bulletin of the john rylandsuniversity libraryof manchester · areference that debae does not...

BULLETIN OF THE JOHN RYLANDS UNIVERSITYLIBRARY OF MANCHESTER

Volume 81, Number 3Autumn 1999

TEXT AND IMAGE: STUDIES IN THE FRENCHILLUSTRATED BOOK FROM THE MIDDLE AGES

TO THE PRESENT DAYGuest Editors: David J. Adams and Adrian Armstreng

CONTENTSIntroductionDavid J. Adams and Adrian Armstrang 3

Female figures in the illustrated manuscripts of Le conte duGraal and its Continuations: ladies, saints, spectators,mediators~~~~ 7The Grail in Rylands MS French 1 and its sister manuscriptsAlison Stones 55

Three illustrated ProseLancelots from the same atelierMartine Meuwese 97

A Parisian in New York: Pierpont Morgan LibraryMS M. 804 revisitedPeterAinsworth 127

Le Chevalier des dames du dolentfortune: image and text,manuscript and printJanell.M. Taywr 153

Printing and reading the Book of Hours: lessons from thebordersMary Beth Winn 177

Textual and IconographicalAmbivalence in the Late Medieval

Representation of WomenCYNTHIA J. BROWN

Department of French and Italian, University of California,Santa Barbara

In December 1491 Margaret of Austria, betrothed to Charles VIIIfrom a young age and raised at the French Court, was abruptlydisplaced by Anne of Brittany, who, as a result of politicalmachinations, unexpectedly married the French king. Thismanoeuvre, which exacerbated already-existing hostilities betweenFrance and the Austro-Burgundian dynasty, set the stage fora bitter, if distant, rivalry between two of the most importantwomen of rank in Continental Europe during the late medievalperiod.'Although adversaries on the political stage and even in the

literary arena, as evidenced by competition between theirrespective courts for the writer Jean Lemaire de Belges," a strikingnumber of similarities bound Anne of Brittany and Margaret ofAustria, whose political and cultural achievements set an impres-sive benchmark by which to measure the status of female authorityat the dawn of the Renaissance. Each was twice a foreign bridewith no surviving male children; each outlived at least one husbandand benefited from the independence that widowhood affordedmedieval women. Although traditional political pawns during theirearly years, when the men who ruled their lives were constantlyreshaping European alliances, Anne and Margaret gained prom-inence as autonomous female rulers: Anne controlled Brittany

I This antipathy eventually ended up in a showdown over the future of much of Europewhen Margaret's nephew, Charles V, whom she herself had raised following her brother'sdeath, was elected Emperor in 1519 over Francis I, king of France and husband of Anne'sdaughter, Claude.

2 For details, see Pierre Jodogne, Jean Lemaire de Beiges, ecrioain franco-bourguignon(Brussels: Palais des Academies, 1972), 113-15, 127-31, and Cynthia J. Brown, The shapingof history and poetry in late medieval France (Birmingham: Summa, 1985), 136-7, n. 54.

205

206 BUlLETIN JOHN RYLANDS UBRARY

from her father's death in 1488 until her own in 1514; Margaretserved as regent (1507-15) and then governor (1518-30) of theNetherlands almost continuously from 1507 until she died in1530. While Anne played a critical role in the negotiation of hermarriages to two successive French kings (Charles VIII, LouisXII), Margaret's direct involvement in negotiating the Treaty ofCambrai in 1508 and the so-called Paix des Dames in 1529provides evidence of her significant diplomatic influence. In a morefar-reaching manner than their husbands, who were less inclinedto support literature and the arts, Anne of Brittany and Margaretof Austria were also responsible for royal culture at the time overa considerable geographical area.My current research project explores the larger issues

surrounding female modes of empowerment in late-medievalEurope, by means of a comparative study of the images of Anneof Brittany and Margaret of Austria, of their models (includingAnne of Beaujeu, jeanne of Navarre, Margaret of York and Maryof Burgundy) and their successors (including Claude of France,Louise of Savoy and Mary of Hungary). 3 The cultural reconstruc-tion of Anne and Margaret that I propose is based in large measureon the books that defined them: those for and about them, thosecommissioned by them, those they inherited and received as gifts.!In the belief that such books are virtual repositories of latemedieval image-making in both verbal and visual terms, I consider

, While much research has been carried out recently on female power in the Middle Ages,particularly from the perspective of women's roles as patrons, such works have focused onearlier centuries, on English women of rank, and on religious figures. See, for example, Thecultural patronage of medieval women, ed. June McCash (Athens: University of Georgia Press,1996); Women's lives in medieval Europe, ed. Emilie Amt (New York: Routledge, 1993);Women and sovereignty, ed. Louise Fradenburg (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press1992); Women and power in the Middle Ages, eds Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleshl(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988); Joan Ferrante, Woman as image in medievalliterature from the twelfth century to Dante (New York: Columbia University, 1985). Moreoften than not these studies constitute edited volumes of significant scholarly contributionsbut they do not form a coherent, theoretical whole. With the exception of work by ElizabethMcCartney such as 'Ceremonies and privileges of office: queenship in late medieval France',Power of the weak: studies of medieval women, eds Jennifer Carpenter and Sally Beth MacLean(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 178-219, surprisingly little recent research hastaken account of French female sovereignty in the late medieval period; even less attentionhas been given to related questions in the Netherlands. Figures like Margaret and Annehave been examined through the histories of their respective countries, but never togetherin the broader context of female sovereignty.

4 Recent works such as the edited volumes of Jane Taylor and Lesley Smith (Women,the book and the godly (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Brewer, 1993); Women, the book and the worldly(Cambridge: Brewer, 1995); Women and the book: assessing the visual evidence (London: TheBritish Library, 1997», have begun to offer more than a bibliographical study of the centralrole of books in the lives of medieval women. Their latest volume in particular promotesthe multidisciplinary study of text-image relationships. See also Patricia Stimemann,'Women and books in France: 1170-1220', Representations of the feminine in the middle ages,ed, Bonnie Wheeler (Dallas: Academia, 1993), 247-52, and Anne-Marie Legars,'Reassessing women's libraries in late medieval France: the· case of Ieanne de Lavai',Renaissance Studies, 10Gune 1996),209-36.

TEXTUAL AND ICONOGRAPHICAL AMBIVALENCE 207

the manuscripts, often elaborately decorated, and early printedbooks making up the libraries of Anne of Brittany and Margaretof Austria as cultural artifacts that embody signs of contemporarytensions - between book producers, authors, book owners,readers, and society in general _,5 and that provide insight intohow women's roles as political strategists and cultural figures weretranslated by and for those in their entourage and the world atlarge."A study of the production of books can shed new light on the

imagery of women of power by providing answers to questionsabout how, why and by whom works were conceived andassembled for a designated audience. Moreover, the imagesthemselves contained in these late medieval books constitutecomplex representations which, as cultural constructions of theartists who made them, may have in turn been constructors of theworlds they ostensibly represented, as Jane Taylor and LesleySmith, among others, maintain." Furthermore, an understandingof the relationship between text and image in these volumes andof the emblems, symbols, allegories, and other visual and verbalsigns that figure centrally therein is crucial to a discussion of theimagery of late medieval female sovereignty. Here, the recent workof Brigitte Buettner, who has studied systems of signification in aFrench manuscript translation of Boccaccio's Des cleres et noblesfemmes,8 is pertinent, for she discusses how images both providethe text with a concrete reality and recompose, reshape, andrework it through complicated and sometimes contradictoryrepresentations. By taking into account the manner in which theiconographic representation of females in books making up thelibraries of late medieval women of power both interfaced with andcontested the historical, literary and cultural documents theydecorated, my analysis aims to uncover the potential conflict thatsurfaces in male-authored, male-illustrated works for and aboutwomen. My study of the choice, orientation and design of imagesin these works, whether textual, visual, or an association of therwo, likewise reveals an ambivalence about the male representationof women of power in late medieval Europe.In this present discussion, I will compare the images of Anne of

Brittany, Margaret of Austria and the women (and men) associated

, See my development of this theory in Poets, patrons, and printers: crisis of authority inlate medieval France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995).

6 For details on Anne of Brittany's library, see Michael Jones, The creation of Brittany: alate medieval state (London: Hambledon, 1988),371-409. Marguerite Debae has publishedthe most exhaustive study of Margaret of Austria's library, La bibliotheque de Marguen'red'Autriche (Louvain-Paris: Peeters, 1995).

7 Women and the book, 16.8 See her Boccaccio's 'Des cleres et noblesfemmes': systems of signification in an illuminated

manuscript (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996).

