This and the next 14 images are of Madame de Pompadour, the epitome of mid-1700s fashion.*** One of three of her as Diana by Nattier on file at http://www.madamedepompadour.com/_eng_po mp/home.htm . She got him!*** Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, mistress to Louis XV. She is the essence of mid-1700s fashion with delicate dresses laden with bows and lace. This is by Nattier who painted many of the French royal family at the time.*** Beginning the Wikipedia narrative - Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, Marquise (later Duchesse) de Pompadour, also known as Madame de Pompadour (December 29, 1721 – April 15, 1764) was a well-known courtesan and the famous mistress of King Louis XV of France. Madame de Pompadour was born Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson on December 29, 1721 in Paris. It is suspected that her biological father was the rich financier Le Normant de Tournehem, who became her legal guardian when her official father Francois Poisson, a steward to the Paris brothers - foremost financiers of the French economy - was forced to leave the country in 1725 after a scandal over a series of unpaid debts - a crime at that time punishable by death. Poisson was cleared eight years later and allowed to return to France. Her younger brother was Abel-François Poisson de Vandieres (who would later become the Marquis de Marigny). Jeanne-Antoinette was intelligent, beautiful, and educated; she also learned to dance, engrave, play the clavichord and was an accomplished actress and singer. She later claimed that at the age of nine, she was taken by her mother to a fortune teller and told that she would someday reign over the heart of a king. Apparently her mother believed the prophecy and accordingly nicknamed her "Reinette." She spent a year in a convent as her father wished her to be exposed to the Roman Catholic religion. Her education at home resumed once she returned from the convent. Her education included learning to recite entire plays by heart, botany, painting, charming men, and effective running of a large household. Much of this education was paid for by Le Normant de Tournehem, a close friend of her mother's and it may have been this in particular that sparked rumors of his paternity to little Jeanne-Antoinette. The greatest expense of her education was undoubtedly the employment of famous singers and actors, such as Pierre Jelyotte. Her parents initially found it hard to make her a good match, probably due to their own notoriety rather than any defect in their daughter for, besides her father's exile, her mother was a well-known femme galante (a femme galante is a loose woman, easy woman, prostitute - gogm).