Salon (gathering)

In 16th-century Italy, some brilliant circles formed in the smaller courts which resembled salons, often galvanized by the presence of a beautiful and educated patroness such as Isabella d'Este or Elisabetta Gonzaga.

[2] Before the end of the 17th century, these gatherings were frequently held in the bedroom (treated as a more private form of drawing room):[3] a lady, reclining on her bed, would receive close friends who would sit on chairs or stools drawn around.

[8] Steven Kale is relatively alone in his recent attempts to extend the period of the salon up until Revolution of 1848:[9]A whole world of social arrangements and attitude supported the existence of French salons: an idle aristocracy, an ambitious middle class, an active intellectual life, the social density of a major urban center, sociable traditions, and a certain aristocratic feminism.

[10]In the 1920s, Gertrude Stein's Saturday evening salons (described in Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast and depicted fictionally in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris) gained notoriety for including Pablo Picasso and other twentieth-century luminaries like Alice B. Toklas.

Like Stein, she was also an author and American ex-pat living in Paris at the time, hosting literary salons that were attended by Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald as well.

[11] Contemporary literature about the salons is dominated by idealistic notions of politeness, civility and honesty, though whether they lived up to these standards is a matter of debate.

[12] Dena Goodman contends that, rather than being leisure-based or "schools of civilité", salons were at "the very heart of the philosophic community" and thus integral to the process of Enlightenment.

Individuals and collections of individuals that have been of cultural significance overwhelmingly cite some form of engaged, explorative conversation regularly held with an esteemed group of acquaintances as the source of inspiration for their contributions to culture, art, literature and politics, leading some scholars to posit the salon's influence on the public sphere as being more widespread than previously appreciated.

[36] The integral role that women played within salons as salonnières began to receive greater – and more serious – study in latter parts of the 20th century, with the emergence of a distinctly feminist historiography.

[44] The enlightenment salon brought together Parisian society, the progressive philosophes who were producing the Encyclopédie, the Bluestockings and other intellectuals to discuss a variety of topics.

Les bas-bleus [fr], borrowed from England's "blue-stockings," soon found itself in use upon the attending ladies, a nickname continuing to mean "intellectual woman" for the next three hundred years.

From the middle of the 19th century until the 1930s, a lady of society had to hold her "day", which meant that her salon was opened for visitors in the afternoon once a week, or twice a month.

Marcel Proust called up his own turn-of-the-century experience to recreate the rival salons of the fictional duchesse de Guermantes and Madame Verdurin.

Some late 19th- and early 20th-century Paris salons were major centres for contemporary music, including those of Winnaretta Singer (the princesse de Polignac), and Élisabeth, comtesse Greffulhe.

In Belgium, the 19th-century salon hosted by Constance Trotti attracted cultural figures, the Belgian aristocracy and members of the French exiled colony.

Christine Sophie Holstein and Charlotte Schimmelman were the most notable hostesses, in the beginning and in the end of the 18th century respectively, both of whom were credited with political influence.

German society imposed the usual gender role restrictions and antisemitism, so cultivated Jewish women tapped into the cultural salon.

In the 18th century, Aurora Sanseverino provided a forum for thinkers, poets, artists, and musicians in Naples, making her a central figure in baroque Italy.

Naturally there were many salons with some of the most prominent being hosted by Clara Maffei in Milan, Emilia Peruzzi in Florence and Olimpia Savio in Turin.

The salons attracted countless outstanding 19th-century figures including the romantic painter Francesco Hayez, composer Giuseppe Verdi and naturalist writers Giovanni Verga, Bruno Sperani and Matilde Serao.

Most renowned were the Thursday Lunches of King Stanisław II Augustus at the end of the 18th century, and among the most notable salonnières were Barbara Sanguszko, Zofia Lubomirska, Anna Jabłonowska, a noted early scientist and collector of scientific objects and books, Izabela Czartoryska, and her later namesake, Princess Izabela Czartoryska founder of Poland's first museum and a patron of the Polish composer Frederic Chopin.

[61] The arguably most noted political salonnière of the Swedish age of liberty was countess Hedvig Catharina De la Gardie (1695–1745), whose salon has some time been referred to as the first in Sweden, and whose influence on state affairs exposed her to libelous pamphlets and made her a target of Olof von Dahlin's libelous caricature of the political salon hostess in 1733.

Salon hostesses were still attributed influence in politic affairs in the first half of the 19th century, which was said of both Aurora Wilhelmina Koskull[63] in the 1820s as well as Ulla De Geer in the 1840s.

In Coppet Castle close to Lake Geneva, the exiled Parisian salonnière and author, Madame de Staël, hosted a salon which played a key role in the aftermath of the French Revolution and especially under Napoleon Bonaparte's Regime.

In the 19th century, the Russian Baroness Méry von Bruiningk hosted a salon in St. John's Wood, London, for refugees (mostly German) of the revolutions of 1848 (the Forty-Eighters).

[71] Holland House in Kensington under the Fox family in the late 18th and early 19th centuries was akin to a French salon, largely for adherents to the Whig Party.

[74][75] Modern-day versions of the traditional salon (some with a literary focus, and others exploring other disciplines in the arts and sciences) are held throughout the world, in private homes and public venues.

"An invitation to the couple’s historic Georgetown home was one of the most coveted status symbols in the nation’s capital, an entry to an elite salon of the powerful, talented and witty.

"[76] In the 1980s, former nun and musician Theodora di Marco and her sister Norma hosted musical and debating soirées in their home in Notting Hill, London.

A jury system of selection was introduced in 1748, and the salon remained a major annual event even after the government withdrew official sponsorship in 1881.