French Queen Research Articles

The Divine Role of the Diadem in Rubens’s Marie de’ Medici Cycle

Summary In the 24 paintings for the French Queen Marie de’ Medici, painted by Peter Paul Rubens 1622−1625, historic facts are depicted in the shape of mythological gods and symbols resulting in allegorical scenes. When focusing on headdress, the crowns and the wreaths rarely present a challenge in modern interpretations, but a magnificent diadem does. The grand diadem in these paintings appears to be misread in analyses today. At this point in history, the crowns and the wreaths have been transferred from divine spheres and turned into physical objects. The large diadem has not; it is still only a symbol on a goddess or for goddess-like qualities. Today, it is an easy mistake to believe that Rubens copied what he saw instead of heralding a coming fashion. Here, I suggest that it is the highest goddess Juno the Queen is personifying. Juno, a goddess for women in general, was also the saviour of the country and a special counsellor of the state. These roles are what Queen Marie took on when acting as regent for her young son, Louis XIII. By putting Juno’s diadem on Marie’s head, the divine abilities are manifested according to the allegorical language of the Baroque.

«Я, Бретань». Гербовый король Анны Бретонской и функции герольда в позднесредневековой Франции

The article analyses the text of a report on the journey of the French princess Anne of Foix-Candal to her fiancé King Vladislav II in Hungary in 1502. The main functions of a court herald in late medieval France are discussed based on the text created by Pierre Choque, a participant of the events, the king of arms of the French queen Anne of Brittany.

‘Het lijkt hier wel de achttiende eeuw’

In Sophie Straat’s song ‘Vrijheid, Gelijkheid & Zusterschap’ (2022) and her corresponding music video, a colorful character falls asleep and, like a ‘Marie-Antoinette of the twenty-first century,’ dreams that she can do anything she wants. We witness a utopian dream world where all twenty-first-century problems have been solved: from climate change and factory farming to corruption and religious oppression. Her awakening in the true twenty-first century, however, is rough: ‘it looks more like the eighteenth century!’ The song contrasts present and past, dream and reality in an intriguing way and depicts the beheaded French queen Marie-Antoinette as an embodiment as much as a victim of eighteenth-century progressivism. Departing from the French Revolution, it seems, Straat aims at criticizing today’s progressivism. For this, she uses one of the historically most powerful tools to voice social critique and mobilize the masses: song. But will the people ever be able to achieve the utopia that this singer is dreaming of?

Marie-Antoinette: The Making of a French Queen by John Hardman

Marie-Antoinette: The Making of a French Queen by John Hardman

Illuminating the Middle Ages: Tributes to Prof. John Lowden from His Students, Friends and Colleagues ed. by Laura Cleaver, Alixe Bovey and Lucy Donkin

