Valet de chambre

While some valets simply waited on the patron, or looked after his clothes and other personal needs, itself potentially a powerful and lucrative position, others had more specialized functions.

At the most prestigious level it could be akin to a monarch or ruler's personal secretary, as was the case of Anne de Montmorency at the court of Francis I of France.

[1] For noblemen pursuing a career as courtiers, like Étienne de Vesc, it was a common early step on the ladder to higher offices.

Valets might supply specialized services of various kinds to the patron, as artists, musicians, poets, scholars, librarians, doctors or apothecaries and curators of collections.

Valets comprised a mixture of nobles hoping to rise in their career, and those—often of humble origin—whose specialized abilities the monarch wanted to use or reward.

[4] The "Grooms of the Privy Chamber" and of the "Stool" were more important posts because they involved closer access and were usually held by the well-born, often knights.

There were some female equivalents, such as the portrait miniaturist Levina Teerlinc (daughter of Simon Bening), who served as a gentlewoman in the royal households of both Mary I and Elizabeth I, and Sofonisba Anguissola, who was court painter to Philip II of Spain and art tutor with the rank of lady-in-waiting to his third wife Elisabeth of Valois, a keen amateur artist.

Finally, after the King's first application on his behalf was rejected, and some probable falsification of his family background and career, Velázquez managed in 1659 to obtain entry to the chivalric Order of Santiago, the pinnacle of his courtly ambitions.

But the title required only 3 months' work a year, looking after the royal furniture and tapestries, for a salary of 300 livres, with the opportunity to take commission on a number of lucrative contracts.

[10] Alexandre Bontemps, head of the thirty-six functional ordinary valets de chambre of Louis XIV of France, was a powerful and feared figure, in charge of the troops guarding the royal palaces, and an elaborate network of spies on courtiers.

Especially in German lands, honorary titles as kammerer and the variants were now given, mostly to noblemen, with great freedom, but with no payment or services being exchanged; both Vienna and Munich had over 400 by the 18th century.