Madame de Sévigné - Lettres parisiennes

The Carnavalet Museum – History of Paris is presenting an exhibition devoted to Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sévigné (1626–1696), on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of her birth.

Designed with the support of a scientific committee made up of specialists in her work and in the period, the exhibition is based on a renewed critical approach to the letter‑writer and brings together over 200 works — paintings, objects, and drawings — from the museum’s collections, major French public collections, and private collections.

Marie de Rabutin‑Chantal was born in Paris at the Place Royale (now Place des Vosges) on 5 February 1626. Of ancient Burgundian nobility on her father’s side, she was raised in Paris by her maternal grandparents, the Coulanges, who provided her with an excellent education, uncommon for a young woman of the time. In 1644 she married Henri de Sévigné, a Breton gentleman, with whom she had two children: Françoise‑Marguerite and Charles. Her husband was killed in a duel in 1651, leaving her a widow at twenty‑five.

Dividing her time between the Marais district in Paris and her estate Les Rochers in Brittany, Madame de Sévigné took part in the most refined literary circles of the capital, including those of the Marquise de Rambouillet and Mademoiselle de Scudéry. She contributed to the development of the gallant culture that then flourished as an art of living and influenced literature and the arts.

The greater part of Madame de Sévigné’s surviving correspondence consists of letters sent to her daughter, who married the Count of Grignan in 1669 and moved to Provence. The published Correspondence now stands both as a work counted among the classics of French literature and as an essential document for understanding the history of ideas, manners, and events of the period.

Housed in the Hôtel Carnavalet, where the celebrated Parisian lived from 1677 until her death in 1696, this exhibition revisits Madame de Sévigné’s life in Paris at a time when the city was undergoing significant transformations.