Reviewed by: Illuminating the Middle Ages: Tributes to Prof. John Lowden from His Students, Friends and Colleagues ed. by Laura Cleaver, Alixe Bovey and Lucy Donkin Joan A. Holladay Laura Cleaver, Alixe Bovey, and Lucy Donkin, eds. Illuminating the Middle Ages: Tributes to Prof. John Lowden from His Students, Friends and Colleagues. Library of the Written Word 79; The Manuscript World 12. Leiden: Brill, 2020. xxii, 481 pp., 138 ills. €198. ISBN: 978-90-04-42232-2. In the course of John Lowden’s distinguished career, he has concentrated on three separate areas of medieval art: manuscript illumination in both Byzantium and western Europe and ivory carving. In all three fields he has taken on big topics: the Octateuchs with their 550 scenes, the even more prolifically illustrated Bibles moralisées, and the thousands of preserved ivories now catalogued online in the Gothic ivories project that he directs at the Courtauld Institute. Close examination of the works and detailed study of context, in the sense of both the physical matrix and the social and political milieux that produced these works, have been the hallmarks of his scholarship. In the twenty-eight short articles in Illuminating the Middle Ages, specialists in the latter two of these three fields deploy these same approaches to pay tribute to their teacher and friend; Byzantine art has been omitted “to make it possible to lift the resulting book” (1). The articles, only some of which can be addressed here, examine works made between the tenth century and about 1500 with the greatest concentration on those from the twelfth through fourteenth centuries; they are ordered more or less chronologically. Manuscripts from Italy, Germany, France, and Spain are represented, although the largest number of studies are devoted to works of English provenance. Iconography and text-image [End Page 205] relationships are a concern throughout, as are context and audience; style and technique play lesser roles. Two essays devoted to ivories and one to mosaics seem a bit like outliers, although Sarah Guérin’s on ivory plaques assembled as booklets does indeed include two-dimensional painting on the leaves bound inside the carved covers of the same material. The only article that mentions the moralized Bibles to which Lowden devoted award-winning work is Mika Takiguchi’s on the mosaic scenes of Noah’s ark at Monreale Cathedral. A number of the essays are fairly straightforwardly iconographic. Maria Grasso identifies patristic sources for the portrayal in the Codex Aureus of Echternach of the souls of Lazarus and Dives as homunculi exiting from the dead men’s mouths; their green tint, she argues, is intended to connote a different state of being from living humans. Christian Heck, in a contribution on ants portrayed in a fifteenth-century Italian representation of the death of Saint Martin, finds in Pliny the knowledge that they were, apart from humans, the only animals to bury their dead. Author portraits of Terence and Aristotle, examined by Beatrice Radden Keefe and Hanna Wimmer, respectively, use similar devices to show these authors’ foreign origins; Wimmer subtly weaves into her discussion medieval ideas about authorship and the reception of the ancient philosopher’s work in Paris in the second half of the thirteenth century. A jointly authored essay by Patricia Stirnemann and Judith Kogel uses personal features in the Psalter of Blanche of Castile to associate the manuscript with the French queen more firmly than heretofore. The portrait of Abraham Ibn Ezra at the beginning of the book is one of these, commemorating the role of Blanche’s homeland in both new intellectual activity and translation from other languages, perhaps at the behest of Roger de Four-nival, the court scholar from Amiens, where the manuscript seems to have been illuminated. A similarly personalized book, with the text of Saint Anselm’s Prayers and Meditations, is T. A. Heslop’s subject. Admont 289 is, he argues, a “later derivative” (94) of a manuscript sent by the author himself to Matilda of Tuscany in 1104. Its significant deviations from another manuscript that also goes back to “an Anselmian original” (96) result from and refer to the [End Page 206] intertwined lives of the archbishop and the...

Неаполитанское королевство и Россия в начале XIX в.: на материале переписки братьев Булгаковых

The article examines the activities of the Russian diplomatic mission in Naples in 1802-1808 based on the correspondence between brothers Alexander and Konstantin Bulgakov. In accordance with the tropological methodology of the historian Hayden White, tragic and novel metanarratives are distinguished in describing the relationship between the Kingdom of Naples, Russia, and the countries of Western Europe at the beginning of the 19th century. The narration of the events in accordance with the tragic plot reveals the confrontation between the hero and the world, Napoleon and the coalition of European states led by Austria, Britain, and Russia. At the same time, the transformation of the tragedy into the novel in historical terms presupposes a change in the established world order after the end of the era of the Napoleonic Wars, which the decisions of the Congress of Vienna consolidated in 18141815. The basis of the plot in the selected metanarratives is the life of Ferdinand IV, the king of Naples, and his family; Napoleon’s military actions in Italy; diplomatic and military assistance to Naples from Russia and the life of Russians in Naples and Palermo; the events of the Patriotic War of 1812; the messianic role of Emperor Alexander in the victory over Napoleon’s army. The influence of the actions of the allied forces in 1813-1815 and the decisions of the Congress of Vienna on the emergence of national liberation movements in Italy and the subsequent unification of the country is revealed. The spatial centers of the Bulgakovs’ epistolary works are Naples, Palermo, Rome, the capitals of four empires (Paris, Vienna, London, Petersburg), and related historical figures (King Ferdinand IV and his wife Maria Carolina of Austria (sister of Marie Antoinette, the French queen), Napoleon, Joseph Bonaparte, Joachim Murat, Austrian Emperor Francis II, Russian Emperor Alexander I, Pope Pius VII, Admiral and Secretary of State of the Kingdom of Naples John Acton, Russian envoys in Naples and Rome A.Ya. Italinsky and sine, and others. The article analyzes the conceptual sphere and poetics of the “Neapolitan” text of Russian literature. In the letters, the image of Naples is presented through the situation of a meeting of Southern and Northern Europe, Naples and Petersburg, monarchy and republic, Catholicism and Orthodoxy, history and modernity. Naples is perceived as a special communicative space associated with the diplomatic activities of both brothers, with their circle of communication, and aesthetically with a private letter as a kind of an ego-document. The perception of Naples as an island state, as an “earthly paradise at the foot of a volcano”, as a city of the Lazzaroni and carnival culture brings the correspondence between the Bulgakov brothers close with descriptions of this city in Russian travelogues of the late 18th - first third of the 19th centuries. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

