those from Milan ‘with looks worthy of Venus’ on French women was so enormous that genuine rivalry broke out between them and Parisiennes, or, to be more exact, French women in general. The letters sent by the Venetian Ambassador, which are valuable documents about the moral history of this period, give convincing testimony of the admiration which even the most listless city-dwellers and socialites accorded to Paris, in terms of being the international centre of culture and pleasure. What was the ideal beauty in this period? Chestnut brown hair and golden-brown, lively, and mischievous eyes were lauded. Piquant little faces, with animated features and blazing eyes seem to have been characteristic for Parisiennes even in those days. A cheeky smile, cherry lips, and a little mouth that promised more than it haughtily rejected were prized even then as signs of amorous delight. Calmness and tenderness were especially desired in women.
The art of emphasising one’s charms and underlining them through fashion became increasingly widespread. Ladies of the Court as well as gallant ladies set the example which Parisiennes followed. Parisian fashion started to become international. It is the Court, along with all its accompanying unrestricted freedom of morals to which Paris owes its reputation.
In the work Vie des Dames Galantes, by Pierre de Bourdeille, Sieur de Brantôme (1540–1614) can be regarded as the Chronique scandaleuse of the late 16th century. It provides a revealing picture of the court life of its day. The author’s gaze is fixed on the title-tattle at court, on affairs, intrigues, and amours. “Natura non sunt turpia” (“What nature is cannot be damaging”) was the motto with which he prefaced his book.
Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Judgement of Paris, 1528.
Oil on lime wood, 84.7 × 57 cm. Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel.
Robinet Testard, The Gaze of Desire, illustration for The Book of Love’s Failures, by Évrart de Conty, 1496–1498.
Bibliothèque nationale, MS. Fr. 143, fol. 198v°, Paris.
Brantôme writes “about the ladies who cultivate love and make their husbands cuckolds”. He posed the question: “Which gives the greatest delight in love – the feelings, the face, or the words?” He gives an account of “lovely legs and their charms” and “of older ladies, who cultivate love just as much as young ones”. He claims: “The beautiful and estimable ladies love brave men, and these love courageous women.” He warns gossipers: “which is why one should never speak ill of ladies because of the consequences that may arise”. And he compared “married women, widows, and girls – to discover which is most ardent in love”. Brantôme’s work prefigured the Rococo era. He was a light-hearted and sensual early crusader for the freedom of the female gender – in bed. For him, the chastity of young girls and the faithfulness of married women were outmoded concepts, prejudices that did not accord with women’s social standing and which the nobility must abandon if it wished to perpetuate its delightful way of life. The customs of an outmoded sense of morality were, as Brantôme recounts with some satisfaction, already no longer adhered to.
According to Brantôme, a libertine lifestyle was certainly not considered a drawback for les grandes dames (high-society ladies). He believed that the only women to be branded prostitutes were those who gave themselves to ordinary men, whereas intercourse with royal personages, especially the King, was considered absolutely honourable. In his view there was not one unspoilt woman in the whole court. At court anything could be discussed without embarrassment. Brantôme heard about a grande dame who one day saw a young nobleman who had very white hands, and she asked him how that had come about. He answered laughingly in jest that it was because he washed them so often in sperm. “I’m less fortunate,” rejoined the grande dame, “I’ve been washing my little casket in that for the past sixty years and it’s still as black as before. Even though I wash it in that every day.” The same distinguished lady, who became famous as the Queen of France and a mother – Catherine de’ Medici – did not shy away from taking part in a competition with her ladies-in-waiting to describe the finest details of their most intimate charms. It took place so that the other gentlemen present could, for their part, declare quite openly to which ladies’ favour they owed the state of their male members. Catherine de’ Medici, whose father and mother died of syphilis before she married the future King Henri II when the two were fourteen, spoke frankly about her vagina. “I carry three lovely colours there at the same time: black, white, and red. For that mouth down there is as red as coral, the curly hair round about it as black as ebony, and my skin as white as alabaster.”
Just as Catherine de’ Medici showed no restraint in describing her charms, so Brantôme showed none either when criticising a lack of modesty amongst women. He treated readers to another lady’s witty complaint in the following words: “She complained that her vulva was like hens who, when they don’t drink enough water, get roup and die. Thus, her vulva would get roup if she didn’t get enough to drink, but she needed something other than well-water!” Another lady said “that she had the makings of a good garden for which the rain from heaven was not enough – she also needed a gardener in order to be fruitful”. In this respect, Brantôme had no intention of being malicious. He was an observer and reporter of the exuberant sensuality at the court of the French Kings, who not only had sexual intercourse indiscriminately with every woman who attracted them, but also wanted to hear and see anything that seemed likely to stimulate their lust.
Even ordinary objects at the royal court were calculated to arouse the senses. On platters and plates orgiastic scenes were engraved as “reflections of love”. On a goblet in the form of an enormous male member, which graced the king’s table, Brantôme writes:
This goblet was the cause of miraculous events. The ladies set their lips upon it, enfolding it tenderly. For they realised that the mouth is good for more than speaking and kissing. When a beautiful woman drinks lovingly she is demonstrating her love.
Brantôme then goes on to write that one of the ladies depicted in the book came to see it but was not in the least offended – on the contrary, she was extremely excited. Obscene conversations were perfectly normal, so that people saw nothing unusual in them. Brantôme never missed the opportunity to describe the ladies who took part in such conversations as “very honourable ladies”.
Erotica dominated both the thinking and the feeling of that period. In the world of the courts and the aristocracy, shame was virtually unknown. Since time immemorial, the French court had been the “figurehead of the nation’s morals”. “If one wishes to gain authentic information about a nation’s way of life and morality,” writes Jean Hervez in his contribution to The Moral History of Paris (1926), “then one only needs to study attentively the accounts contemporary authors give of their rulers.” The fact that the French example was also the model for the very smallest princedoms in Germany comes as no surprise, though most of them lacked the material basis for this kind of dissolute life.
Fragment with Renaissance motif, c. 1550.
Heinrich von Ramberg, 1799. Coloured lithograph.
In the course of the 17th century, for court circles in particular, the social postulate of emotional control gained absolute credence, and influenced the way in which one gender treated the other. Increasingly, gallantry and coquetry came to determine the manner in which love was expressed, with the result that it became harder “… to distinguish real from feigned love”. Jean de la Bruyère formulated this problem in a pointed way in Les Caractères ou les Moeurs de ce siècle: “It sometimes happens that a woman conceals from a man all the passion she feels for him, whereas he for his part feigns everything he does not feel.”
Nevertheless,