208 BULLETIN JOHN RYlANDS UBRARY

with them in two manuscript books that figured in their respectivelibraries: Antoine Dufour's Vie desfemmes celebres,penned in 1504and illuminated in 1506 for Anne of Brittany," and MicheIeRiccio's Changement de Fortune en toute prosperite, dedicated toMargaret of Austria between late 1504 and early 1507.10 Theseworks date from a period that was marked, on the one hand, by areconfirmation of the status quo for Anne, with her secondcoronation as queen of France in November 1504 (six years afterher second marriage, to Louis XII), and on the other, by asignificant transition for Margaret. The death in September 1504of Margaret's third husband, Philibert of Savoy (an event discussedby Riccio in his writing), completely undermined the Emperor

9 Currently housed as MS XVII in the Musee Dobree in Nantes, this manuscript wasedited by G. Jeanneau in 1970 (Geneva: Droz), All subsequent references will be taken'from this edition. See Thomas Dobree 1810-1895: un komme, un musee, eds Claire AptelNathalie Biotteau, Marie Richard, and Jacques Santrot (Somogy: Editions d'Art, 1997)'167-8, and Franccis Avril and Nicole Reynaud, Les manuscrits a peintures en France 144~1520 (Paris: Flammarion - Bibliothi:que Nationale, 1993),415, for funher details aboutits dates of composition and decoration.

10 Presently catalogued in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek as MS 2625, thismanuscript was, according to Debae (509-10), written between 1507 and 1509, becauseMargaret is supposedly described in the work as regent of the Netherlands, a position shecame to occupy in 1507, and Henry VII of England, who is mentioned in the text, didnot die until 1509. However, in their introduction to an edition of the work ('Le changementde Fortune en toute prosperitJ de Michel Riz', Humanisme et Renaissance, iv (1937), 351-65a reference that Debae does not cite), Marcel Franeon and Pierre D'Herbecourt claim thatMicheie Riccio penned the work between 25 September 1506, the death of Margaret'sbrother Philip the Handsome, and January 1507, when Riccio resigned as the king'scounsellor to the Parisian Parlernent, a position he held from 3 June 1504 and one he claimsto hold on the first folio of MS 2625 (353-7). The terminus ante quem proposed by Franconand D'Herbecourt is thus more convincing than that proposed by Debae. But I do not agreewith these scholars' suggested terminus post quem. Franeon and D'Herbecourr claimconvincingly that Riccio, closely allied with the House of France, would probably not havededicated a work to Margaret at a time when relations between King Louis XlI and theHouse of Austria were strained. Therefore, they focus on the short period following thedeath of Philip the Handsome, because interactions between the two Houses were relativelypeaceful at that time. However, the absence of any reference to Philip the Handsome'sdeath in the Changement de Fortune is glaring. In fact, a rather ambiguous passage, one thatmay have been misunderstood by Debae when dating the Changement de Fortune, refers bothto Margaret's 'gouvernement' of Flanders upon her return from Spain (and before hermarriage to Philibert of Savoy) and her brother's approval of this situation, suggesting hewas still alive (319): 'Et, sy tost que fut arrivee en Flandres, eult le gouvernement de toutau contentement de mondict Seigneur son frere et tous les subgectz.' While the meaningof this passage is not entirely clear - did Margaret come to govern Flanders earlier thanpreviously thought? - this passage does not refer to Margaret's assumption of thegovernorship of Flanders in 1507, for it would contradict the narrator's chronologicalpresentation of events. Moreover, it is very difficult to accept that Riccio would have failedto mention the death of Margaret's brother among the tragedies that beset her during herlife, had he already died. I, therefore, believe that the work was written before 25 September1506, although it could not have been written before the death of Philibert of Savoy (IOSeptember 1504), which Riccio does mention. This earlier date happens to coincide withthe first treaty of Blois negotiated among Maximilian, Louis XII and Philip the Handsome.It is entirely possible that Riccio composed the work before Philip the Handsome's deathbut did not dedicate it to Margaret until after that event. A copy of ONB MS 2625, BNFMS fr. 14940, was apparently made around 1540 (Debae, 511-12). An edition of theChangement de Fonune by Marcel Franeon and Ghislaine Oe Boom appears in Humanismeet Renaissance, v (1935), 307-29, from which all subsequent references will be taken.

TEXTUALAND ICONOGRAPHICAL AMBIVALENCE 209

Maximilian's efforts to place his twenty-four-year-old daughter ina position of European prominence. Ultimately, however, thistragic event helped launch her political career, and by doing so,signalled the different political paths Anne and Margaret wouldtake from that point in time. But during the period 1504-06, whenthese two works were written, the contrast between Anne's morestable situation and the uncertainty of Margaret's was significant,and this disparity surfaces through a comparison of the textual andvisual imagery in each of these dedicatory volumes.Although Dufour and Riccio created their compositions for and

about women with somewhat different goals in mind and relied ondifferent, albeit interrelated, traditions, the underlying didactic andepideictic nature of the two writings was similar. Dufour's Vie desfemmes celebres, drawing inspiration from Boccacio's De elarismulieribus, among other works, implicitly glorified Anne of Brittanythrough the ninety-one biographies of famous women fromantiquity, mythology, the Bible, and medieval history that she hadcommissioned.11 Like many of Antoine Dufour's famous women,a number of the references in Riccio's manuscript book areinspired by Boccaccio. Riccio, however, who initiated thededication of his work to the dowager duchess of Savoy,constructed a fictional setting that focused on the fateful personallife story of Margaret herself, who had, in the course of her twenty-four years, lost a mother, three husbands, and a child. Throughhis words, borrowed from treatments of the theme of Fortune asthey had appeared in earlier classical and medieval sources,including those of Valerius Maximus (Factorum et Dictorummemorabilium) and Boccacio (De casibus virorum illustrium),12Margaret is presented as an exemplary model for contemporaryreaders of the Changement de Fortune, much like the numerousfemale exempla of Dufour's Vie des femmes celebres. In each case,artists provided visual interpretations of the famous women inquestion, and, as was often characteristic of manuscripts dedicatedto nobles of high rank, images abound in both works: eighty-oneminiatures painted by the Parisian artist Jean Piehore illustratealmost all of the biographies featured in Dufour's manuscript ofseventy-six leaves; eleven exquisite images painted by the so-called

JI See Jeanneau, xxxvi-xxxvii. For a discussion of Dufour's other sources and hisuncritical use of them, see xxxix-xliv.

12 Franeon and D'Herbecourt, 358-60. See also Debae and Jones for details about theseand other sources that were housed in the private royal libraries of both Margaret and Anne.Anne owned a special dedication copy of Verard's 1493 edition of the French translationof Boccaccio's Nobles et cleres dames. For details, see Mary Beth Winn, Anthoine Verard,Parisian publisher, 1485-1512: prologues, poems and presentations (Geneva: Droz, 1997), 114-16. Margaret's copy of the same French version is not mentioned before her 1516 inventoryof books (Debae, 303). Christine de Pizan's Mutacion de Fortune (whose title resembles thatof Riccio's work) and Cite des dames, both imponant precursors of these works, do notappear to have served as models.


Master of the Chronique scandaleuse decorate the manuscript ofthirty-eight leaves dedicated to Margaret.'?These two works offer insight into conceptions about women in

late medieval Europe and the manner in which the intendedportrayal of two females of rank by authorized male voices mighthave underpinned - or contested - contemporary realities.Indeed, inherent contradictions that surface in each work betweenthe ostensible glorification of women and the literary and artisticmeans adopted toward that end suggest the existence of underlyingtensions in male creations of works for and about women.v' WhileDufour's Vie des femmes celebres offers a rather traditional and moremoralistic depiction of women, based as it is on a. familiar late-medieval paradigm that presented female models of virtue (and ofvice in some cases) from the past, it nevertheless imparts a certainambivalence about that particular status quo through the shiftingpositions explicitly and implicitly taken by the author vis-a-vis hispatron and some of his female models. The Vienna manuscript ofMicheie Riccio's Changement de Fortune en taute prospirite offersevidence not only of the manner in which the disparaterelationship between text and image undermined and redefinedconventional male-female relationships, but also - and moreprovocatively - of the stunning alteration of the literal andmetaphoric shape of female characters in the translation fromverbal to visual expression.The iconography associated with Anne of Brittany in Antoine

Dufour's Vie des femmes celebres is, at first glance, completelyfemale-centred. Despite the fact that the French queen is nowhereexplicitly lauded through words, the opening dedicatory miniatureprominently presents Anne in her roles as patron and future readerof the book (Fig. 1). In a scene in the left background, the queencommissions from Antoine Dufour the Vie des femmes celebres,which she receives from the author on bended knee in the rightforeground scene." Anne's active involvement in the making,reading, and dissemination of the Vie des femmes celebres isunderscored verbally as well, for in the prologue that begins belowthe dedication scene, Dufour confirms that she requested him towrite these 'hystoires anciennes, loyales et veritables' in the mother

" Avril (see n. 9) was the first to identify Jean Piehore as the illuminator of the Vie desfemmes celebresmanuscript. See Debae, 511, for details about the Master of the Chroniquescandaleuse .

•f In Virtue and venom: catalogs of women from antiquity to the Renaissance (Ann Arbor:University of Michigan Press, 1991), a study of catalogues as an expression or critique ofcultural attitudes toward women, Glenda McLeod claims: 'Catalogs can [... ] not onlyilluminate the stubborn persistence of Western misogyny but also reveal struggles anddoubts about this line of thought' (3) .

