Christine sans Christine

Abstract

We know Christine de Pizan as one of the greatest poets and writers of late Middle Ages, but she might have had other strings to her bow. This paper extends the field of studies to manuscripts outside the corpus of her texts, which could be indebted to her in one way or another. Her interest in images and talent for creating new compositions was influential as numerous borrowings testify since her time, among others the allegorized clock of temperance, the wheel of Fortune populated by rising and fallen kings, and Perseus armed with a scythe riding Pegasus. Like her contemporaries Honorat Bovet and Jean Lebègue, she can rightly be considered an iconographer. A copy of the Grandes Chroniques de France (Paris, Bibl. Mazarine, ms. 2028), that unusually highlights the Queen of France, seems to reflect her political ideals through the models of past queens represented to their advantage. It may be no accident that two of Christine favorite illuminators were at work in this manuscript, the Master of the Epître d’Othéa and the Master of the Cité des Dames. Thus the question arises whether one should not add to her talents those of supplier of books and adviser to the queen.