Spectroscopy reveals passages in Marie Antoinette’s letters

Entire passages were at some point crossed out from letters exchanged between French queen Marie Antoinette and the Swedish count Axel von Fersen, her rumored lover, during the height of the French Revolution. Someone clearly did not want those passages to be seen. A team of researchers has now uncovered both the redacted contents and the probable identity of the censor ( Sci. Adv . 2021, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abg4266 ). Researchers led by Anne Michelin from the Sorbonne’s Research Center for Conservation examined the letters using X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy. They found that the consistent copper-to-iron ratio between the inks in some of the original letters could be used to decipher the redacted text, which included words like “adore” and “madly.” Historians had hypothesized that the count’s great-nephew censored the letters to protect the von Fersen family’s reputation. But after analyzing the overlying redaction inks and comparing their composition to the inks

2D macro-XRF to reveal redacted sections of French queen Marie-Antoinette secret correspondence with Swedish count Axel von Fersen.

During the French Revolution, Marie-Antoinette, queen of France and wife of Louis XVI, maintained a highly secret correspondence with the Swedish count Axel von Fersen, her close friend and rumored lover. An unidentified censor later redacted certain sections of the exchanged letters. This presumably sensitive content has been puzzling historians for almost 150 years. We report on the methodology that successfully unraveled this historical mystery. X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy was used in macroscanning mode on the redacted sections. Specific data processing was applied to improve the legibility of the hidden writings (elemental ratios, statistical data reduction, multimodal images fusion, unmixing procedure, and image treatments). This methodology successfully revealed the redacted contents of eight letters, shedding new light not only on Marie-Antoinette and Fersen relationship but also on the author of the redactions. It will also be of great interest for other historical and forensic cases involving the disentanglement of superimposed multi-elemental materials.

Portrait in Western European porcelain of the XVIII century

This article is dedicated to portrait images in Western European porcelain of the XVIII century. Research is conducted on the works created in various European countries, such as Germany (Meissen), France (Sevres), Austria (Vienna), and England (Wedgwood Pottery Manufactory). Prominent masters of porcelain –Kendler, Boizot, Grassi – are the authors of the portraits. Sculptural portrait images of August III – painter of the court of the French Queen Marie Antoinette and the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II are notable for exquisite artistic merit. The article reviews porcelain sculpture, as well as oil painted portraits. Interpretation of the images manifests the features of three styles characteristic to art of the XVIII century: Baroque, Rococo and Classicism. Portrait images reflect the themes typical to the Age of Enlightenment. The article describes the peculiarities of the creations of artists who worked in various European porcelain manufactories. Research methodology is based on the detailed stylistic analysis of the works of Baroque, Rococo and Classicism; fundamental examination of the works in historical sequence for determining the evolutionary changes; comparative analysis for revealing national and authorial specificities. The novelty is defined by the fact that this article is first to comprehensively analyze the portrait images in porcelain of such countries as Germany, France, and Austria of the XVIII century, as well as in identification of the features characteristic to different artists.

