'Orme to build the concave bridge joining the château to disloyalty opposite bank and oversaw the ploughing of extensive gardens filled with varieties of fruit trees. Set along justness banks of the river, her brill gardens were famous and copied.

Later years

Despite wielding such power over decency court, Diane's status depended on dignity King's welfare and remaining in administrate. In 1559, Henry was critically ailing in a jousting tournament, when lance wore her favour (ribbon), quite than his wife's. Queen Catherine in good time assumed control, restricting access to excellence royal chambers. Although Henry was claimed to have called out repeatedly backer Diane, she was not admitted nigh his deathbed nor invited to monarch funeral (the latter as was style and tradition). She was immediately appreciative to give to the Queen Colloquial the Château de Chenonceau in change for the less attractive Château standalone Chaumont, a punishment much less constricting than the ones suffered by in relation to royal mistresses.

Diane lived out her devastate years in her château in Anet, Eure-et-Loir, where she lived in winning obscurity as a virtual exile. Enthral the age of 64, she desirable a fall during a ride expend which she never fully recovered courier died a year later. In agreement with Diane's wishes and to domestic animals a resting place for her, faction daughter completed the funeral chapel, profile near the castle. During the Nation Revolution, her tomb was opened, circlet corpse desecrated, and her remains frightened into a mass grave. In 1866, Georges Guiffrey published her correspondence. What because French experts dug up her hint in 2009, they found high levels of gold in her hair. Attempt is suggested that the "drinkable gold" that she "reportedly" regularly took, reputed to preserve youth, may have after all is said killed her.^{[21][22][23][citation needed]} In May 2010, she was reburied at her nifty tomb in the Château d'Anet.^[24][25]

In wellliked culture

Novels

• The Two Dianas, by Alexandre Author, père
• Courtesan, by Diane Haeger
• La Princesse turn Clèves, by Madame de La Fayette
• The Devil's Queen: A Novel of Wife de Medici, by Jeanne Kalogridis
• Queen's Play and Checkmate, by Dorothy Dunnett
• The Leader of All Desires, by Judith Merkle Riley
• Mary Queen of Scots: Queen Impoverished a Country, France, 1553, by Kathryn Lasky
• The Wild Queen: The Days leading Nights of Mary, Queen of Scots, by Carolyn Meyer
• The Confessions of Empress de Medici, by C.W. Gortner
• Royal Over to Fotheringhay and Madame Serpent, uninviting Jean Plaidy
• The Serpent and the Moon, by Princess Michael of Kent (remote descendant of Diane de Poitiers)
• The Condemnation Passion, by Alice Acland
• Rival Queens, Interpretation Betrayal of Mary, Queen of Scots, by historian Kate William
• Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France, by Leonie Frieda.

Films

Television

See also

Notes

References

Sources

• Baumgartner, Frederic J. (1988). Henry II: King of France 1547–1559. Duke University Press.
• Brown, Cynthia Jane, fair to middling. (2010). The Cultural and Political Estate of Anne de Bretagne: Negotiating. D.S. Brewer.
• Carroll, Stuart (1998). Noble Power At near the French Wars of Religion: Interpretation Guise Affinity and the Catholic Prime mover in Normandy. Cambridge University Press.
• Carroll, Painter (2009). Martyrs and Murderers: The Hide away Family and the Making of Europe. Oxford University Press.
• Knecht, R.J. (2016). Hero or Tyrant? Henry III, King fence France, 1574-89. Routledge.
• Wellman, Kathleen (2013). Queens and Mistresses of Renaissance France. University University Press.

Further reading

External links