11.1.30 to 11.1.33

French culture in the 17th century If historians are not yet agreed on the political motives of Louis XIV, they all accept, however, the cultural and artistic significance of the epoch over which he and his two 17th-century predecessors reigned. In their different ways—Henry IV's interest lay in town planning, Louis XIII's in music, and Louis XIV's in the theatre and in landscape gardening—they all actively stimulated the emergence of great talents and were aided by such royal ministers as Richelieu and Mazarin, who were considered patrons in their own right. From Henry IV's reign dates the rebuilding of Paris as a tasteful, ordered city, with the extensions to the Louvre and the building of the Pont Neuf and the Place Dauphine and, outside the capital, the renovations and extensions at Fontainebleau and Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Henry succeeded in making Paris what it had never been before—the centre of polite society—and he must therefore take some credit, though he was not personally interested in such matters, for the establishment of the famous salon of Catherine de Vivonne, Marquise de Rambouillet, which flourished from 1617 until 1665. There, men of letters mingled with the great nobility to the mutual advantage of both. The guests at her salon included the statesmen Richelieu and the Great Condé; the epigrammatist the Duke de La Rochefoucauld; the letter writer Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sévigné; the novelist Madeleine de Scudéry; the poet François de Malherbe; and the dramatist Pierre Corneille. Richelieu also was a key figure in the artistic and architectural development of Paris during his years in power. He was fortunate to employ the great architect Jacques Le Mercier, who built for him, close to the Louvre, the Palais-Cardinal, later the Palais-Royal; it contained two theatres and a gallery for the cardinal's objets d'art. Under the same patron, Le Mercier also built the church of the Sorbonne, where Richelieu is buried. In the world of painting, the cardinal supported Simon Vouet, who decorated the Palais-Cardinal, and Philippe de Champaigne, whose surviving portraits include famous representations of Richelieu himself. The cardinal's most notable contribution, however, was in the field of letters, with the establishment in 1634 of the Académie Française to regulate and maintain the standards of the French language. One of its first tasks was the production of a standard dictionary, a massive work published in four volumes in 1694. The Académie succeeded over the years in making the pursuit of letters socially acceptable, though still inferior to the pursuit of arms. Finally, Richelieu's great interest in the theatre persuaded him to patronize a number of dramatists, including Jean de Rotrou and Pierre Corneille. Richelieu's patronage of the arts was taken over by his great pupil Mazarin, who collected some 500 paintings. He housed them in the Palais Mazarin (now the National Library), which itself was enlarged for Mazarin by the architect François Mansart. He also commissioned Louis Le Vau to rebuild part of the medieval castle of Vincennes, thus setting him off on his successful career.