Madame Pompadour's Backside
History Today's blog (URL below) is running a profile on a series of racey, humorous caricatures from the mid to late 1700's. The November issue of the journal History Today features 'The Other Cheek', and authors Colin Jones and Emily Richardson reveal who a little-known collection of obscene and irreverent caricatures targetting Madame de Pompadour from a book of drawings entitled the Livre de caricatures tant Bonnes que mauvaises. Many of the drawings are a little--well, what should I say? They reflect French humor of the time (the image posted here is very tame compared to many of them). You can see them all here: http://www.historytoday.com/colin-jones/madame-de-pompadour-other-cheek The cartoonist, one of Madame Pompadour's contemporaries, told it like he saw it, that's for sure. The 'Book of Caricatures both Good and Bad' was composed over almost 30 years from the 1740s to the 1770s. The man responsible for them was Charles-Germain de Saint-Aub...