Professor Colin Jones, FBA
Professor Colin Jones in History Today on the publication of obscnene charicatures of Madame de Pompadour
The School's Professor Colin Jones co-authors the lead article in this month's History Today.
"A woman dressed in a cardinal’s robes is squatting on the back of a chair, positioning her exposed behind so that she can defecate into the gaping mouth of a sleeping cleric. A dove hovers close by, bearing a winged cardinal’s hat. This obscene 18th-century image (shown above) displays a kind of French humour – crude, anti-clerical – that forms part of a long, Rabelaisian tradition. Yet what makes it both astonishingly bold and also highly unusual in its substance and context is that it represents Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour (1721-64), Louis XV’s mistress, and her political client, the Abbé (soon to be Cardinal) Bernis."
You can read more here.
You can also listen to Professor Jones on the History Today podcast talking about the article and the drawings it discusses here.