The small prayer book at the center of this case was used by Louis XVI’s younger sister Élisabeth in 1793, when the royal family was jailed in the Temple fortress prior to their executions by the republican government. It is signed inside “Elisabeth, La Temple, 1793,” with a small sketch of the Crucifixion. The text itself is dedicated to Marie Leszczyńska, and the book likely passed from her to her granddaughter Élisabeth. The elaborate binding is in keeping with the traditional degree of decoration on religious books. One large stamp produced the floral vase while many small tools, including several in the shape of butterflies and insects, were used for the surround.

Before she became Louis XIV’s second wife, Madame de Maintenon was the governess to his illegitimate children, including Françoise-Marie de Bourbon. At left is a
prayer book dedicated to the devout Maintenon. Although the text looks handwritten, it was in fact printed from engraved plates in a style meant to imitate
longhand. The decoration in Françoise-Marie’s manuscript prayer book at right emulates that in her governess’s book. When Françoise-Marie married her cousin
Philippe II, duc d’Orléans—who was regent of France during Louis XV’s minority—she briefly became the highest-ranking woman at court.

The two bindings at left in this case belonged to Marie-Adélaïde de Savoie and Marie Leszczyńska, respectively the mother and wife of Louis XV. Marie-Adélaïde’s
entire armorial composition (everything inside the oval) was produced from one large stamp, an unusual choice for the period that suggests there was a need to
efficiently decorate a large quantity of books. In contrast, the armorial and full cover composition for Marie Leszczyńska were built up from small individual
tools, which would have been laborious both to design and to implement—befitting her status as queen.

The binding at left for Marie-Thérèse, the first wife of Louis XIV, features a grid (semis) of fleurs-de-lis and her crowned MT cypher. Toward the end of the seventeenth century, binding decoration changed to focus on framing patterns with a centerpiece or armorial, as seen in the middle binding for Louis’s second wife, Madame de Maintenon. As an untitled queen of France, she was not permitted to use the French insignia as Marie-Thérèse did; however, this allowed Maintenon’s armorial to stand alone, undefined by that of her husband. Similarly, Louis’s mistress Madame de Montespan could not use the French royal emblems, and her binding at right includes only her initials.

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Prior to her 2019 bequest, Jayne Wrightsman gave the Morgan a group of forty-one letters and documents that provide a record of French court life from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. Over two-thirds of the documents were written or signed by women, including two queens of France, Marie Leszczyńska and Marie-Antoinette; Josephine, empress of France; Henrietta Maria, queen of England; Maria Theresa, empress of Austria; Catherine the Great, empress of Russia; and Madame de Pompadour, one of the most renowned courtiers of the ancien régime. The pair of documents shown here are signed by two significant women during the reign of Louis XIV: his mistress Madame de Montespan (left) and his second wife, Madame de Maintenon (right).

Madame de Pompadour’s library contained over thirty-five thousand books, making it one of the largest literary repositories of the ancien régime. Her affinity for high-end works of art and luxury items extended to her books, many of which were lavishly decorated. On this binding, Douceur added red accents at the corners and within individual flowers to highlight the dentelle. Among Pompadour and her peers, books were often displayed with prominence as objets d’art—as Jayne Wrightsman lived with them—of which this colored and delicately gilt binding is an excellent example.

Madame de Pompadour commissioned Boucher to illustrate the edition of Pierre Corneille’s play Rodogune, first published in 1647, that she was having printed at Versailles (on view in the case below). The frontispiece illustrates the climax of the play, when both Cleopatra, queen of Syria, and Rodogune, a Parthian princess, accuse each other of the murder of Seleucus. Boucher drew the scene from two vantages, which were later combined into a single composition. The original engraving, seen in the proof print to the right, was produced by Pompadour and then touched up for the final printing by Charles-Nicolas Cochin the Younger.

Adélaïde, Victoire, and Sophie were daughters of Louis XV and Marie Leszczyńska. The sisters held significant positions at court; Adélaïde, for example, served as an advisor both to her father and to her nephew Louis XVI. The bindings of the Mesdames are differentiated by color: Adélaïde’s are bound in red morocco, Victoire’s in green, and Sophie’s in yellow (citron). The diamond-shaped armorial of the fille de France (daughter of France) is the same for each, however. Of the three sisters, Adélaïde had the most extensive library—over eleven thousand volumes, surpassed only by the collection of Madame de Pompadour. Adélaïde’s books are richly decorated, demonstrating nearly every stylistic technique practiced by contemporary binders.