ABSTRACT
Although the salon that Robert was commissioned to ornament in 1787 was a public, rather than a private, space in the house, it was not Mereville's grand, ceremonial salon, the Salon d'Ete. 14 In the correspondence between Laborde and Hubert Robert, the salon which concerns us is referred to as "Ie petit salon de Miriville," a sobriquet suggesting a comparatively more diminutive architectural space. Such spaces evolved during the ancien rigime in connection with various new social practices stressing intimacy and informality. One of these, for example, was the petit souper. The petit souper took its eighteenth-century form during the reign of Louis XV when the monarch began to host intimate dinners in the private apartments of the palace at Versailles. Court protocol was set aside in the newly remodeled salles a manger in the Cabinets du Roi (the first appeared in 1732) and guests of both genders were invited to sit in no particular order at the same table with the king (Solnon 1987: 492). Quickly spreading to Paris, the intimate late supper eventually became a social event of more consequence than the traditional afternoon dinner. Vigee-Lebrun, who became famous for her petits soupers, described them in her memoirs as intimate gatherings of twelve or fifteen persons who would come together around nine in the evening "pour y finir leur soiree" (I, 82). At ten o'clock, guests dined on simple, light fare, and at midnight everyone retired. Conversation was lively, polished, and artful: "L'aisance, la douce gaiete, qui regnaient a ces It~gers repas du soir, leur donnaient un charme que les diners n'auront jamais plus" (1986: I, 82). It was at these soupers, Vigee concludes nostalgically, that Paris society showed itself superior to the rest of Europe.