•, I do not completely agree with Jeanneau's interpretation of the two scenes in thisimage, which he bases on G. Durville's assessment (lvii-lix),


Figure 1Dedication miniature, Vie desfemmes celebres,Nantes, Musee Dobree, MS XVII, fo. I'(Cl. Ch. Hemon, Musee Dobree, Names)


tongue, most noble French ladies being unable to read Latin, forthe purpose of overcoming idleness:

Et considere que la plupart des nobles dames de France ne entendent le langagelatin, et congnoissant l'abisme et comble de vertus estre en treshaultetrespuissante et tresxcellente dame et princes se ma dame Anne de Bretaigne'royne de France et duchesse de Bretaigne, je frere Anthoine Dufour, docteur e~theologie, de l'ordre des Freres Prescheurs, general inquisiteur de la foy, par lecommandement d'icelle, pour matter oysivete, ay bien voulu translater ce presentlivre en maternd langage, en y prenant les hystoires anciennes, loyales etveritables, pour brider la langue de ceuIx qui ne ont veu ny leu que fables etmensonges (1-2).

These remarks reveal that Anne of Brittany's motivation for thiscommission was at once of a virtuous and generous nature. Thisso-called 'Mirror of Ladies?" was not only designed for her moralimprovement, but, since she apparently knew Latin.!? was alsodestined for a wider female court public, perhaps the very onerepresented by the ladies seen at the queen's side in this and othersimilar dedication miniatures. IS In keeping with Christine dePizan's own recommendations in her Tresor de la Cite des Dames,a printed copy of which she owned," Anne of Brittany activelysought, through this commission, to influence the court culture ofwomen by providing past models of female action.Whereas the conception and reception of Dufour's Vie desfemmes

celebres are visually staged in the dedication miniature, with thequeen depicted as the central figure in these transactions, theprologue verbally prepares the reader's state of mind byannouncing the very defensive role to be taken by the author.Dufour categorically sets his work apart from others on the subject,particularly that of Boccaccio, who, he claims, arbitrarily blamed

16 In the text, Dufour makes numerous references to a mirror, such as Dido's story,advertised as "ung beau mirouer pour les chastes veufves chrestiennes' (54), Amalasonte'slife, described as 'I'exemple de vertuz, mirouer d'honnestete, reigle de justice et equite'(146), and Blesilla herself, seen as 'le mirouer et exemple de toutes les vierges, mariees etjeunes vefves' (130). See also his references to some women being included in the 'cataloguedes dames d'honneur' (l09) and others being 'cathalogueejs] au nombre des vertueuses'(117). Dufour also celebrates his own work in similar terms when he says: 'Les philosophesn'ont trouve que les sept sages d'Athenes, mais lisez ce livre: vous en trouverez plus detrente dignes de pareilles ou plus grandes louenges' (149).

17 Jeanneau, ix.11 See the dedication miniature in the manuscript copy of the Vlryage de Genes that Jean

Marot wrote and offered to Anne of Brittany around 1507 (BNF, MS fr. 5091, fo. 1') andthat of the Epistre composee en latin [. ..] et translaue [...] en francoys (St. Petersburg, StateM. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin Public Library, MS Fr. F. v. XIV, 8, fo. 1'), for another exampleof an image of Anne and her female entourage. See also n. 42. For details about the womenat Anne's court, see Jeanneau, xxiii,

19 For details about Anne of Brittany's copy of Christine de Pizan's Tresor de la Cite desdames, see Otto Pächt and Dagmar Thoss, Die illuminierten Handschriften der ÖsterreichischenNationalbibliothek: Französische Schule II (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie derWissenschaften, 1977), I, 175-6, and Mary Beth Winn, 'Treasures for the queen: Annede Bretagne's books from Anthoine Verard', Bibliotheque d'Humanisme et Renaissance, lviii(1997),669-76.


women. The author asserts that his writing is based instead on awise, loyal, and truthful assessment of them:

Pour ce que la plus commune partie des hommes se adonnent a blasmer lesdames, tant de langue que de plume, et en ont compose des livres, commeBocasse, Theophraste et ung tas d'aultres, j'ay bien voulu cereher par lesanciennes librairies a edle fin de trouver aucun veritable acteur qui sagement,loyallement et veritablement parlast d'elles (1).

Echoing perhaps the ideas Symphorien Champier promoted in hisNe! des dames vertueuses of 1503, 20 Dufour goes so far as toattribute any evil done by women presented in his work to the badcounsel of men around them: 'Et croy que, si les dames ont faitquelque mal, s'a este plus pour l'instruction d'aulcuns maulvaishommes qui par aventure les admonestoient a pis faire, ainsi quevous voirrez et orrez en ce present livre' (2). In the prologue, then,the author's posture is very defensive of women in general andpresumably of his benefactor in particular. However, this attitudemay well reflect the thinking of Dufour's benefactor or at least theperspective adopted by a male author conscious of his patron'sinterest in women of the past, especially since later contradictionsundermine the seriousness of his assertions here. Moreover, exceptfor his reference to the 'abisme et comble de vertus' found in thequeen (1), Dufour never explicitly extols Anne of Brittany, praisingher only implicitly when he claims that since the creation of theworld no greater number of 'good and wise ladies' can be foundthan at the present time: 'Car, a la verite, il me semble que, depuysla creation du monde, l'on ne trouva ung si grant nombre debonnes et sages dames que aujourd'huy de ce temps, l'an mil cinqcens et quatre' (1). His rather reserved manner of addressing Anneof Brittany contrasts sharply with the overly effusive dedicationsthat typically introduced dedicated volumes at the time." Whileit would have been inappropriate for Anne to commission a workdevoted to her own glory, it is also striking that Dufour did notcapitalize on the obvious opportunity to pay extensive tribute tothe French queen, confirming, perhaps, that he was not dependenton her patronage for his livelihood."

20 Jeanneau suggests that Dufour may have borrowed the ideas he presents in his prologuefrom the prologue that prefaces Anthoine Verard's 1493 French translation of Boccaccio'sNobles et cleres dames (174, n. 1), which he reproduces in his edition (174-7). It is just aslikely that Dufour was influenced by the ideas in Symphoricn Champier's prologue to hisNe! des dames oertueuses, which Jeanneau also reproduces (178-82).

21 See, for example, the dedication to Anne that introduces the French translation ofBoccaccio's Nobles et cleres dames published in 1493 by Anthoine Verard (Jeanneau, 174-7). Although the translator who wrote this prologue, or Verard, may have been seekingAnne's patronage, in contrast to Dufour, who was commissioned by her to write the book,the sycophantic tone of the translator's introduction is in fact more typical than that ofDufour's prologue.

22 For details on Antoine Dufour's background, see Jcanneau, xix-xxi,

214 BUllETIN JOHN RYlANDS UBRARY

Anne's royal presence in the opening miniature of the Vie desfemmes celebres and Dufour's indirect praise of her through hiscelebration of contemporary women are, nonetheless, reinforcedfor the careful reader by the associations made between hisdedicatee and the models he offers her in his book.P Like thevisual depiction of the queen, a number of famous women arevisually enthroned as a sign of their power as political leaders ofone kind or another. They include Niobe, Claudia, Faustina ,Theodolinda, and the figure closest to Anne of Brittany's ownposition, Joanna, queen of Naples and Sicily in the fourteenthcentury (168) (Fig. 2).like Anne, many of the women celebrated by Dufour are visually

or verbally associated with book culture as well, such as Sappho(59-60) (Fig. 3) or Nicostrata, the supposed inventor of letters(45). Saint Helen seeks out books to avoid idleness, like Anne(122). And Mammea's library and her motivation for establishingit doubtless recall Anne's: 'Elle fist rediger par escript toutes leshystoires anciennes vrayes et avoit son cabinet de son tresor etl'autre de ses livres a part, et singulierement ceulx que Origeneset aultres hystoriographes par son commandement avoyenttranslatez' (128). Dufour's attribution of a voice to Mammeastands out, because of her political astuteness regarding theprestige conveyed by booksr" 'J'ayme mieulx mes petitz cayers quemon tresor, car a perpetuite ilz parleront de moy, et I'autre,comme chose insensible, de mains en mains sera aliene' (129).Mammea's preference for her library over her material wealth,because her name would not be lost through her books as it mightbe through her riches, underscores her consciousness - andpresumably that of Dufour, Anne and her entourage - of thefunction of books as instruments of image-making andempowerment. In a mise en abyme of the very production anddissemination of the Vie des femmes celebres, Zenobia is lauded forbeing the first to have written down a history of wise and virtuouswomen (119),25 whereas Lucretia's verbal depiction as a femalelistening to the reading of a book about wise and virtuous women('oyant la lecture des sages et vertueuses dames, que luy lisoit unede ses femmes de chambre' (65)) anticipates the experience of

n See also Jeanneau, xliv, lii, who likewise interprets Dufour's praise of the political skilland culture of several famous women as a way to praise Anne of Brittany indirectly.

24 Through the use of direct discourse, Dufour gives voice to some thirty-six other womenin the Vie des femmes celebres.

z, 'Ce fut elle [Zenobia] qui trouva la facon de mettre par hystoire les sages et vertueusesdames, disant que femme de cueur ne peult estre sans grant et bon serviteur, tant aux lettresque aux armes, et que les hommes par leurs faulces escriptures avoyent ainsi brouille lepapier des dames' (119-20).