Ecclesiastical Household of Anna Yaroslavna, Queen of the Franks (1051–1075)

Introduction. The court of Anna Yaroslavna, the French queen of the 11th century, has not been specifically studied in historical literature. The author proposes to find out how the ecclesiastical environment of the Queen was formalized and structured in 1051–1075, who of the church persons formed her inner circle, and whether the royal ecclesiastical household had an influence on the formation of the church policy of the crown. Methods. The methodology is a combination of institutional and social history as part of the systemic approach that makes it possible to understand the evolution of the Queen’s household within the curial Capetian system. Analysis. The reviewed sources indicate that Anna Yaroslavnas staying in France and her relationships with the curial clerics were very close. The Royal acts attest to Anna’s high level of involvement in the ecclesiastical affairs of France, her regular support for the church persons of Curia regis, the Chancellor-Bishop and his servants, as well as the state of curial priests. Results. The ecclesiastical entourage of King Henri I and Queen Anna largely shaped the policy of the Capetians and strengthened dynastic authority. As a widow and queen mother, Anna Yaroslavna played in accordance with the policies of Henry I and his predecessors, contributing to the further strengthening of the church presence at the court, and in particular the bishops in Curia regis, as opposed to the feudal clans and influence of the pope. At the same time, all her actions were aimed at the interests of the crown in order to guarantee the safe preservation of the throne for her son Philip I.

Ties, Triangles and Tangles: Catherine de Medici as Philip II of Spain’s Mother-in-Law

After Catherine de Medici became the mother-in-law of Philip II of Spain in 1559, as a result of her daughter Elisabeth of Valois’ marriage to the Spanish king, she set out to augment and multiply the family ties between the Valois and the Habsburgs by negotiating further marriages. These efforts have been ridiculed by her biographers, who accuse her of a naïve faith in marital bonds. In line with more recent French historiography, this article re-evaluates Catherine’s efforts by placing them in the context of other kinship networks, especially the very dense one connecting the royal houses of Portugal and Spain. Seen in this light, it makes perfect sense for the French queen mother to weave an ever more intricate web of marriage alliances herself. It also means that most kinship relations between members of early modern ruling families were multi-layered and being ‘only’ a mother-in-law to a son-in-law was rare, complicating the conceptualisation of this particular role.

Contextualizing Wertmüller's 1785 Portrait of Marie-Antoinette through Dress

Wertmüller's 1785 portrait of French Queen Marie-Antoinette was a disappointment when first exhibited, a reaction partially explained by the conflicting associations surrounding the Queen's dress. This article examines the gown worn by Marie-Antoinette in the portrait — a robe à la turque — and its wider context in 1770s–1780s France. The gown, which was probably a real garment, corresponds to contemporary fashion plates and extant garments of the same style, whose distinct cuts demonstrate their connection to Turkish dress. The style's fashionability and formality is considered, as well as its role in the Queen's wardrobe and reputation. The turque joined other Ottoman-inspired French fashions in aligning with the Enlightenment ideas about simplified, unostentatious dressing that Marie-Antoinette embraced. However, the turque opened the Queen to criticism based on its fashionability, as well as connections between Ottoman dress, luxury and eroticism.

