A collection of love letters from former French president François Mitterrand to his longtime mistress, Anne Pingeot, hits the bookstands next week. But the French media already can't get enough of their former president's illicit love life, reports FRANCE 24.
An image from a blustery January 1996 afternoon, when Mitterrand’s two families stood around the former president’s flag-draped coffin, is seared in the French public’s memory.
Standing slightly behind Mitterrand’s wife Danielle and his four children – three sons and an illegitimate daughter, Mazarine – Anne Pingeot looked elegant and withdrawn in her black winter coat topped with a veiled pillbox hat.
But the nation’s attention was fixed on Mazarine, the product of a decades-long relationship between Mitterrand and Pingeot. The January 1996 funeral marked 20-year-old Mazarine’s first official appearance, and the dark-haired, dark-eyed girl who bore a striking resemblance to her late father was the subject of intense media scrutiny.
Over the past two decades Mazarine (who uses her mother’s family name) has occasionally sought the media spotlight, notably when the author and philosophy professor released a new book, diary or memoir.
Of her mother – the withdrawn, grieving presidential mistress in the photograph – very little has been said. Pingeot, 73, is an art historian specialising in 19th-century French sculpture and was once curator of the sculpture department at both the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay. She has also authored several art books and catalogues.
But French respect for la vie privée (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.