Figure :zJoanna, Queen of Naples and Sicily, Vie desfemmes celebres,Nantes, Musee

Dobree, MS XVII, fo. 75'(CL Ch. Hemon, Musee Dobree, Names)

216 BUlLETIN JOHN RYLANDS liBRARY

Figure 3Sappho, Vie desfemmes celebres,Nantes, Musee Dobree, MS XVII, fo. 28"

(Cl. Ch. Hemon, Musee Dobree, Names)

Anne of Brittany herself upon receiving Dufour's dedication copyof his Vie des femmes celebres. 26Indeed, Anne's visual and verbal placement on centre stage as a

sovereign reigning over the women of her court and controlling thebook production process serves to associate her thematically withnearly one third of the ninety-one portraits that follow, therebyproviding a coherent framework for the stories of famous womenwhich, although presented chronologically, are otherwise

26 Other female models associated with book culture in this text include Albunea,Hortensia, Blesilla, Penthesilea, Battista Malatesta, Proba, Cornificia, Erythraea, Amalthea,and Theodolinda,


juxtaposed without connection." Dufour's choice of past modelsmay, then, have been determined to a large degree by the veryprofile of his patron.Although Dufour appears in an appropriately self-effacing

posture in the opening miniature of the Vie des femmes celebres, histextual voice is in fact quite interventionist, as he presents hisfamous women from a moralistic perspective. This can beexplained in part because his work, like Boccaccio's, treats bothvirtuous and infamous women. As might be expected of aDominican friar, the author clearly distinguishes the positive fromthe negative exempla for his readers, promoting in particularChristian heroines as models of virtue" and positioning the Virginfirst in his portrait gallery as the highest example of femininevirtue.Artist and author concur in devoting the most attention to Mary

through an elaborate series of exquisitely painted scenessurrounding the Annunciation" and a lengthy narrative - by farthe longest in the book - about the Virgin's life. She provides themeasure for all the biographies that follow. At the opposite end ofthe spectrum are stories such as that of Medea, whose heinouscrimes repel Dufour as he struggles to narrate her biography, evenas a negative exemplum: '11me fasche bien de parler de ceste cy,pour la reverence des bonnes, mais pour enseigner les simplettesdu dangier de cest inconvenient, au plus brief je en diray ce qu'ilm' en semble [...] Je me vouldroys voluntiers taire, mais il m'estdu tout difficile' (38-9). This example typifies how intrusiveDufour's first-person voice actually is, as it inserts itself repeatedlyin over a quarter of his narratives, sometimes even vying with thespeaking voice of his 'femme celebre.' What gains the author'sstrongest endorsement in the end are those women who remainedvirgins or those widows who strived, often against great odds, toremain chaste and faithful to their deceased husbands by refusingto remarry.30 Dufour's praise centres, for example, on Diana'savowed chastity (34), Hippone's decision to drown herself ratherthan be raped (68-9), Dido's undying loyalty (52-4),31 Sarah'sdevotion as wife (18-23), the purity of Marcia (77-8), who, as anartist, refused to paint nude women, and Pauline's chaste lifefollowing the death of her husband. Anne's decision to remarry

27 See Jeanneau, xxxvi, who claims the biographies are 'justaposees sans autre ordre quel'ordre chronologique, quand it s'agit d'heroines ayant appartenu a I'histoire.'

28 Such as Azella, Paula, and Galla Placidia. See also Dufour's remarks about Diana,for example, who, he claims, deserved great praise, except for the fact that she was a pagan

(3~For a reproduction of this image, see Pächt and Thoss, 1I, Fig. 35.30 Dufour thereby invokes a central idea of Jerome's Adversus Jovinianum that reappeared

in medieval catalogues of women (see McLeod, 36, 64)." Like a good Catholic, however, Dufour denounces her suicide. Other suicides

denounced include Diana's (34) and Lucretia's (64-6).

218 BUlLETIN JOHN RYLANDS UBRARY

only months after the death of her first husband, Charles VIII,does not fit, then, into Dufour's paradigm."The author's aggressive defence of women in his prologue is,

therefore, decidedly tempered by his conservative interjections, ashe promotes traditional values and roles for women. In fact, theunderlying misogynist tone that sometimes surfaces in Dufour'scomments belies his attribution of women's evils to men, earlierprofessed in the prologue.P For example, Emilia's sacrifice ofoverlooking the blatant infidelities of her husband Scipio andsponsorship of Scipio's mistress following his death earn Dufour'sadulation, which assumes even greater authority through itsjuxtaposition with his derision of most other women: 'Posetoutesfoys que la pluspart des femmes soyent suspicionneusessingulierernent quand il est question de la perte du droit qU'i1~doyvent avoir de leurs mariz, ceste cy, par discretion, se monstragentille [... ] ce que ne feroyent beaucoup de femmes' (82). Inanother biography, Dufour denounces Sabina Poppaea'slasciviousness as the common vice of women and her use of femaleways, or 'modes fernenines' (103) to deceive: 'Et pour sonindiscible beaulte, par dehors honneste estoit, ingenieuse, caulteet secreternent malicieuse, tresmeschante par le de dens et plainede lacivite, qui est le commun vice des femmes [... ]' (102). Inthese examples, Dufour's essentialist position about the female sex,which is not surprising given his religious grounding and theliterary traditions from which he borrowed, nonethelessundermines yet again the claim in his prologue about men beingto blame for women's sins. In the end, Dufour assumes the verysame posture as Boccaccio, whom he had criticized in hisintroduction. Is Dufour unconsciously hypocritical at these pointsin the text, while striving to please and appease his patron andaudience in his prologue? In the final analysis, he is generally less'innovative' than Christine de Pizan in her rewriting of thetraditional representation of women in her Cite des dames." and acomparison of the two works uncovers the very different aims ofthe respective female and male narrators. However, Dufour's shiftfrom the traditional focus of a number of stories is worth noting,especially since it is precisely at the intersection of word and imagethat these more unusual renditions are the most striking.

32 Nevertheless, as Jeanneau points out (97, n. 205), Dufour implicitly justifies Anne'saction if it was undertaken for the good of the state, when he states in his biography ofAntonia: 'oncques ne voullut prendre party ny se marier, disant que secondes nopces sontsuspectes, si ce n'est pour la conservacion de la chose publicque' (97).

33 Jeanneau points this out as well (liii).,. See, for example, McLeod, 111-37; Kevin Brownlee, 'Christine de Pizan's canonical

authors: the special case of Boccaccio', Comparative Literature Studies, 32 (1995), 135-52;Patricia Phillippy, 'Establishing authority: Boccaccio's De claris mulieribus and Christine dePizan's Le liore de la cite des dames', Romanic Review, 77 (1986), 167-93; and MaureenQuilligan, The allegoryof female authority: Christine de Pizan's 'Cire des dames' (Ithaca: CorneUUniversity Press, 1991).


The images painted by Jean Piehore in Anne of Brittany's copyof the Vie des femmes celebres tend to follow closely Dufour's textualrepresentations, suggesting that he was either familiar with the textor had been given very specific instructions about the visualtranslation of text to image. For example, Piehore does not offerthe conventional image of Lucretia's death - presumably becauseof Dufour's voiced criticism of suicide -, but portrays instead themoment at which Lucretia's attacker assails her, thereby focusingon the male perpetrator of evil (fo. 31r). 35 Ignoring another well-established iconographical tradition, while remaining faithful to thetext, Piehore presents Eve in the throes of childbirth, as Adamworriedly looks on, instead of in her more traditional role, that ofprecipitating the Fall (fo. 8r) (Fig. 4).36This unusual interpretation foreshadows another seemingly less

conventional dimension of the Vie des femmes celebres, the author'sglorification of women's courage, physical vigor and endurance,especially their military prowess, which implicitly evokes anandrogynous image of the ideal woman. In a significant numberof cases Dufour compares women to men in very favourable terms,most often portraying them as superior to them. Zenobia, forexample, is described as 'ingenieuse comme Aristote, prudentecomme Senecque, taciturne comme Segond le philosophe,eloquente plus que Dernosthenes, sage autant ou plus que Bias,Solon et Thales Milesius, puissante aux armes autant que nul despreux' (118).37Indeed, the most repeated visual image of women in the Vie des

femmes celebres is that of the armoured combatant, for whomDufour often expresses enormous admiration. Dufour nevercondemns women for cross-dressing, because, in point of fact, they

" See n. 31 above. It is worth noting that the artist portrays' Cleopatra, a negativeexemplum, committing suicide (fo. 42,), while the suicide of Lucretia, who is promoted asa positive example of female virtue, is not depicted visually.

36 In describing Eve's sin, Dufour surprisingly downplays the moment of the Fall, makingno moral judgment about it whatsoever: 'Ce fut la mere des premiers malheureux et baniz,laquelle, par curiosite, de son mary se separant, trouva le serpent enveloppe de l'ennemyde nature, qui luy fist taster du goust dont le jus nous est et sera tousjours amer' (17).He, like Pichore, focuses instead on the positive relationship between Adam and Eve: 'Quivouldroit raconter la contenance que tenoit Adam, quant elle fut au travail du premierenfant? Car il n'y avait point de sages femmes. Et si croy que sa douleur, sans mourir, touteaultre passa. En paix et en amour, en une grande prudence, regna avec son mary Adam etses enfans, excepte que jamais ne povoit oublier le meurtre de son filz Abe!' (18).

