Montaigne's tower

Scholars have long noted that the tower's physical environment influenced Montaigne's writing; Montaigne himself elaborates on the importance of the library for his writing in the third essay of the third part of the Essays. Montaigne did not simply use the books in his library for inspiration, but he was also stimulated by the paintings and maxims painted all over its walls and ceilings, as shown by the usage in the Essays of citations drawn from the room's paintings. The extent and nature of this influence remains however difficult to ascertain: while early critics may have conjectured a stylistic correspondence between the proliferating decorations and Montaigne's exuberant writing,[6] more recent scholarship tends to insist on Montaigne's personal approach to the inspiration provided by the paintings and maxims surrounding him[7] or on the way its physical arrangement, "a structure based on comparison and contrast," reflects Montaigne's associative reading tendencies.".[8]

Forty-six of its forty-eight oak joists, as well as two supporting beams, were painted with Greek and Latin citations in Montaigne’s time. These inscriptions are still visible today, although some of them cover earlier inscriptions. Visitors in the eighteenth century noted the presence of maxims on the boards of the library as well as on its shelves, but these are today erased. A dedication of the entire library to Montaigne's friend Étienne de La Boétie is also lost, as is the cabinet which contained over a thousand books.[7]

The two load bearing beams bear eight inscriptions from skeptic authors, mostly from Sextus Empiricus. The forty-six joists, distributed on three rows, are inscribed with a total of sixty-seven sayings[5] taken in their majority from the Bible and from classic authors (including Horace, Lucretius, Menander, and Sophocles). Many of these are mentioned in the Essays, either verbatim, in translation, or in paraphrase. Alain Legros argues that the order in which Montaigne would have encountered the quotations while walking in the room is perceptibly influential on the structure of some essays, notably the "Apology for Raymond Sebond." Later authors such as Grace Norton, Pierre Villey, Michel Butor and George Hoffmann have also discussed these quotations.[7]

The library has been mentioned in travel accounts as early as from 1611, including one in English (John Sterling in 1836).[9]

The study, the only room in the tower to have a fireplace, contained most of the paintings commissioned by Montaigne. Painted a secco, they included "a landscape with Venus and Adonis, Mars and Venus surprised by Vulcan, Cimon suckled in prison by his daughter Pero, a shipwrecked sailor safely on shore beside a temple to Neptune, a figure with a lance before another temple, and a combat between soldiers (perhaps gladiators) in what might have been an amphitheater." Early accounts also report the presence of representations of the Judgment of Paris and of the burning of Troy, as well as a banquet scene, but these are not mentioned in accounts dating from the nineteenth century.[10] A still visible Latin inscription, dated from the year 1571, dedicates the room " à sa liberté, à sa tranquillité et à son loisir" ("to his [Montaigne's] freedom, to his tranquility, and to his leisure").[5]

Decorated in the ornamented style typical of French Mannerism style, the paintings and elaborate borders filled "every inch" of the available surface, including "ceiling beams, and ceiling." One of the central theme of the paintings gathered in the space seems to have been nudity, a question metaphorically at the heart of the writing project of the Essays.[11]