Circle of Pierre Gobert

Collection of the Rochechouart de Mortemart Family since the 18^th Century;

Thence by descent. 

Daughter of Gabriel de Rochechouart, Marie-Madeleine de Rochechouart was appointed abbess of Fontevraud Abbey by the king in 1670. She was included by Gilles Ménage in his list of women philosophers and was well versed in scholastic theology, maintaining correspondence with Charles Testu.

She came to court during the final years of her sister Athénaïs de Montespan’s favour and became acquainted with Madame de Scarron, with whom she maintained a friendly correspondence. She died at Fontevraud Abbey surrounded by works of morality, piety, and literary criticism. Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon claimed that her beauty eclipsed that of Madame de Montespan.

Initially accommodating men and women in the same buildings, the Abbey of Fontevraud eventually grew into a double monastery, in the spirit of Gregorian reform. It began to decline in the thirteenth century but was later run for nearly two centuries by abbesses from the Bourbon family. In 1738, Louis XV entrusted the education of his four youngest daughters to the Fontevraud nuns, which necessitated the building of a new residence, the Logis Bourbon.