Guirlande de Julie

The 1641 manuscript was bought by the Bibliothèque nationale de France in 1989 and is now kept in the Département des Manuscrits of the BnF.

The Hôtel de Rambouillet, as it was called, was frequented by renowned précieuses, writers, nobles and "robins".

Montausier asked the most talented poets of the time, all frequent visitors of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, to write one or several madrigals in which a flower would sing the praises of Julie.

Julie found the manuscript by her bed, upon awakening on the morning of her name day, 22 May 1641[6] (see 1641 in poetry).

After the death of Montausier in 1690, the manuscript became the possession of the ducal Crussol family, in which his daughter, Marie-Julie de Sainte-Maure (1647-1692), duchesse of Uzès by marriage, had married.