37 Irene surpassed her father in the art of painting (77); Hortensia 'parla si ingenieuse-ment que chascun disoit que c'estoit son feu pere Hortence ressuscite' (91). Comificia, asinventor of epigrams, elicits this praise: '0 le grant honneur que c'est aux dames de avoirtrOuve !'invention de ce que a grant paine les sages hommes pevent suyvre!' (91). Mariamne'Iaissa toute contenance femenine et fist ce que bien peu de chevaliers en pareil cas neeussent sceu faire [...] receut le coup de la mort aussi hardiment que oncques homme oufemme fist devant elle' (95-6). Triaria 'oubliant son sexe et fragilite, excecuta ce que bienpeu d'hommes oseroyent entreprendre' (108); Blesilla is described as 'ung vray Orneretouchant la grecque, un raby Salomon a l'interpretation de l'ebraicque' (130). See alsoAlbunea, Proba, Trianaria, Hypsicrathea, and Maria Putheolina.

220 BULLETIN JOHN RYLANDS UBRARY

Figure 4Eve, Vie des femmes celebres, Nantes, Musee Dobree, MS XVII, fo: Sr

(Cl. Ch. Hemon, Musee Dobree, Names)


usually dressed like men for the most respectable of reasons - toremain chaste, join their loved ones, or enter into religion." Mariaputheolina, for example, a contemporary of Petrarch, elicits thefollowing words from Robert, king of Sicily: 'Nous sommes enmerveileux temps la ou il fault qu'une femme en touz faitzcertamineux passe les hommes' (158). This female model is oneof the many portrayed in military gear.Piehore, however, in his miniatures, avoids any excessive display

of female superiority over men and, of course, any suggestion ofandrogyny. Twelve of the women Dufour invokes for their militaryexpertise are painted by Piehore with armour and/or arms,although five others who achieved celebrity in similar fashion arenot thus depicted." It is likely that there was little resistance tothe portrayal of many of these women in military gear, because thiswas a conventional iconographic feature of the virtues. BothSemiramis and Minerva (Fig. 5), for example, look strikingly likethe cardinal virtues in other contemporary depictions (see, forexample, Fig. 9). That is, the highly stylized scene in which theseand other figures are depicted rather passively in their armourrecalls the traditional medieval iconography of personifiedvirtues.:" The fact that all of these examples belonged to thehistoric or mythic past created perhaps a convenient culturaldistance from contemporary female readers.Indeed, although the verbal image of the female warrior had a

certain contemporary currency, as we see in one of the Epistres,written in Anne of Brittany's own voice and translated by courtpoets around 1509, the armoured women are absent from relatedimages. Although Anne did not pen the words uttered by hernamesake in the first epistle of this collection, Publio FaustoAndrelini adopted the female-warrior image based on the

,. Semiramis, Queen of the Assyrians, 'si ressembloit du tout a son filz, et, pource qu'elles~avoit qu'il n'estoit fait aux armes, elle se armoit de toutes pieces, faignant estre luy, donttenoit les gens d'armes en une crainte, car nul aux armes ne la passoit' (23). Hypsicrathea'mua ses habillemens et coupa ses cheveulx [...] se armant de toutes pieces, affin de n'estreplus priee ne solicitee [...] faignoit estre chevalier de Pompee' (85). Euphrosine 'print I'habitd'ung jeune gars, gaignant estre heunucque et en une abbaye se fist faire religieux [...] queI'on cuidoit homme' (134). Irene 'en habit dissirnule, le [her enemy son] print et tint sonprisonnier I'espace de cinq ans, a la grant joye du peuple rommain et de tous les gentilzhommes et populaires, qui la tenoyent en grant et merveilleux estime' (150). Mariaputheolina, 'toute dediee a des choses grandes et honnestes, evitant toutes modesfeminines', is described in the following terms: 'Onques ne but de vin, bien peu dormoit,incessaument se exercoit a choses ardues et belIiqueuses. A la course nul ne la passoit, ala lutte tous deffioit, a I'arc, a l'espee et a la lance tous aultres surmontoit, tellement quejamais I'on ne la povoit lasser' (157).

39 The females painted with armour and/or arms include Semiramis, Minerva, Marpaisa,Deborah, Orithea, Argia, Penthesilea, Thamaris, Ipsicretha, Zenobia, Maria Putheolina, andJoan of Arc. Those who achieved celebrity in similar fashion in the textual account but arenot thus depicted include Camilla, Artemis, Urania of Milan, Amalasonte, and Triaria .

.., For details, see Adolf Katzenellenbogen, Allegories of the virtues and vices in medievalart (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989).

222 BULLETIN JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY

Figure 5Minerva, Vie desfemmes celebres,Nantes, Musee Dobree, MS XVII, fo. 11"

(Cl. Ch. Hemen, Musee Dobree, Names)


Semiramis model to depict Anne's desire to be with her husband,King Louis XII, during his Italian campaign and to hasten hisreturn by helping kill the enemy on the battlefield. Mace deVillebresme then translated the original Latin into French in thefollowing manner:

Par maintesfoiz me suys delibereeD'icy partyr en armes preparee,Pour tost aller ton fier ost rancontrerEt de carcas et fleches m'acoustrerEt porter arc comme Samiramys,Affin que fust par mes propres mains mysEn dur estour quelque vng de tes aduers,Auee les corps sanglants tout it l'enuers.Aussi affin meue d'enhortemensQue vraye amour faiet aux loyaulx amansQu'eussions peu lors demeurer la nous deuxApres l'exploict en champ victorieux,Ou que vaincuz sur la terre estanduzNoz esperitz eussions a Dieu renduz [...]41 (vv. 123-36)

This striking image, clearly drawn from the same tradition asDufour's, remains just that - a metaphor, whose aggressivenessand violence is, in the end, completely undermined by the author'sconventional vision of Anne of Brittany. Her subsequent,reconstructed words provide the portrait of an ever-devoted wife,who, in an almost paralysed, grieving state, awaits the delayedreturn of her husband. Corroborating Andrelini's shift in focusfrom a militant figure to a grieving woman is the accompanyingminiature, which depicts Anne of Brittany in her private quarterspenning her missive to Louis through her tears.v The absence ofany visual depiction of a female warrior, or of the queen in aposition of strength rather than weakness, points to the underlyingmale-engendered tradition of a contemporary woman's role as oneof mourner in an interior space rather than a person of action inan exterior setting.And yet, Dufour's Vie des femmes celebres provides one very

compelling visual testimony to the female warrior, that of the

41 Epistre composee en latin par le renomme et royal poete Publio Fausto Andrelini de Four/y,en laquelle Anne, tres oertueuse royne de France, duchesse de Bretaigne, exhorte de son retour letrespuissant et invincible roy de France, Lays douziesme, son mary etant en Italye, apres avoirobtenu le triomphe de oictoire contre les Veniciens, et translatee icelleepistre en francoys par Macede Villebresme, valet de chambre d'iceluy seigneur, State M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin Publiclibrary, MS Fr. F. v. XIV.8, fos. 4'-5'. For details on the manuscript and printed versionof this work, see Godelieve Toumoy-Thoen, Publi Fausti Andrelini (Brussels: Paleis derAcademien, 1982), 162-5. I wish to thank the Institut de Recherche et d'Histoire desTextes for providing access to a microfilm copy of this manuscript. In quotations frommanuscripts, all abbreviations have been expanded, capital letters have been added to markthe beginning of a proper name or of a verse, word separation has been modernized,apostrophes have been added to indicate elided vowels, and e serves to indicate a finalpronounced syllable (as in apres), Punctuation has been added when necessary.

42 See Avril and Reynaud, 305, for a reproduction of this image.

224 BULLETIN JOHN RYlANDS LIBRARY

rehabilitated [oan of Arc, who is the only female warrior depictedastride a horse in a stunningly bold pose (Fig. 6). Dufour's claimthat [oan had been falsely condemned for having worn armoursuggests that early sixteenth-century French court circles no longerheld Joan's cross-dressing in contempt, as had many of hercontemporaries. And yet this rather realistic portrait of a womanin armour, the very image with which the Vie des femmes celebresends, symbolized not so much Joan's military and political victoriesas her moral triumphs, in particular her ability to remain a virginagainst all odds, as Dufour implies:

Somme Jehanne tant fist que elle conduit le roy jusques :iRains, oü Cutsacre etcourrone, Jamais homme en sceut veoir en elle chose digne de reprehension, quiest une chose presque divine, estre nuyt et jour avec gens d'armes, et par si longtemps, sans faire chose de quoy langue ou plume la sceust blasmer [...]. Depuis,le roy Louis fist examiner son proces, la oü Cut trouvee veridique et innocente.Car seullement fut rapporte sa condamp nation ne avoir este faicte si non queelle, contre la coustume des dames, cheminoit arrnee (165).

