| This dissertation investigates the representation in portraiture and in the decorative arts of Marie Leszczinska (1703--1768), queen of France, and considers what the queen's image represented for the monarchy, for the varied publics who viewed it, and for herself.;Chapter One introduces Marie Leszczinska and the context of her queenship. Chapter Two concentrates on a 1725 portrait of the young queen, painted by Pierre Gobert, directly modeled on a Jean-Baptiste Santerre portrait of Louis XV's mother. The use of serial imagery of royal women incorporated Marie Leszczinska into the monarchy by patterning her image on those of her predecessors. Chapter Three focuses on two portraits of the queen. The first was commissioned from Carle van Loo and represented her as the wife of the king. Marie Leszczinska commissioned the second from Jean-Marc Nattier. This portrait represented her as a foreign woman, an intellectual woman, and the queen of France.;Chapters Four and Five analyze the decoration of the queen's apartments as non-figural representations of Marie Leszczinska. Chapter Four investigates the decoration of this space as a representation of the symbolic importance of the queen's body, which envisaged her place in the social order, through an emphasis on fecundity, lineage, and maternity in the decorative scheme. The final chapter considers the queen's decoration of her Cabinet des Chinois, where she was both patron and artist. The queen's Cabinet des Chinois is reconstructed based on plans and elevations at the Archives Nationales, contemporary descriptions of the room, and an examination of the panels the queen created with the help of four artists. This space is examined as way to understand how the queen used the 'exotic' to represent her own difference as a Polish woman within the French court.;Marie Leszczinska was a discerning and critical patron. Her patronage reveals new questions about artists, works of art, and the patronage activity of the royal family and prominent members of the court. By turning attention toward the distaff side of the monarchy, one can better reconsider the construction of the dynasty in the early modern period. |
