A tale of Sleeping Beauty
SLEEPING BEAUTY: This portrayal of Madame du Barry, later the mistress of Madame du Barry (1743-1793) was modelled by Philippe Curtius in 1765 and is the oldest wax figure at Madame Tussauds.
So reads the current label for the famous Sleeping Beauty at Madame Tussaud's in London. I'm not sure any of it is true.
How old is she?
The Sleeping Beauty was undoubtedly among the models brought from France by Marie Tussaud in 1802, and is always said to be the oldest in the collection, but, as far as I know, there is no certain date for her creation. 1765 or 1767 are extrapolations from the chronology of the Tussaud Memoirs; 1770 or 1776, both of which are also cited, are possible dates for Curtius's first waxworks in Paris.
It should also be emphasised that it is not the wax figure, but the mould, if it still exists, which is 18th-century. The model was certainly replaced after the fire of 1925. It has also been replaced or completely revamped very recently - I'm convinced it wasn't there at all when I visited Madame Tussaud's in August 2010. In earlier photos on the internet the Beauty is definitely the worse for wear, whereas now she appears brand new. If you look carefully, you also see she that she has sported a number of different dresses - or at least bodices and bows - over the last decade or so.
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| Looking a bit rough in 2005 |
MADAME DE SAINTE-AMARANTHE
In the early days of the Tussaud travelling exhibition the figure was identified as a now largely forgotten society beauty called Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe. Thus John Theodore Tussaud, in the Romance of Madame Tussaud:
Among the figures taken on tour at this time [c.1818] were models of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and the Dauphin, Voltaire and Madame St. Amaranthe (Tussaud's "Sleeping Beauty"), taken a few months before her execution. These identical figures, as already stated, are still in the collection (1921 ed. p.101).
Richard Altick in The Shows of London (1978) mentions a programme in the British Library for a show at 87 Pall Mall in 1802 which may be tentatively identified as a early reference to the Tussaud exhibition. The waxworks figures are described as "taken from life, from masks moulded on the persons themselves, or from the best original paintings" and included "Charlotte Corday, Mlle. de Ste. Amaranthe and Mirabeau" (p.333).
The early Tussaud catalogues all featured "Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe". The earliest I can find on the web was published in Bristol in 1823 and has the following entry:
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Biographical and descriptive sketches of ...the unrivalled exhibition of Madame Tussaud. Bristol: J. Bennett, 1823. |
Biographical and descriptive sketches... London, 1851
https://archive.org/stream/biographicaldesc00mada#page/14/mode/2up
The American Benjamin Silliman saw her in that year, so we can be sure that this was indeed the Sleeping Beauty with her clockwork breathing mechanism:
Another lady, Madame ______, afterwards a victim of Robespierre's cruelty, because she indignantly refused to become the victim of his lust, lies asleep on her couch in her day dress, probably in prison prior to her execution. She breathes,and her bust, with her dress, rises and falls so naturally with the respiration, that you instinctively move softly, lest she should be disturbed in her slumber (Benjamin Silliman, A visit to Europe in 1851, vol.2, p.431)
This tableau, with the figure of Madame Tussaud, seems to have survived more or less unaltered down to the fire of 1925. Thus the Romance of Madame Tussaud:
All day long groups of Cup-tie trippers stand about the Sleeping Beauty, not only for her sake, but also for the sake of Madame Tussaud, whose figure stands at Madame St. Amaranthe's head, while at her feet sits William Cobbett, wearing his old beaver hat, and holding in his hand the snuffbox which legend credits him with passing to visitors on some weird occasions (p.235)
The association with William Cobbett, which is also in the 1851 catalogue, is at first sight a strange. The key to the mystery is supplied by Richard Altick: this too was a mechanised figure: the great journalist apparently bowed continuously to onlookers. Clockwork featured elsewhere in the exhibition: Benjamin Silliman reported the existence of a richly dressed Chinese couple represented in silent conversation, where the wife moved her head as she spoke to her husband. Altick makes the intriguing (?but unverified) suggestion that Sleeping Beauty's clockwork mechanism was added in the 19th century; in his view the "famous Sleeping Beauty" was "converted from Mlle de Ste Amaranthe", presumably for the permanent exhibition. (Altick, Shows of London, p.335). The clockwork mechanism was replaced by an electric motor in the early 20th century.