Laura Dufresne's contention that female warriors in late medievaltexts (including Christine de Pizan's works) are not usuallyvisualized in a warring posture unless the patrons of the texts arewomerr" suggests that Anne of Brittany may have played evenmore of an instrumental role in designing the Vie des femmes celebresthan previously thought.The queen mayor may not have been directly involved in the

decision to include Joan as a 'femme celebre' or to portray her andother famous women as military heroines. Nonetheless, the factthat Dufour describes the deed of the woman whose biography andportrait close the Vie des femmes celebres as 'plus divin que humain'(162) implies that Joan of Arc has attained the same level ofmythic celebrity as her predecessors in the Vie des femmes celebresand that, moreover, her vignette was consciously engineered to bea symmetrical complement to the work's opening image of theVirgin. In the end celibacy and devotion to religious idealsconstitute the virtues for which Dufour most enthusiastically laudshis famous women. Curiously, the author never directly associatesAnne of Brittany with upstanding religious behaviour in his book,although the contents of her library and numerous contemporaryimages of the queen emphasize this dimension of her character.w

43 See 'Women warriors', Women's Studies, 23 (1994), 128-9. She also attributes the useof realistic armour for a fifteenth-century image of an Amazon to the contemporary exampleof Joan of Are (126).

44 A good number of the volumes in Anne of Brittany's library were books of hours orworks on moralistic subjects. See [ones, 371-409. See also the well-known image of Annein Jean Bourdiehon's Grandes Heures, sometimes referred to as the Heures d'Anne de Bretagne(BNF, MS lat. 9474, fo. 3').


Figure 6Joan of Arc, VÜ?des femmes celebres,Nantes, Musee Dobree, MS XVII, fo. 76Y

(Cl. Ch. Heman, Musee Dobrie, Nantes)

226 BULLETIN JOHN RYlANDS LIBRARY

It is apparent, then, that a number of tensions underlie AntoineDufour's Vie des femmes celebres, which is not an unbiasedpresentation of women, and could not have been so for the reasonsoutlined above. The fact that this was one of only two knowncommissions from Anne of Brittany" and that the Vie des femmescelebres was Dufour's only known secular work, suggesting apossible unfamiliarity with vernacular literary codes or protocol,may explain in part this ambivalence. Rhetorically speaking,moreover, the Dominican writer had to negotiate diplomatically apath between a discourse of respect due his female patron, a stagevisually represented in the dedicatory image, and a discourse ofmoral instruction, which implied an assumption of superiority:Dufour, who was subsequently appointed as confessor of both theking and the queen, clearly adopted the dominating voice andpersona of a moralizing teacher. This relationship of malecounsellor and queen recalls that associated with the medievaltradition of the Speculum dominarum. 46

Moreover, Dufour's strong affiliation with ecclesiastical opinionspoints to an implicit tension between the Church's traditionaladoption of exempla, especially those of powerful women, usuallyused negatively," and Anne of Brittany's commission to writeabout famous women, particularly since Dufour's misogynistcomments denigrated his patron's very sex. This tension isexposed, for example, through the author's enthusiasm for virginsand chaste widows. Furthermore, an inherent contradiction existedbetween one of Dufour's major sources, Boccaccio, and his Ownecclesiastical training: not only did the author of De elaris mulieribusadopt very few examples of famous Christian women (five out of106), but Dufour's criticism of Boccacio, among others, in hisprologue for having arbitrarily blamed women authorized him toattribute women's sins to men's evil impetus. While Dufourenthusiastically provided numerous examples of strong, assenivewomen, repeatedly praising the physical prowess of several ofthem, he also contradicted his prologue's claim of women's naturalinnocence through references to their innate propensity to deceive,seduce and control men, an assessment that at times re-alignedhim with the authors he claimed to correct. Despite this underlyinguneasiness about the representation of women, however, thenumerous and repeated stylized images that dominate themanuscript, coupled with the concordance of authorial and artisticexpression, provide the reader with a sense of the ultimately fixed

., In 1505 Dufour also translated the letters of St. Jerome for Anne .

.. See, for example, the Speculum dominarum addressed to Queen Ieanne of Navarre byher confessor, Durand de Champagne. I am grateful to Roberta Krueger for calling myattention to this tradition.

47 See Susan L. Smith, The power of women: a topos in medieval art and literature(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995).


nature of these female images, of their status quo quality, whichmay implicitly invoke Anne's own stable position as queen ofFrance.In contradistinction to the Vie des femmes celebres, the

ambivalence about women in the Vienna manuscript of theChangement de fortune en toute prosperiti is not located in theauthor's literary representation of Margaret of Austria. It is ratherin the tension between the dedication manuscript's text and imagesthat ambiguities surface. The opening folios of ONB MS 2625 areextraordinary in the way they anticipate this uneasy associationbetween verbal and visual expression, and at the same time, invokethe relationship between the male author and his female dedicatee.A large gold scroll centred on the first folio and surrounded byflowers symbolizing the recipient's name - marguerites - bearsRiccio's dedication to Margaret in blue letters: 'A treshaulte,tresnoble et tresexcellente dame, la duchesse de Savoye,Marguerite d'Austriehe: Michel Riz napolitain, docteur es drois,conseillier du roy trescrestien en sa court de Parlement a Parys eten son grant conseil: Changement de Fortune en touteprosperite' .48 While the presence of Margaret's device, Fortuneinfortune fort une, on smaller-sized scrolls in each of the fourcorners of the elaborately decorated margins of this folio seems atfirst glance to be a reverent visual acknowledgment of the duchess,the pessimistic message generated by that very device, which infact contradicts Riccio's goal of comforting Margaret withoptimism about her future, undermines the relationship the authorostensibly seeks to establish with his dedicatee. .This verbal and visual staging of the author-dedicatee

relationship on the first folio differs from conventional dedicationscenarios of the time in its absence of submissive self-repre-sentation. Although Riccio addresses Margaret with deference,placing her name first and adopting a traditional formula of respectand praise, he does not devalue his own position, as contemporarycourt writers were wont to do. Instead Riccio authorizes his voiceby providing in words his credentials - he is a doctor of law andthe French king's counsellor to the Paris Parlement - and, in thelower margin, a representation of his, not the book owner's, coatof arms.49 Unlike the incongruity between Dufour's submissivevisual posture and his dominating moralistic voice in Anne ofBrittany's dedicatory copy of the Vie des femmes celebres, Riccioprojects himself in unequivocally bold terms. 50 .

... For a reproduction of this image, see Pächt and Thoss, 11, Fig. 169.. 49 Debae, 509.'0 Was it because the Changement rh Fortune was not a commissioned work that the

Neapolitan author was not visually figured in a dedication scene, as is the case in Dufour'smanuscriPt, or did he consciously avoid appearing in a subordinate position before a womanwho was not his patroness?


In the introductory paragraph ..of the Changement de fortune,which falls on the second folio of ONB 2625, Riccio maintains hisrespectful yet authoritative profile. Interrupting his prologuerepeatedly with references and direct addresses to Margaret, theauthor, nonetheless, draws his readers and dedicatee into hisnarrative space, an intellectual world inhabited by his literarycounterpart (L'Acteur) and companion (Le Chevalier). Theirphilosophical discussion comes to focus on the inexplicablecontradiction between Margaret's virtues and her fatefulencounters with Lady Fortune. That two male characters, ratherthan allegorical figures, engage in this analysis and celebration ofMargaret's life is in itself unusual." That the acteur invitesMargaret to judge the merits of their conclusions because of hersuperior life of virtue is likewise uncommon:

Et, considere I'honnestete et comble des vertus que avons congneu en vous,avons eu tresgrande occasion de, toutes autres choses delaissees, parler et deviserle long de notre diet chemin de la force et puissance de fortune et comment ellevous a si longuement travaille et pourquoy est que fortune infortune fort une.Et comme a ieelle qui prent plaisir a lisre et ouyr disputations vertueuses et quipourra mieulx jugier de la verite en ceste matiere que nul aultre, je Iui envoye cepresent traicte en me recommandant treshumblement a sa bonne grace (307).

As if to punctuate this praise, Margaret's arms decorate the lowermargin of this folio (fo. 2f

). Whereas Dufour seemed little inclinedto praise directly or engage his patron in his Vie desfemmes celebres,the male-centred fictional world of the Changement de fortune entoute prosperit« opens itself up to Margaret, according her the finalstatus of arbiter. Rather than adopting a diplomatic posture ofappeasement that is ultimately reversed by a morally superiorattitudevlike Dufour, Riccio's more consistently strong self-imagefunctions to authorise his praise of Margaret more fully, especiallysince he was presumably not motivated by a search for long-termfinancial support. 52 Riccio's verbal glorification of the duchess is,however, immediately undermined by the artist's visualinterpretation.Featured prominently on the facing folios of the next manuscript

opening (fos 2v and 3f) are two miniatures of Fortune and

Margaret in a stunning depiction (Figs 7, 8). Perched atop herfamous wheel, a toga-clad Fortune at the left literally lassoes thecrown off the head of Margaret, enthroned at the right. This imagedirectly translates a later passage in the book that portrays

,. Compare, for example, with Jean Lemaire's Temple d'honneur er de uertus (1504) orhis Concorde du genre humain (1509).

51 See Franeon and D'Herbecourt, 352-7, for details concerning Riccio's ties with theHouse of France. They suggest that Riccio dedicated the work to Margaret in the hopesthat she would intercede on his behalf in his efforts to obtain restitution of his possessionsfrom the kingdom of Naples (356).


