Château de Talcy

The Château de Talcy is a historical building in Talcy, Loir-et-Cher, France. It lies on the left bank of the Loire River, in the Loire Valley, known for its 16th-century châteaux. It was commissioned around 1520 by Bernardo Salviati, a Florentine condottiero and cardinal with connections to the Medici family. The château, which is embedded in the village to one side, where the village church forms one side of the courtyard, is more Gothic in its vernacular feeling than might be expected in a structure built for an Italian patron at the height of the Renaissance.

History

The estate is better known in literary rather than architectural history. 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. Ronsard fell in love with the 15-year-old Cassandre in 1552, during his stay at Talcy. He dedicated to her some of the best known sonnets in the French language. D'Aubigné, a neighbour of the Salviati, composed for Diane in 1571 the collection of sonnets, ballads, and idylls entitled Le Printemps and at her death the finest of his poems, Les Tragiques.