Jakob Ferdinand Voet “Portrait of Marie Mancini Colonna as Armide” at the Colonna Gallery in Rome

Maria Mancini Colonna

Jakob Ferdinand Voet (1639-1700) “Marie Mancini Colonna as Armide”

Oil on canvas - 1669

Marie Mancini Colonna, born in Rome on 28 August 1639 and died in Pisa on 8 May 1715, was the niece of Cardinal Mazarin.

Her portrait by Jakob Ferdinand Voet hangs in one of the first rooms of the Princess's apartment in the Colonna Palace.

Mazarin had introduced her to the French court, and it seems that she was Louis XIV's first love.

Beautiful, witty and cultured, she had everything to please the king.

But this royal flirtation was not to the liking of Mazarin or Anne of Austria, Louis XIV's mother, who intended to marry him to the Infanta Maria Theresa of Austria.

To put an end to the romance, Mazarin sent his niece to Dammarie-les-Lys at the Abbaye du Lys, then to La Rochelle and Brouage.

Jakob Ferdinand Voet, portrait of Marie Mancini Colonna as Armide at the Colonna Gallery in Rome

Marie Mancini Colonna Marie Mancini Colonna was twenty years old when she left the French court for good on 22 June 1659, and it is said that Louis XIV's emotional reaction during their last meeting inspired Racine to write the following line in Bérénice:

“You are an emperor, Sire, and you weep!”

She married Prince Lorenzo Colonna in 1661, with whom she had three sons.

However, the couple did not get along, and following mutual infidelities and fear of her sometimes violent husband, Marie Mancini Colonna chose to leave Rome to travel around Europe with her sister and brother Philippe, Duke of Nevers.

Marie Mancini Colonna is the great-great-grandmother of Prince Camille Borghese, husband of Pauline Bonaparte, sister of Napoleon Bonaparte, whose statue can still be admired in “Victorious Venus” in the Borghese Gallery in Rome.

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