Margaret as victim. 53 Its shift to the front of the manuscriptdramatizes in very provocative terms the artist's focus on the morenegative aspect of Riccio's work: Fortune has repeatedly disruptedand redefined Margaret of Austria's socio-political station in life.The moment depicted through the metaphor of Fortune'sspectacular un-crowning is, as the fleurs-de-lis decoratingMargaret's dress and the shield to her right confirm, therepudiation of Margaret at the age of eleven by Charles VIII as hiswife and queen of France." This image elicits shock and perhapspity, rather than awe, before the figure of Margaret of Austria.Curiously, in the anonymous Malheur de France, which figured inher library as well, Charles VIII is directly attacked for havingabandoned Margaret." But in the hands of both artist and author,who, as protege of the French king and queen, was probably notinclined to launch such specific criticism against the House ofFrance, Margaret's misfortunes are abstracted and convenientlyattributed to the popular classical and medieval figure of Fortune.Fortune's ambiguous gendering in this miniature may wellcompensate for this abstraction of the tragedies in Margaret's life.That is, this blurred line between the masculine and femininedepiction of Fortune in manuscript ÖNB 2625 through thediscrepancy between text and image appears to relate to the factthat Margaret's tragic circumstances arose from the fate of the menin her life, who are entirely absent from the work's visual narrative.In the miniature Fortune possesses more distinctly male thanfemale attributes. Although the bald head behind her forelocks isa characteristic sometimes associated with Fortune, the visual

53 The passage reads: 'Fortune lui arracha la couronne de sa teste' (317, I. 9). This isrepeated on 317, 11. 31-2 ('Mais crueUe Fortune [...] lui osta par mort soubdaine sondictmary, et, par consequence, la couronne d'Espaigne de sa teste') and 318, 11.8-9 ('[ ...]considerant que Fortune lui avoit oste les deux couronnes de la teste, assavoir de Franceet d'Espaigne [...)').

54 The arms of Flanders are featured at her left.55 See Brussels, Bibliotheque Royale Albert I", MS 11182, dating from after 1495/6. For

example, on fo. 5'" one reads:Donques et pourtantToy Charles regnantEn France pour lors,Repens toy plourantDes maulx que fais tantAs, et des discors.[...] Mauldis I'acointanceQue as fait pour le plucD'auoir a oultranceEnfraint I'alianceDudit arceduc[oO.] tu asPar faulx entrelasEnfraint I'alianceQue abbes et prelasConclurent, helas!


Figure 7Fortune, Changement de Fonune en toute prosperiü,

Vienna, ÖNB, MS 2625, fo. 2"(Foto: Bildarchiv, ÖNB Wien)


Figure 8. Margaret of Austria, Changement de Fortune en taute prospmte, Vienna, ÖNB,

MS 2625, fo. 3r(Foto: Bildarchio, ÖNB Wien)

232 BULLETIN JOHN RYU\NDS LIBRARY

depiction of the allegorical figure diverges dramatically fromconventional portraits of the goddess, who most often appears ina dress or robe and, when portrayed in the nude, is usuallyendowed with female breasts." This masculine version of Fonunelikewise contradicts the repeated textual allusions to Fortune as elleand dame. Furthermore, this dramatic visual rendition focuses onMargaret's status as victim, a more one-dimensional portrait thanthe one Riccio provides.It is not the conventional distinctions the narrator establishes

between Margaret's exemplary comportment and that of infamoushigh-ranking women of antiquity that strike the modem reader ofthe Changement de Fortune en taute prosperite, nor the similaritiesdrawn between her and other celebrated women. 57 What promptsspecial notice are the favourable comparisons made betweenMargaret and famous virtuous men of the past. On the one hand,Riccio praises the duchess for what are considered to be femaletraits. These include her piety and constant devotion to God,Margaret's service being described as 'pardessus ce que requiertla condition des femmes' (310). A miniature of Margaret ofAustria in prayer (fo. 7r) visually reinforces this particular,praiseworthy quality. 58 Indeed, just as Dufour positioned theVirgin first in his portrait gallery as the highest example offeminine virtue, so too Margaret's devotion to God is visually andverbally highlighted in the Changement de Fortune from the outset.Likewise lauded are other traditional female characteristics such asMargaret's chastity, her modesty, 'la vertu qui est principalementrequise avoir les femmes' (311), and her faithfulness in love.On the other hand, Riccio calls attention to the more

traditionally masculine-associated attributes of Margaret by makingextended comparisons with male models of virtue from antiquity,most of which are drawn from Valerius Maximus." Margaret's

,. As Howard R. Patch states in The goddess Fottuna in medüzetJallilertuure (Cambridge:Harvard University Press, 1927), 116: 'Fortune, standing for Oceasio, has a long forelock,while the back of her head is bald. The forelock one must seize in order to prevail uponthe goddess before she slips away: For a very useful series of images of Fortune, seeMiniatures of Goddess Fortune in mediaeval manuscripts; ed. Tamotsu Kurose (Tokyo:Sauseido, 1977). I am grateful to Nancy Regalade for ca1Iing my attention to this reference.See also Marcel Francon's discussion of the sources of the image of Fortune in ÖNB MS2625 in 'Miniatures du XVI" siecle", The Romania Review, xxvii (1936), 247-51. In JeanLemaire's Courrmne margarizicque, Infortune is depicted as a male. I thank Adrian Armstrongfor reminding me of this ambiguity.

n Several of the same women are invoked by both Dufour and Riccio, althoughsometimes from a different perspective. Riccio makes reference to Olympia, Cleopatra,Zenobia, and Joanna as negative examples, while citing the histories of Emilia, Lucretia,Penelope, Portia, Sulpicia, Hortensia, Amesia, Sempronia, Thuria (Triaria), and Venturiafor positive comparisons with Margaret.

511 For a reproduction of this image, see Pächt and Thoss, 11, Fig. 171.¥J See Franeon and D'Herbecourt, 357-00, for a discussion of Riccio's medieval sources

concerning the theme of Fortune, and Franeon and De Boom, who provide abundant notesconcerning his other sources in the notes of their edition of the Changement de Fortune.

TEXTUAL AND ICONOGRAPlllCALAMBIVALENCE 233

successful guidance and government of her subjects as duchess ofSavoy, her active support of the virtuous conduct of 'gransseigneurs', her counsel to avoid evil thoughts and actions, herability to speak several languages, and her wisdom and eloquenceare favourably compared with the related qualities of AppiusClaudius, Themistocles, Publius Crassus, and Kings Mithriditesand Cyrus:

Valerius le Grant loue fort Publius Crassus lequel avoit en son armee gens dequatre ou cinq langues et en administrant parloit la langue de la queUe estoientles playdoians par devant lui. Loue aussy le roy Mitridates qui parloit de xxiiIangues subgectz a lui et le roy Cyrus qui scavoit le nom et surnom de tous sesgens d'armes. Je croy qu'i[lJ soit plus a louer mediae dame qui parle sy bien leslangues de tous les pays ou eUe a este et de gens qui ont este a son servicecomme se eUefut nee de leur pays. (313-14, my emphasis)

While Margaret's generosity is likened to that of a number ofwomen from the past, it is also compared to that of famous Romanmen:Le Grant Valerius loue sur tous les aultres Fabius Maximus de liberalite pource que, quant le senat faillist a payer I'argent de la renchon des personnes, fistvendre son patrimoisne pour faire le payement, disant qu'il vouloit plustostestre povre de biens que le Seignoirye de Rome fu povre de foy. Or il estadvenu souventes foys que, quant madiete dame a este requise ayder quelquegentil homme pour luy faire avoir quelque argent ou biens, se elle ne povoitimpetrer tout ou partie de sa demande, eUe donnoit du sien propre, et vouloitplustost avoir moins de bien que I'on eust perdu la foy et espoir qu'on avoit enelle. C'est him resamble a Fabius Maximw qui est tant loue de liberalite [...] veules povres gentiIz hommes en grant nombre que ma diete dame a ayde et secourude ses biens en queIque part qu'eIle ayt este, eile n'est gaires moins digne Jelouenge que les dessw-nommez. (314-15, my emphasis)

Margaret's patience, mercy and moderation are likewise comparedto that of Furius Camilius, Marcus Marcellus, Marcus Bibulus andTheopompus (315-16). The extraordinary humanity and gratitudeof the duchess make her more worthy than Anthigonus in the eyesof Riccio's narrator, who claims:

[...] et qui vouldra noter tous les aetes de humanite desqueIz madiete dame ause envers ses serviteurs, parens et amis, on en lTOUVerabeaucop plus dignes deplusgrant louenge, lesquelz auanchetu' ainchois l'humaniü Je nry Anthigonw [...] Ettout ce que je en ay diet n'est pas la centysme partye qui soot en elle. (316, myemphasis)

In the end, Margaret's 'parfaicte bonte" (319, 322) stands as theembodiment of a host of both male and female virtues and thereflection of the model behaviour of both male and female heroesof the past.However, the artist's depiction of these qualities through

abstractions of the four cardinal virtues downplays theandrogynous vision imagined by Riccio. The depiction of Fortitude(fo, 10r, Fig. 9), Prudence (fo. I P), Justice (fo. 13V

