It was 1745, and Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, the pretty young woman who would become Marquise de Pompadour, had been invited to a masked ball at Versailles. If this sounds like a chance meeting ...

Portrait of the Marquise de Pompadour by Maurice Quentin de La Tour, between 1748 and 1755, currently at the Louvre Museum. Public Domain Madame de Pompadour is perhaps most associated with the ...