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pregnancies.
    Marie’s first child, Filippo Colonna, was born on April 7, 1663, to the great joy of the family. After the requisite forty-day confinement, Marie was put on display in a magnificent bed that Lorenzo had commissioned on the occasion of her first pregnancy. It was a wonder of baroque art, designed by Paul Schor, who in collaboration with his mentor, Bernini, had been producing elaborate decorative and monumental objects for the churches, squares, and palazzi of Rome in response to the huge demand created by the city’s prosperity and the festivals and renovations that had come in its wake. In November 1661, just after Marie’s miscarriage, Schor and Bernini had created a stunning spectacle of decorations and fireworks in front of the French church of Saint Trinita dei Monti in Rome, commissioned to celebrate the birth of a son to Louis XIV and Marie-Thérèse. But the bed created for Marie Mancini
Colonna was a more durable artifact and quickly became one of the sights that visitors to the city wanted to view. Marie took great care to describe the bed in her memoirs. It was a vision out of a fairy tale, in the shape of a giant gilded seashell floating on waves and drawn by four seahorses mounted by mermaids. The bed was framed by a giant canopy of gold brocade held up at the ceiling by an array of cherubs carved of wood and gilded. Marie lay as resplendent as Venus on this marvelous creation. Benedetti’s letters to France describing the spectacle were gushing: “If Venus had been a dark haired goddess one would have thought that it was she herself in her seashell. It is certain that neither the bed of Cleopatra and Antony nor that of Venus and Adonis were equal to this one.” 9 In the Parisian salons that Marie had left behind, hostesses typically would receive their guests while lying on a bed. Marie’s was over the top. Visitors coming to pay their respects to the new mother and her son marveled at this vision of the goddess on her seashell-turned-chariot. The bed would become an emblem of Marie’s triumph as mother, patron of the arts, and host to the elite of Roman society. Later generations of the Colonna family would invite visitors to Rome to view the bed, which became one of the sights highlighted in early guidebooks written for young English travelers on the grand tour of the Continent.
    Despite her persistent view of Rome as a second-rate urban center, the new Princess Colonna soon began to devote her attention to enhancing the city’s cultural life. She also entered into the political as well as the artistic interests of her family. This meant that in her new role she would not always be viewed as supporting the interests of France and King Louis. In fact, though Lorenzo was cordial with the French king, in Rome the Colonnas had closer ties to the Spanish faction, while the rival Orsini family was more closely allied with the French. Marie’s position at times was delicate: On the one hand, she made no secret of her French disdain for some of the
more repressive Roman customs, particularly regarding limitations on the freedom of women. She dismissed those who criticized the liberties of her French lifestyle and encouraged other Roman noblewomen to join her in “considering Rome as Paris,” urging them to come out from “behind the windows and blinds that limit a woman’s pleasure.” On the other hand, as the Constabless Colonna, she was often in direct competition with the French in Rome. In alliance with her husband, she quickly became a fierce defender of the family’s high status, sensitive to the slightest social misstep made by diplomatic envoys from France. Before undertaking their missions in Rome, emissaries from the French court had to be briefed on dealing with her.
    In the cultural arena, the Colonnas’ tastes were decidedly French. By 1660 Lorenzo had already established a reputation as a collector and patron of art.