Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art: The Dinner Party: Heritage Floor: Catherine de Rambouillet

Catherine de Rambouillet, aristocrat and salon hostess, shaped the style of French literature in the first half of the seventeenth century. After marrying at a young age, Rambouillet established a salon as a rival to the court of Henry IV, which she considered morally depraved. Her salon encouraged eloquent expression of ideas and was known for its mixture of nobles and literary figures. It also exerted conformist pressures on French classical literature, a tendency that was later critiqued by Molière in Les précieuses ridicules (1658).