Madame du Barry
| Jeanne Bécu, comtesse du Barry | |
|---|---|
Madame du Barry by Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, 1781
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| Born |
19 August 1743 Vaucouleurs, France |
| Died | 8 December 1793 (aged 50) Paris, France |
| Occupation | Maîtresse-en-titre to Louis XV |
| Spouse(s) | Comte Guillaume du Barry |
| Parent(s) | Anne Bécu de Cantigny and possibly Jean Baptiste Gormand de Vaubernier |
Jeanne Bécu, comtesse du Barry (19 August 1743 – 8 December 1793) was the last Maîtresse-en-titre of Louis XV of France and one of the victims of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution.
Jeanne Bécu was born at Vaucouleurs, in the present-day Meuse department in Lorraine, France, as the illegitimate daughter of Anne Bécu, a seamstress of enticing beauty,. Jeanne's father was possibly Jean Baptiste Gormand de Vaubernier, a friar known as frère Ange.
During her childhood, one of her mother's acquaintances (possibly briefly a lover), Monsieur Billiard-Dumonceaux, and possibly father of Jeanne's half-brother Claude (who died in infancy when only ten months old) took both Anne and three-year-old Jeanne into his care when they traveled from Vaucouleurs to Paris and installed Anne as a cook in his Italian mistress's household. Little Jeanette was well liked by Dumonceaux's mistress Francesca (known in French as Madame or La Frédérique), who pampered her in all luxury. Dumonceaux funded Jeanette's education at the Couvent (convent) de Saint-Aure.
At the age of fifteen, Jeanne left the convent, for she had "come of age". For some reason – possibly due either to La Frédérique's jealousy of the former's beauty or because Dumonceaux's passion for Anne revived – both mother and daughter were thrown out. They then moved into the very small household of Anne's husband, Nicolas Rançon. Jeanne had to find some sort of income to help herself live, and thus traveled the dingy streets of Paris carrying a box full of trinkets for sale. Over time she worked at different occupations; she was first offered a post as assistant to a young hairdresser named Lametz; Jeanne had a brief relationship with him that may have produced a daughter, although it is highly improbable. On the instigation of a Gomard (possibly the brother of her supposed father), Jeanne was then employed as a companion (dame de compagnie) to an elderly widow, Madame de la Garde, but was sent away when her youth and beauty began to meddle in the marital affairs of both la Garde's two sons. Later, Jeanne worked as a milliner's assistant (known as a grisette) in a haberdashery shop named 'À la Toilette', owned by Madame Labille, and run by her husband. Labille's daughter, the future famed painter Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, became a good friend of Jeanne.
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