page_title: Château de Chenonceau
section_title: Louise Dupin
hierarchical_section_title: Château de Chenonceau / History / Louise Dupin
context_page_description: The Château de Chenonceau is a French château spanning the River Cher, near the small village of Chenonceaux in the Indre-et-Loire département of the Loire Valley in France. It is one of the best-known châteaux of the Loire valley.
  The estate of Chenonceau is first mentioned in writing in the 11th century. The current château was built in 1514–1522 on the foundations of an old mill and was later extended to span the river. The bridge over the river was built to designs by the French Renaissance architect Philibert de l'Orme, and the gallery on the bridge, built from 1570–1576 to designs by Jean Bullant.
context_section_description: In 1733 the estate was sold for 130,000 livres to a wealthy squire named Claude Dupin. His wife, Louise Dupin, was the natural daughter of the financier Samuel Bernard and the actress Manon Dancourt, whose mother was also an actress who had joined the Comédie Française in 1684. Louise Dupin was "an intelligent, beautiful, and highly cultivated woman who had the theater in her blood." Claude Dupin, a widower, had a son, Louis Claude, from his first wife Marie Aurore of Saxony, who was the grandmother of George Sand (born Aurore Dupin).
  Louise Dupin's literary salon at Chenonceau attracted such  leaders of the Enlightenment as the writers Voltaire, Montesquieu, and  Fontenelle, the naturalist Buffon, the playwright Marivaux, the philosopher Condillac, as well as the Marquise de Tencin and the Marquise du Deffand. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was Dupin's secretary and tutored her son. Rousseau, who worked on Émile at Chenonceau, wrote in his Confessions: "We played music there and staged comedies. I wrote a play in verse entitled Sylvie's Path, after the name of a path in the park along the Cher."
  The widowed Louise Dupin saved the château from destruction during the French Revolution, preserving it from being destroyed by the Revolutionary Guard because "it was essential to travel and commerce, being the only bridge across the river for many miles."
caption: Louise Dupin by Nattier
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