A salon is a gathering of people held by a host. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to please or to educate". Salons in the tradition of the French literary and philosophical movements of the 17th and 18th centuries are still being carried on today.
Réunion de dames, Abraham Bosse, 17th century
"Abbé Delille reciting his poem, La Conversation in the salon of Madame Geoffrin" from Jacques Delille, "La Conversation" (Paris, 1812)
Portrait of Mme Geoffrin, salonnière, by Marianne Loir (National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC)
Italian in exile, Princess Belgiojoso 1832, salonnière in Paris where political and other émigré Italians, including composer Vincenzo Bellini, gathered in the 1830s. Portrait by Francesco Hayez
The Hôtel de Rambouillet, formerly the Hôtel de Pisani, was the Paris residence of Catherine de Vivonne, marquise de Rambouillet, who ran a renowned literary salon there from 1620 until 1648. It was situated on the west side of the rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre, just north of Marie de Rohan's Hôtel de Chevreuse, in a former quarter of Paris, located between the Louvre and Tuileries palaces, near the then much smaller Place du Carrousel, in the area of what was to become the Pavillon Turgot of the Louvre Museum.
Catherine de Vivonne's Hôtel de Rambouillet was located at the extreme left of this photograph, where the Pavillon Turgot of the Richelieu wing of the Louvre Palace stands since the second half of the 19th century.
