Jeanne Françoise Julie Adélaïde Récamier (; 3 December 1777 – 11 May 1849), known as Juliette (), was a French socialite whose salon drew people from the leading literary and political circles of early 19th-century Paris. An icon of neoclassicism, Récamier cultivated a public persona as a great beauty, and her fame quickly spread across Europe. She befriended many intellectuals, sat for the finest artists of the age, and spurned an offer of marriage from Prince Augustus of Prussia. Beautiful, accomplished, and possessing a love of literature, Récamier was described as shy and modest by nature.
Early marriage
At the age of fifteen, she was married on 24 April 1793 to Jacques-Rose Récamier (1751–1830), a banker nearly thirty years her senior and a relative of the gourmet Brillat-Savarin. In relaying the news to a friend of his impending marriage to Juliette, Jacques wrote:
thumb|250px|[[Portrait of Madame Récamier by Jacques-Louis David (1800, Louvre)]]
A rumour arose that her husband was, in fact, her natural father who married her to make her his heir. Their marriage occurred at the height of the revolutionary terror and, if he were guillotined, she would inherit his money. Although many biographers have given credence to this theory, it is unproven Curiously, however, Jacques once wrote to a friend that his relations with Madame Bernard may have been more than platonic:
The marriage was never consummated, and Récamier remained a virgin until at least the age of forty. A rumour was initiated by writer Prosper Mérimée that she suffered from a physical condition which made the act of sexual intercourse painful. There was a project for her divorce, in order that she might marry Prince Augustus of Prussia, but, though her husband was willing, it was not arranged. a 17th-century convent (demolished in 1907) situated at 16 rue de Sèvres in Paris, to which she retired in 1819.
Despite old age, ill-health, partial blindness, and reduced circumstances, Récamier never lost her attractiveness, though at least one man who met her, artist Guillaume Gavarni, opined that she "stank of the lower middle class." And although she numbered among her admirers Mathieu de Montmorency, Lucien Bonaparte, Prince Augustus of Prussia (whose marriage proposal she rejected), Pierre-Simon Ballanche, Jean-Jacques Ampère, and Benjamin Constant, none of them obtained over her so great an influence as did Chateaubriand, though she suffered much from his imperious temper. If she had any genuine affection, it seems to have been for the baron de Barante, whom she met at Coppet.
In 1849, Récamier died in Paris of cholera at the age of 71 and was buried in the Cimetière de Montmartre in Montmartre, at the time a village north of Paris.
Cultural legacy
thumb|[[Madame Récamier (1920 film)|Madame Récamier (1920)]]
A type of sofa or chaise longue on which she liked to recline, the récamier, was named after her.