Marie de Lorraine, Duchess of Guise

Marie
Duchess of Guise
Marie after a portrait by Pierre Mignard
Born	(1615-08-15)15 August 1615 Hôtel de Guise, Paris, France
Died	3 March 1688(1688-03-03) (aged 72) Hôtel de Guise, Paris, France
Full name Marie de Lorraine
House	House of Guise
Father	Charles de Lorraine
Mother	Henriette Catherine de Joyeuse

Marie de Lorraine (15 August 1615 – 3 March 1688) was the daughter of Charles de Lorraine, Duke of Guise and Henriette Catherine de Joyeuse and the last member of the House of Guise, a branch of the House of Lorraine.

Marie de Lorraine de Guise was a "foreign princess naturalized in France" (that is, the daughter of a foreign prince of a junior branch of the House of Lorraine). After the death of the last male of the House of Guise in 1675, Marie became duchess of Guise, duchess of Joyeuse, and princess of Joinville and enjoyed the vast revenues from these duchies and principalities. People addressed her formally as "Your Highness"; she herself signed legal documents as "Marie de Lorraine"; and after 1675, as "Marie de Lorraine de Guise," but she ended personal letters with, simply, "Guise."

Exiled to Florence with her family, 1634–43, Marie (whom the French knew as "Mademoiselle de Guise") became close to the Medicis and came to love Italy and especially Italian music. For over forty years scarcely a week passed that she did not write to her Medici friends in Florence, or receive word from them through the Tuscan resident in Paris. Circa 1650 she morganatically married Claude de Bourdeille, count of Montrésor by whom she had several children whose existence was never acknowledged publicly but whom she occasionally threatened to acknowledge if she did not get her way.

As guardian for her nephew, Louis Joseph, Duke of Guise, she was preoccupied with returning the House of Guise to its former glory. This meant giving the young man a fine residence and a prestigious bride. In 1666 Marie therefore commissioned Jacques Gabriel (the father of royal architect Jacques Gabriel) to carry out extensive renovations for the family's urban residence, known as the Hôtel de Guise. She also ordered a total reworking of the garden by the famous garden designer, André Le Nôtre. The old stable wing that stretched along the garden was also renovated and subdivided into comfortable apartments to be occupied by what might be likened to today's artists and intellectuals in residence: Philippe Goibaut, Roger de Gaignières, and, a bit later, Marc-Antoine Charpentier.