Hôtel Charost

Le duc de Charost fit construire cet hôtel en 1722 par l'architecte Antoine Mazin qui venait de finir l'hôtel de Matignon. Resté inhabité pendant la Révolution, il fut vendu en 1803 par la veuve du cinquième duc à Pauline Leclerc, veuve elle aussi, soeur préférée de Napoléon Bonaparte. Pendant les onze années durant lesquelles elle en fut propriétaire, elle fit faire de grands travaux. Aujourd'hui encore, la résidence peut se vanter d'une belle collection de mobilier Empire datant de cette période. histoiredumonde.net/Bonaparte-Marie-Paulette

Le Premier Consul chercha vite un nouveau mari et le trouva en la personne de Camille Borghèse. C’est un prince romain possédant un riche palais, de vastes domaines et une belle rente. Après le mariage en 1803 à Mortefontaine dans la propriété de Joseph, Napoléon acheta la collection d’art des Borghèse qu’il destina au musée du Louvre. Pauline se lassa vite de Rome et s’en vint habiter le château de Neuilly, où elle tint une espèce de cour, tandis que Camille Borghèse partait pour l’armée dans la Garde consulaire. En 1804, Pauline a la douleur de perdre son jeune fils Dermid qui avait toujours été de constitution faible. Mais quelques mois plus tard, princesse Borghèse, elle assiste au couronnement. Elle habite alors faubourg Saint-Honoré dans cet hôtel Charost (devenue ensuite l’ambassade britannique).

Hotel+de+Charost

leblogdesovena/le-vieux-paris-deugene-atget/

Chateau de Montgobert. House of Pauline Leclerc

The Château de Montgobert in the midst of the Forest of Retz, near Soissons, in Montgobert, Aisne, Picardy, is a neoclassical Frenchchâteau that was built for Antoine Pierre Desplasses between 1768-1775 on the site of an ancient seigneurie.^[1]

 

The château, which has the air of an English Palladian house, with four Ionic columns under an arced pediment, raised upon a high rusticated basement, was owned by Pauline Bonaparte, Napoleon's sister and wife of General Charles Leclerc who employed Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine to raise the house by adding an attic story^[2] about 1798 and transformed the parterre into a terrace overlooking the park, which was re-landscaped in the naturalistic fashion, à l'anglaise, with meadows and clumps of trees and specimens against a background of woodland. The outbuildings were constructed before 1831, when they appear on an estate map. The pair of entrance pavilions date after 1835. In the early twentieth century the office of Achille Duchêne reorganized the grand terrace: a semi-circular parterre was flanked by terraces connected by stairs.
 

"I did not love the Emperor as a sovereign; I loved him as my brother, and I shall remain faithful to him until death."

(Sculpture by Antonio Canova)

As such, and thanks to the prestige of her family name and powerful connections, Marie-Pauline Bonaparte was painted and sculpted by the foremost artists of the age. She shocked conventional society by her love affairs - and for posing nearly nude for Canova's celebrated sculpture, Venus Victrix, a work that has been replicated ad nauseum since its completion in 1808. A memoirist, the Duchesse d'Abrantes, whose husband fell madly in love with Pauline and was unable to resist her charms, wrote of her, "It is impossible to form any correct idea of the beauty of Paulette from her pictures."

(Quote: Bingham, D., The Marriages of the Bonapartes, Vol. 2, 1881: 227)

But for all her scandals, she was fiercely loyal to her brother, Napoleon I, if not to her husbands. She was witness to Napoleon's unstoppable victories, sharing the moments of his triumphs; but when his fortunes changed and her brother fell from power and was exiled to Elba, she was the only one of his siblings (on whom, as emperor, he bestowed so many titles and thrones) to follow him there. Even after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, when he was stripped of his titles and reduced to a mere mortal, she begged to be allowed to join him on Saint Helena's in order to share in his exile. Her fidelity was unswerving and concrete-firm. So it is not surprising that, of his three sisters, Marie-Pauline was Napoleon's favourite.

Read more the coincidental dandy

Pauline Borghese

Beautiful and immoral, Napoleon's sister, Pauline broke hearts all over Europe. It was said of her that she and Napoleon were both going to conquer Europe, but Pauline was going to do it one man at a time! There are many legends about the behavior of this scandalous woman.

Napoleon found his flirtatious young sister difficult to control and managed to marry her to the much older General Leclerc, who was the opposite of Pauline. Wealthy, serious and sickly, he was in charge of the French expedition to put down a black rebellion in Haiti.

 

Charles Leclerc by François-Joseph Kinson (1771–1839)

Read more: life in italy

 

 

bothuridiademesilence

 

p bonaparte

Disqus

Like
Dislike