After the 1925 fire the tableau was reconstructed in much the same format (minus Cobbett). The London tour guide Joanna Moncrieff, has posted this photograph on her blog, taken from an illustrated guide of the 1930s:
See: Joanna Moncrieff, Madame Tussaud’s – A Souvenir Brochure from the 1930s (Part 2), Westminster Walks, blog post of 26.03.2013
http://westminsterwalks.london/2013/03/madame-tussauds-a-souvenir-brochure-from-the-1930s-part-2/The text in Joanna Moncrieff's guide states clearly that this is a portrait model of "Madame St. Amaranthe", as does the 1932 catalogue on Google Books:
SLEEPING BEAUTY: This figure is a model of Madame St Amaranthe, widow of a Lieutenant-Colonel of the Body Guard of Louis XVI. She incurred the emnity of Robespierre - the story goes because she repelled his amorous advances. At the early age of 22 she was condemned by the Revolutionary Tribunal and guillotined.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=1EwRAQAAMAAJ&dq=tussaud+guide&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=sleeping+beauty
Here is the model in close-up in a vintage postcard from the same sort of era (on various pinterest sites):
It is intriguing to note how, in this incarnation, Sleeping Beauty has been denuded of her provocative sexuality. She is supplied with an amorphous dark gown, a massive crucifix and the stern figure of Madame Tussaud herself as a chaperone. Only her heaving bosom reassures us she is still alive!
Who was Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe?
The Tussaud Memoirs supply the following:
Her husband had been a lieutenant-colonel in the body guards of Louis XVI, and was killed in the assault of the Tuilleries on the 10th of August. She was one of the most beautiful women in France, and had the misfortune to been seen by Robespierre who, charmed by her graceful attractions, sought her for his mistress, and was repelled with indignation. Robespierre, at that time in full power, soon found a pretext for bringing her before a revolutionary tribunal, when she was tried, condemned, and beheaded, at the age of twenty-two.
Memoirs, ed. Herve (1838), p.125-6.
https://archive.org/stream/11499676.2170.emory.edu/11499676_2170#page/n129/mode/2up/
The biographical information is essentially the same in all the catalogues: Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe was the wife of a Lieutenant-Colonel of the Royal Bodyguards, who was guillotined when she rejected the advances of Robespierre.
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| Heinsius, Émilie de Sainte-Amaranthe |
See Melanie Clegg's blog post:
"The tragic fate of Sleeping Beauty's daughter, Émilie de Sainte-Amaranthe", Madame Guillotine, 02.01.2012
http://madameguillotine.co.uk/2012/01/02/the-tragic-fate-of-sleeping-beautys-daughter-emilie-de-sainte-amaranthe/
It seems highly unlikely that Robespierre ever had designs on either woman, though Augustin Robespierre knew them and attempted to protect them from the guillotine (see, John Laurence Carr Robespierre (1972) p.82-83)
The Tussaud memoirs then specify:
She sat to Madame Tussaud, only a few months before her execution, for her brother, and the portrait was fitted up and adorned in a most elegant and expensive manner.
It is clearly the daughter rather than the mother who is being referred to, and "elegant and expensive manner" is probably intended to suggest the Sleeping Beauty. However, "a few months before her execution" implies 1793 rather than a date in the 1760s or '70s.
None of it quite adds up: Did Marie Tussaud really create the model? Is "Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe" the mother or the daughter? If the daughter, why on earth would her brother want his sister portrayed in such a provocative pose?
MADAME DU BARRY
Madame Tussaud possessed a portrait of this celebrated lady taken at the age of twenty-two, which exhibits a beautiful countenance and figure, but as she advanced in life she became rather embonpoint.
Memoirs, ed. Herve (1838), p.111-2.
https://archive.org/stream/11499676.2170.emory.edu/11499676_2170#page/n115/mode/2upIn the winter of 1790 the German playwright August von Kotzebue, visiting the Salon de cire at the Palais-Royal, saw a model of "Madame du Barry sleeping and half naked".
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k35315n/f65.image
In 1793, confronted by Curtius's rendition of her severed head, Palloy concluded that the resemblance was so strong that "in reality he must already have moulded a wax mask from life" (Livre de raison, ed. 1956, p.212.)
