Château de Talcy

[4] The building was bought from Marie Simon in 1517 by Roberto Bernard Salviati, a Florentine banker and his wife Francoise (née Doucet).

Salviati's daughter and granddaughter, Cassandre and Diane, were the muses of two leading French poets of the time, Pierre de Ronsard and Théodore-Agrippa d'Aubigné, respectively.

[8] D'Aubigné, dedicated to Diane in 1571 the collection of sonnets, ballads, and idylls entitled Le Printemps and at her death the finest of his poems, Les Tragiques.

[12] Isabella had bought the château from her mother (Isabeau née Sardini) although she was married to Louis de la Marck, with whom she had four children.

[16] Their daughter Marie Madeleine Pierrette Vincens (1778–1854) married Philipp Albert Stapfer in 1798 and their family moved into the chateau.

The chateau remained intact throughout the revolution due to the families (Gastebois, Vincens and Stapfer) strong egalitarian beliefs.

Albert spent his youth as a liberal journalist for le Globe and continued to support egalitarian policies, manning the barricades in the 1830 revolution.

[18] Retiring to Talcy after his marriage to Clarey Louise Vincens in 1835, he gained an interest in daguerreotypes, taking a series of pictures of the chateau, still on view there.

During the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, Albert hosted General Antoine Chanzy there, but he was driven out by the Prussians in the Battle of Beaugency (1870) in December 1870.

Albert died there in 1892, leaving it to his three children: Leon (Protestant minister at Jones, Le Mans and Blois), Genevieve (married Raoul Debaste) and Valentine.

[26] Whilst predominantly dating from the Renaissance the building has a strongly medieval feel due to the central tower.

The Salviati family did not build the wings in a heavy Renaissance manner, that was becoming very popular at the time due to their wish to play down their Italian background.