Marc Antoine René de Voyer, Marquis de Paulmy and Marquis d'Argenson (1757) (22 November 1722, Valenciennes – 13 August 1787), was a French ambassador to Switzerland, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Republic of Venice and to the Holy See, and later became the Minister of War. He was also a noted bibliophile and collector of art.
Contents
Biography
Marc Antoine René de Voyer was the only son of René-Louis de Voyer de Paulmy, marquis d' Argenson. He should not be confused with his grandfather, Marc-René, or his great-grandfather, also Marc-René, or in particular with his cousin Marc-René de Voyer d'Argenson (1721–1782).
Appointed councillor at the parlement (1744), and maître des requêtes (1747), he was associated with his father in the ministry of foreign affairs and with his uncle, Marc-Pierre, in the ministry of war, and, in recognition of this experience, was commissioned to inspect the troops and fortifications and sent on embassy to Switzerland (1748).
In 1750 he was appointed to head the stables of King Louis XV and appointed governor of the Château de Vincennes in 1754. In addition to Switzerland, he served as French ambassador to Poland, Venice and to the Holy See. He followed his uncle as war minister when the latter was forced from office by the influence of Madame de Pompadour in 1757. The outbreak of the Seven Years' War made this post exceedingly difficult to hold, and he resigned on 23 March 1758.
He was a noted bibliophile and collector of art, whose private hope, reported in his memoirs was to be appointed director of the Bâtiments du Roi, a post that devolved upon Mme de Pompadour's highly competent brother. He built a château at Asnières in 1750, with expenses that scandalized his virtuous uncle, to set the tone for the Court and display his collection of works by Northern Renaissance masters. In the decade 1748–58 he appears repeatedly in the daybook of the marchand-mercier Lazare Duvaux, often purchasing Chinese celadon porcelains set in rococo French gilt-bronze mounts, and even bringing to Duvaux fine examples from his own collection to be mounted according to his taste. He was compelled by financial troubles to sell the house in 1769.