), and

234 BUll.ETIN JOHN RYLANDS UBRARY

Figure 9Fortitude, Changement de Fortune en toute prospmce, Vienna, ÖNB,

MS 2625, fo. 10'(Foto: Bildarchiv, 6NB Wien)


Temperance (fo. 15V) in female form, in accordance with the

gender of the French words that identify them, would have greatlyflattered the duchess of Savoy. At the same time these images notonly eliminate the textual associations drawn between Margaretand the male heroes invoked by the narrator, but also distance herperson from these very traits. It is true that the depiction ofFortitude as partly armoured, an iconographic detail frequentlyassociated with the virtues, anticipates subsequent textualcomparisons between Margaret and past military heroes. And yet,the marked demonstration of empathy for Margaret's plight asdepicted through the grief-stricken faces of Fortitude and the threeother virtues distorts Riccio's words to a large extent byemphasizing the underlying sympathy of the text's protagonistsmore than their admiration for their subject of discussion.This visual focus on Margaret's misfortune rather than on her

'complete prosperity,' which figures so centrally in the work's title,is intensified by the series of miniatures that provides a narrativeof Margaret's ever-changing political status between the ages ofeleven and twenty-four. Following the metaphorical illustration ofher repudiation by Charles VIII (Fig. 8), Margaret of Austria isportrayed in turn as princess of Castille and future queen of Spain(fo. 18V

), a position she lost upon the death of Prince Juan ofCastille shortly after their marriage in 1497; as duchess of Savoyfrom 1501-04 (fo. 2P); as an uncrowned widow in mourningkneeling before her lost throne upon the premature demise ofDuke Philibert of Savoy (fo. 22r);60 and finally as a dispossessedwoman framed by the arms of her parents' territory, Burgundy andFlanders,61 as she stands before an empty throne with an emptyshield in hand (Fig. 10). The portrayals of an enthroned Margaretin several of these miniatures invoke the image of a strong femaleassociated with political power, much like those in the Vie desfemmes celebres. And yet Fortune's aggression in the first miniature,the multiplicity of images displaying Margaret in different politicalconfigurations, punctuated by ever-changing dress and groupingsof coats of arms, and the focus on her vulnerability as a widowhighlight the underlying instability of her - and, by implication,any noble woman's - position. The images painted by the Masterof the Chronique scandaleuse underscore the fact that women ofrank, despite the power associated with their names and theirpresence, could find themselves in a position of shifting alliances,a tenuous position that was determined in large measure by themale forces in their lives. Margaret was essentially the pawn of thepolitical manoeuvrings of her father, Emperor Maximilian 1,62 and

60 For reproductions of these three images, see Pächt and Thoss, 11,Figs. 174-6.61 Debae, 510-11.62 See, for example, 31B, 11. 1-2: '[ ... ] et Cut force a madicte dame pour obeyr au roy

son pere et a mondict seigneur son frere s'en retourner en Flandres [...]'.

236 BULLETIN JOHN RYlANDS LIBRARY .

FIgUre 10 t' ~

Margaret of Austria, Changement de Fortune en toute prospenre, Vienna, ÖNB~MS 2625, fo. 31t •

(Foto: Bildarchiv, ÖNB Wien)

TEXTUAL AND ICONOGRAPlllCALAMBIVALENCE 237

of Charles VIll's decision to repudiate her, and a victim of the fateof her two subsequent husbands. As a woman she was notpermanendy tied to tide and territory in the way her brother, forexample, was - although in Margaret's unusual circumstances,her repeated return to her homeland would eventually contest thisstereotype. Invisual terms, Margaret of Austria is distanced fromher own virtues through their allegorical representation, while therepeated images of her political alliances reduce her to an unstablefigure. Again this insistence on Margaret as victim characterizes themanuscript images more than Riccio's text, which devotes only afew pages to this dimension of her life.As a form of consolation to Margaret, in an effort to justify the

repeated tragedies in her life, the narrator of the Changement deFortUne adopts a metaphor of combat. Through a series of male-centred verbal images, Fortune is likened to a knight or soldier,perhaps another justification of her masculine appearance in theopening miniature, while Margaret is depicted as her most worthyopponent (319-20). Interpreting the tragedies that have befallenher as a positive sign that Lady Fortune, in singling her out forattack, has chosen Margaret as an exemplary adversary because ofher extraordinary virtue, the narrator draws inspiration from thestories of Hannibal, Julius Caesar, and numerous lesser-knownRoman combatants.' These and other similar references to maleworlds63 lead to the narrators prediction that Lady Fortune willbe shamed into converting the many misfortunes she has broughtto Margaret's life into prosperity, as numerous contemporaryexamples of other male and female nobles serve to ensure." WhileMargaret is never herself physically described in masculine terms,as some of the female warriors in Anne of Brittany's manuscriptare (see n. 38), these repeated comparisons between her moral andpsychological character and that of male military heroes of the pastare quite extraordinary and result yet again in the blurring ofgender lines .. However, the manuscript images never promote this textualandrogyny, nor is any artistic interpretation of the text's optimismregarding Margaret of Austria's future to be found, since thenumerous illustrations portraying the duchess in manuscript ONB2625 retain only conventional emblems of her changing politicalpositions. This striking disparity between the visual and verbal

63 They implicidy recall Michele Riccio's previously penned worb on war and on thequalities of the kings of France, Spain, Jerusalem, Naples and Sicily, including his Traiüdu dewiT des gem de guerre et de leurs priviIiges, composed in January 1506 for King Louisxn. as well as his De regihus Francorvm, De regihus Hispaniae, De regihus Hierosdymitarum,and De regibusNeapolis et Siciliae... These include Lucius Lentulus, Comelius Scipion, Gayus Marius, Julius Caesar,

Emperor Sigismundus, Margaret's father Maximilian, Kings Louis XII and Henry ofEngland, Mary of Hungary, Judith, wife of Louis the Pious, Anne of Brittany (!), and Isabelof Castille and her husband Ferdinand V.


portrayal of Margaret points to an underlying ambivalence aboutthe representation of the duchess that may have had as much todo with adherence to convention and the conditions of the creationof this book manuscript as with Margaret's own history. On theone hand, her own political success as duchess of Savoy and herhusband's failure in the same context is one example of the wayin which her life, up to that point in time, contested the traditionalcultural image of women." On the other, the sexual ambiguitiesthat characterize the Changement de Fortune can also be located inthe complex dynamics of men reconstructing a female-genderedworld, one whose literary and artistic parameters had, forcenturies, been determined by religious and secular male-orientedconvention. The fact that Margaret found herself for a third timein that ambiguous unmarried (and childless) state that couldpotentially enable her to transcend her womanhood doubtlesscaused anxiety not only for Margaret's family, entourage, and eventhe duchess herself, but also for the creators of the Changement deFortune. How, for example, did a reasonable, late-medievalintellectual overcome the prevailing misogynist tendencies to writeat length about a virtuous woman? In fact, as an historian, Riccioadopts secular male models as his points of reference in aRenaissance-like revisionist mode that bears comparison withSymphorien Champier's Nef des dames vertueuses, among otherworks. He thereby succeeds far better than Dufour, who wasobviously imbued with more medieval-based Catholic notionsabout women. In the end, however, it is the tension between verbaland visual depiction in the Vienna manuscript of the Changementde Fortune that not only highlights Margaret's unstable socio-political position but also signals contemporary ambivalence aboutthe portrayal of women.In both the Vie desfemmes celebresand the Changement de Fortune,

then, despite - or because of - the focus on celebrated femalesof virtue, the strong presence of male authors and artistscomplicates the verbal and visual portrayal of women. The visualplacement of Anne of Brittany on centre stage in the openingdedication miniature of Antoine Dufour's commissioned work asa sovereign reigning over her court and controlling the bookproduction process, an ideal image of the royal married lady,contrasts with MicheIe Riccio's dedication manuscript, whichspotlights the displaced widow, Margaret, in similarly enthronedpolitical poses that nevertheless depict her as an isolated victim ofthe vicissitudes of Fortune. And yet in verbal terms, the tables areturned. Riccio makes bold comparisons between Margaret'scomportment and that of earlier successful male political leaders

6' See, for example, lane de Iongh, Margaret of Austria, Regent of the Netherlands (NewYork: Norton, 1953), 119-22.


and military heroes of antiquity, while Dufour's analogies betweenAnne and virtuous females of the past are indirect at best. Thus,Anne's book served as the mirror in which she would discovermodels from the past, and presumably find her own reflection inthem. However, the biography offered to Margaret was a volumein which she herself, as female subject exalted for her virtuouscomportment, essentially represented the very mirror into whichothers would look for inspiration. In this delicate balance of malevoice and female subject, of female presence and male articulation,in which the verbal and visual images of Anne of Brittany andMargaret of Austria presented by Antoine Dufour, Micheie Riccioand manuscript illuminators, consciously or unconsciously bothglorify and contest each woman's authority, modem scholars havea glimpse of how the contradictory cultural reality of the latemedieval and early Renaissance periods in Western Europeinformed the portrayal of women of rank.

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