Mathilde Bonaparte

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Édouard Dubufe : Mathilde Lätitia Wilhelmine Bonaparte, oil on canvas, 1861

Mathilde Lætitia Wilhelmine Bonaparte , also Mathilde-Létizia (born May 27, 1820 in Trieste , † January 2, 1904 in Paris ) was the daughter of Napoléon 's youngest brother Jérôme Bonaparte and his second wife Katharina von Württemberg . She devoted herself to pastel and watercolor painting, and from the 1850s onwards ran an artistic and literary salon in her Hôtel particulier in Paris .

Life

André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri , Mathilde Bonaparte, around 1860

Born in Trieste, Mathilde grew up in Florence , Stuttgart and Rome . With the intention of uniting two of the different Bonapartist lines into a new main line, Mathilde was initially engaged to her cousin Louis Napoleon (later Napoleon III) at the age of 15 in 1835 , but Mathilde's father broke up after Napoleon's failed coup attempt in 1836 Jérôme resumed the engagement immediately. Instead, on November 1, 1840, she married the Russian Prince Anatoly Demidow, Prince of San Donato , a son of Count Nikolai Demidow and the Baroness Jelisaveta Stroganowa in Florence . The marriage was marked by affairs and disputes. Anatole had a long-standing affair with Valentine de Sainte-Aldegonde - a relationship he continued against Mathilde's will.

Mathilde then left Florence with her lover Alfred Émilien de Nieuwerkerke and with her husband's jewelry collection. The marriage ended in divorce in 1847 and Anatole was legally compelled to pay Mathilde an annual alimony of 200,000 francs. Despite his vehement demands, Anatole never got his jewelry back.

At the end of 1848, Louis Napoleon was elected President of France. Since he was initially unmarried and Mathilde was his closest female relative, she officially served as première dame ( first lady ) or maîtresse de maison (landlady) at his until his marriage to Eugénie de Montijo (early 1853), despite the engagement that had once been dissolved Page. In Paris, Mathilde became a well-known member of the aristocratic art and literature circle during and after the Second Empire . After Anatole's death on April 29, 1870, she married Claudius Popelin (1825-1892) in December 1873 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b E. A. Reinhardt: Napoleon the Third and Eugenie - tragic comedy of an empire , pages 29f, 33f, 94ff and 115ff. Fischer Verlag, Berlin 1930

Web links

Commons : Mathilde Bonaparte  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Bonaparte, Mathilde
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bonaparte, Mathilde-Létizia; Bonaparte, Mathilde Lætitia Wilhelmine
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French salonniere and painter, daughter of Jérôme Bonaparte
DATE OF BIRTH May 27, 1820
PLACE OF BIRTH Trieste
DATE OF DEATH January 2, 1904
Place of death Paris