ART HISTORIAN ANNE PINGEOT MISTRESS OF FRENCH STATESMAN AND PRESIDENT FRANCOIS MAURICE MITTERRAND

One of the references for this month's posts, Philip Short's book on Mitterand, is well regarded.  Upcoming are links to articles about this book, YouTube videos, and information from general research on the internet.

Anne Pingeot: French Art Historian. A woman of personal accomplishment. Long time Mistress of an important man on the world stage.

She and their daughter came to Francois Mitterrand's State funeral, as did his wife of over 50 years and their children, and so a second family and long term Mistress who was known to his family, his inner circle, and the press (who had focused on his politics), became known to the world. Mitterand, not known for his warmth, was the the President of France for more years than any previous President - from 1981 to 1995. He lead a double life and was actually capable of great love and feeling.  His Mistress was so often on his mind, he wrote her letters, hundreds of them, and these letters were finally published and read with relish. Yet my feeling is that Anne is still an intriguing mystery, that there is and will long be more curiosity about her and their relationship than knowledge.  In search of information about Anne on YouTube, I found lots - but only in the French language.


Mitterand was born in 1916 and married his one and only wife, Danielle, in 1944. He died in 1996 from prostate cancer, which he had for years and also kept secret. It's said that keeping Mazarine Marie Pingeot, the daughter born in 1974 to Anne (when he had been married for 30 years), a secret, was the real reason behind some illegal wiretaps he ordered at one time. Mazarine appeared on the cover of  Paris Match (a bit like the old American Life magazine) a few months before he left office when she was twenty. So you could say that he chose to be discreet because he wanted privacy in his personal life, even with the attitude about affairs and Mistresses to be more liberal or open minded in France than in other cultures. Anne too is said to have loved her privacy.  But eventually, especially with a beautiful and intelligent daughter coming to age herself, their relationship had to come out.

Anne was 27 years younger than he. They met because her father and Mitterand both loved to golf.

According to the article that appeared on line from France 24 on 10/17/2016, a decade after his death (Which has a good photo of Anne and Mazarine at the funeral), and then 74 years old, Anne said that her parents were a couple generations behind the times when she was growing up in a farming region where the farmers were still using scythes. People were Catholic, Right-wing, and reactionary, She was 14 years old when her father brought around Mitterand who was only a year younger than him. Six years later they began an affair that lasted 33 years. Why was she speaking to the press after so many years of living so very privately? The book contains 1218 of them.

Though he had a wife and a Mistress, Mitterand also had affairs. Anne waited until Mitterand had been deceased for five years before she herself released the book of love letters, which you could say she curated, translating them as well for an English language edition.  As a French art historian, she specialized in sculptures done in the 1800's and was a curator at the Louvre, department of sculpture as well as st the Musee d'Orsay.  In her lifetime she has written a number of books on French sculpture.

According to an article in France 24, "But French respect for la vie privee (private life) is so sacrosanct that Pingeot's amazing story as the longtime mistress of France's first Socialist president in the Fifth Republic has been dismissed with a Gallic shrug. Powerful men, especially presidents, are almost expected to have mistresses, and Henry Kissinger's contention that "power is the ultimate aphrodisiac" is taken quite seriously in France...", 

Anne is still alive as I write this.

Let's start the New Year with our Mistress of the Month, Anne Pingeot!

Missy

 *(Mazarine changed her name to Mazarine Marie Mitterand Pingeot. She is the mother of three children with a now-ex partner. Very well educated and literary herself, Mazarine is said to have been named after a favorite bookstore of her very literary parents, has published some of her own books, and works as a philosophy professor. 

FRANCE 24 : LOVE LETTERS OF MITTERAND
FRANCE 24: MITTERAND MISTRESS BLAMES SILENCE ON UPBRINGING 

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