r a marquise, bestowed the name of de Pompadour on her and gave her a residence of the same name while also having her legally separated from her husband (Wikipedia, 1).
Pompadour is most closely associated with the art of the Rococo. This style has been described as follows:
"The term rococo style, or the rococo, refers to a style of decoration current in Europe, particularly France, during the 18th century. It applies both to interior decoration and to ornaments. By extension it may also be applied to some sculpture, paintings, furniture, and architectural details, although hardly to architecture as such. It was a style of high fashion and had few popular forms.
Rococo is derived from the French word rocaille, originally meaning the bits of rocky decoration sometimes found in 16th-century architectural schemes. It was first used in its modern sense around 1800, at about the same time as baroque, and, like baroque, was initially a pejorative term. The revival of the rococo occurred gradually during the 19th century, beginning as a vogue for collecting French 18th-century pictures and furniture and for imitation rococo interiors (Discover France, 1)."
Rococo was very much a style of the French Court in which Madame de Pompadour was extremely influential. Rococo bears further description:
"The overall effect is glittering and lively, a fitting background to 18th-century aristocratic social life, with its emphasis on privacy and its cult of human relationships.
In rococo painting, the powerful rhythms, dark colors, and heroic subjects characteristic of baroque painting gave way to quick, delicate movements, pale colors, and subjects illustrating the varieties of love: romantic love, as in the Antoine Watteau's Pilgrimage to Cythera (1717; Louvre, Paris); erotic love, as in the Frantois Boucher Cupid a Captive (1754; Wallace Collection, London); or mother love, as in the Jean Baptiste Chardin The Morning Toilet (...