Pamela Pilbeam suggests that there might originally have been two "invitingly horizontal ladies", one Madame Sainte-Amaranthe and the other Madame du Barry (Madame Tussaud, p.33-4) (Marina Warner goes one better and for some reason claims that "Madame Tussaud's legacy to the London waxworks" included three Sleeping Beauties - the third one being the princesse de Lamballe (Phantasmagoria, p.47-8))
Perhaps a separate du Barry did come to England with Madame Tussaud: GoogleBooks yields the following intriguing "snippet" from a book on wax models published in 1977:
We cannot be sure that Curtius did make a portrait of Madame du Barry, aged 22, in 1765, as Madame Tussaud's biography claims. Nor do we know whether the wax catalogued by her in 1819 as Madame du Barry (traditionally referred to in Madame Tussaud's as "The Sleeping Beauty") is Curtius's work.
La ceroplastica nella scienza e nell'arte
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ZOXaAAAAMAAJ&
Unfortunately, without the 1819 catalogue in question, there is no means of checking this reference. Certainly there is no du Barry mentioned in the later guides.
Presumably at some point, the administration of Madame Tussaud's in London decided to substitute the royal mistress for the forgotten figure of Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe. In my 1972 guide book Sleeping Beauty looks much the same:
However the caption now reads:
The sitter for this portrait, by Curtius in 1765 was Louis XV's mistress Madame du Barry. Madame Tussaud concealed du Barry's charms under veils and puritanical black, so that the portrait is known only as "The Sleeping Beauty"
In the 1980s the Sleeping Beauty became the centrepiece of one of a series of "historical tableaux" devised for Tussauds in 1978 by the stage designer Julia Trevelyan Oman: she lay under a canopy in a four-poster bed, this time in a splendid 18th-century gown; a lady and gentleman were portrayed gazing at her, while at the foot of the bed, her page, a "blackamoor", kept vigil. (see Maria Warner, Phantasmagoria, p.47). Here is a photograph I found on the internet (the picture was inspiration for an 18th-century styled wedding dress):
The presence of the negro servant makes it clear that this was intended to be du Barry. In this photo, from an 1983 magazine, she is labelled as such.
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| Rotarian, 1983 |
The Sleeping Beauty could just be a novelty piece. Her doll-like features do not particularly suggest a portrait. Recently there has been a flurry of interest in wax "anatomical Venuses", to which the model is sometimes compared - Curtius was not above showing such works: he is known to have displayed a "Pyramus and Thisbe" in which the Thisbe opened to display her vital organs. Intriguing Sylvestre's exhibition at the Lyceum in London in 1785 also included "a Sleeping Venus of exquisite beauty". Sylvestre was less reluctant than Madame Tussaud to avertise the sensual attraction of his waxwork:
The artist to shew that his abilities were not exhausted, has lately produced an additional piece which outdoes his former outdoing; it is a female figure, reposing: toute déshabillée, on a couch, the perfect symmetry of whose limbs, the soft langour of whose eyes and countenance joined to the bewitching posture in which she is displayed make every beholder regret that he has not the power of Prometheus, and cannot animate a figure that exceeds "all that painting can express or youthful poets fancy when they love"
In the publicity material this piece too accrued different identities; in July 1785 she was "the Sleeping Leda", but by April 1787, significantly enough, she had become: "the beautiful Countess du Barre (Barry?), sometimes known as the Sleeping Beauty" (Quotes from Theresa Ransom, Madame Tussaud: a life and a time (2003) , p.58-61).
Conclusions?
The provocatively sleeping "Venus" was clearly a stock pose and Curtius may well have remade or refurbished the model more than once. In 1790 she was du Barry; by 1794 she was the beautiful victim of the Terror, Émilie de Sainte-Amaranthe. Today she is reincarnated once more as du Barry but, more importantly, looks as sexy and alluring as ever.
References
Theresa Ransom, Madame Tussaud: a life and a time (2003) , p.58-61
Marina Warner, ‘Waxworks and Wonderlands’, in Lynne Cooke and Peter Wollen, Visual Display Culture Beyond Appearances, New York, l995;
https://culturesofdisplay.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/waxworks129.pd
_____, Phantasmagoria (2006)
Richard Altick, The Shows of London, Harvard U.P.,1978 [extracts on GoogleBook]