Marguerite Hessein, Lady of Rambouillet de la Sablière, by the Beaubrun Brothers’ studio

Marguerite Hessein (1636–1693), the daughter of a wealthy banker, was born into the Huguenot elite of Paris and became one of the leading salon hostesses of^17th-century Paris. Through her marriage in 1654 to a wealthy Huguenot financier, Antoine de Rambouillet de la Sablière, steward of the king’s estates, she became Madame de la Sablière.

It was at the Folie-Rambouillet that she hosted numerous prominent figures, including Madame de La Fayette, Ninon de Lenclos, Molière, the Duke of Nemours, Racine and the Marquise de Sévigné.  Her name is associated with that of Jean de la Fontaine, whom she patronised and who dedicated a fable to her in 1678, *The Two Rats, the Fox and the Egg*, accompanied by a *Discourse to Madame de la Sablière*, in which he challenges Descartes’ philosophy, in particular the mechanistic theory of animal nature. During his inaugural address as a newly elected member of the Académie française in 1684, La Fontaine paid tribute to his patron under the pseudonym Iris.

A patron of the arts and letters, Madame de Rambouillet wrote *Christian Maxims*, published posthumously, a collection of observations on moral life, centred on virtues, vices and passions. The maxim was a literary genre much favoured in the salons of the time, which relished epigrams dissecting the contradictions of the human heart.

She converted to Catholicism a few months before the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and set out to care for the sick. Having withdrawn from salon life, she died at the Feuillants convent in 1693. Her personal library, catalogued at the time of her death, contained volumes by Descartes, Malebranche, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus and Saint Augustine. Despite the entreaties of her spiritual directors, Madame de La Sablière refused to part with her beloved telescope until the final weeks of her life. She continued to observe the movements of the stars and planets from her apartment and to record her observations in a notebook.

The portrait preserved at the Château de Bussy-Rabutin depicts Marguerite Hessein set against a natural landscape and in a dynamic pose, pointing towards the horizon, allowing the gauze tied to her hair to float freely and lifting a corner of her dress to make walking easier. Her blue silk dress, exquisitely crafted and embroidered with gold thread and pearls, shimmers with a multitude of reflections thanks to its folds.

Henri and Charles Beaubrun were French painters active at the courts of Kings Louis XIII and then Louis XIV, specialising in portraits of the Queens of France. Charles and his cousin, Henri Beaubrun, belonged to a family of^17th-century French portraitists. The cousins worked together between 1630 and 1675, painting not only numerous official royal portraits but also enjoying great success with the ladies of the court. Their collaboration was such that it is impossible to distinguish their respective contributions. The clarity of the young woman’s porcelain-like complexion, the idealisation of features characteristic of the painters, and the pose with its formal movement all point unquestionably to the Beaubrun brothers’ studio.

This type of portrait, with its more natural pose, heralds the evolution of the genre in the^18th century. The Beaubrun brothers, Henri and Charles, also produced a very similar version in *Diane*, which was long thought to depict Mademoiselle de Blois. Alongside the portrait held at the Château de Chambord, the portrait of Madame de la Sablière kept at Bussy-Rabutin is rare, and few painted portraits of this woman of letters survive, apart from the one depicting her as Diana by Louis Ferdinand Elle l’Ainé, now in a private collection.

Lucretia de Planta, ‘An Attempt to Reconstruct the Collection of Roger de Rabutin, Count of Bussy, at the Château de Bussy-le-Grand (Côte d’Or)’, Master’s thesis, Paris IV-Sorbonne, 1989–1991, pp. 59–60, 64–67, 72–73.

Jean-Baptiste-César, Count of Sarcus, ‘Historical and Descriptive Account of the Château de Bussy-Rabutin’, Dijon, 1854, p. 54.

J. Wilhelm, ‘Some forgotten or unpublished works by painters of the Beaubrun family’, Revue de l’Art, 1969, pp. 19–32 (pp. 29–30) | No. 5