Michel de Montaigne at The Louvre, Paris

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This magnificent marble sculpture, showcased at the Salon in 1800 was skillfully crafted by Jean-Baptiste Stouf (born Paris, 1742 - Charenton-le-Point, 1826). Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (28 February 1533 – 13 September 1592) stands out as one of the most influential thinkers of the French Renaissance, renowned for popularizing the essay as a literary form. His work is distinguished by its fusion of casual anecdotes and autobiography with profound intellectual insight; his vast collection Essais (translated literally as "Attempts" or "Trials") contains some of the most groundbreaking essays ever written. Montaigne's ideas have had a direct impact on writers across the globe, including René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Albert Hirschman, William Hazlitt, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friedrich Nietzsche, Stefan Zweig, Eric Hoffer, Isaac Asimov, and possibly influenced the later works of William Shakespeare. In his own lifetime, Montaigne was admired more as a statesman than as an author. The tendency in his essays to meander into anecdotes and personal reflections was viewed by his contemporaries as detrimental to proper style rather than as an innovative approach, and his declaration that, 'I am myself the subject of my book', was seen as self-indulgent by those around him. However, over time Montaigne would come to be recognized as embodying the spirit of freely entertaining doubt which began to emerge at that time. He is most famously known for his skeptical remark, "Que sçay-je?" ("What do I know?", in Middle French; directly rendered Que sais-je? in modern French). Remarkably forward-thinking even to readers today, Montaigne's attempt to examine the world through the lens of his own judgment makes him more relatable to modern readers than any other author of the Renaissance. Much of modern literary non-fiction has drawn inspiration from Montaigne and writers of all kinds continue to read him for his masterful blend of intellectual knowledge and personal storytelling.