‘To Keep off the Company’ – a study of a seventeenth-century royal bed rail from Hampton Court Palace

This article discusses the use and evolution of the royal bedchamber in seventeenth century England, through a unique case study of a surviving bed rail from Hampton Court Palace. This remarkable survival from the royal bedchamber has recently been discovered to date from before the English Commonwealth. It had previously been forgotten for many years before it was rediscovered in the nineteenth century, when it was first shown to the public as an altar rail from the royal chapel. More recently it has been associated with King Charles II: however, new technical and historical research has revealed that this rail was in fact made much earlier, during the reign of his father, Charles I, and before the period when English kings adopted the French ceremony of the lever and coucher. It now appears likely to have been made for his French queen, Henrietta Maria, who brought many novel fashions and possessions to England, including the use of a bed rail for her accouchements. Later alterations to the rail suggest it was soon adapted for Charles II, and perhaps his Queen, Catherine of Braganza, and then again used in the early eighteenth century by first Hanoverian King of Great Britain, George I. The final section of the article discusses how this unique object contrasts with the bedchamber furnishings of other English kings and queens in the later-seventeenth century, who developed their own distinctive form of bedchamber ceremony using a very different mode of bed rail. It is argued that this was in response to the new parliamentary monarchy in England, and contrasted to the focus on the royal body placed in the palaces of absolutist monarchs of France and many other European countries at this time.

Introduction: Shakespeare's Mediterranean

Introduction: Shakespeare's Mediterranean

Procession, pride and politics in the Medicea hospes (1638): a Dutch festival book for a French Queen

In 1638, Caspar Barlaeus penned the Medicea hospes, a description of Amsterdam’s festive reception of French Queen Marie de Médicis in September of that year. The first of its kind in the Dutch Republic, the sumptuously illustrated volume featured seventeen etchings, including seven views of the celebrations that took place within the city. This essay examines the illustrations in the Medicea hospes with respect to Barlaeus’s prose. I suggest that the images depart from the pictorial conventions of European ceremonial books and instead engage native artistic and literary traditions to evoke peace and prosperity in a Dutch idiom. I situate the visual and textual aggrandisement of Amsterdam within the context of urban rivalries and the political framework of the 1630s, a time when the vroedschap attempted to influence foreign policy in favor of a truce with Spain, and assert the city’s economic and cultural preeminence at home and abroad. The Medicea hospes, I argue, affirmed a positive image of Amsterdam and served as a political vehicle for the vroedschap’s peace efforts.

The Boke of the Cyte of Ladyes by Christine de Pizan

Reviewed by: The Boke of the Cyte of Ladyes by Christine de Pizan Karen Green Christine de Pizan, The Boke of the Cyte of Ladyes, ed. Hope Johnston, trans. Brian Anslay (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 457), Tempe, ACMRS, 2014; hardback; pp. lxvii, 622; 13 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. US $90.00, £69.00; ISBN 9780866985086. With this new edition of the Middle English translation of Christine de Pizan's Le Livre de la Cité des Dames, the purchaser gets two editions for the price of one, for the book incorporates both the text of Brian Anslay's English translation, published in 1521, and an edition, in Middle French, of an early exemplar of Christine's famous defence of women, London, British Library, MS Royal 19.A.xix (L), a manuscript that may have been consulted by the English translator (p. xxv). As the editor, Hope Johnson, notes, by printing both the French and English on facing pages, comparison of the two texts and the identification of places where they deviate is greatly facilitated. Since the only other easily available edition of the French text, that prepared by Earl Jeffrey Richards and Patrizia Caraffi (Luni Editrice, 1997), comes with an Italian translation, the inclusion of the French along with the Middle English significantly enhances the publication's usefulness for English speakers. The introduction offers a brief account of the contents of Christine's defence of women, a short account of her life, with brief details of her other works, a biography of the translator, Brian Anslay, a discussion of the minor ways in which the translation deviates from the original, an account of the editorial history of the [End Page 155] Cité des Dames, some details concerning the printer, Henry Pepwell, and details of the signature irregularities, provenance, and marginalia of the five surviving copies of the English publication. There are extensive notes, which detail the ways in which the text of L diverges from British Library, MS Harley 4431 (R), the authoritative version prepared for the French queen, Isabeau of Bavaria, in 1414. A bibliography and selective glossary of Middle English words that are likely to cause trouble make up the volume. An enormous amount of detailed work has gone into the preparation of this pair of texts, and I find the conjunction of the Middle French with the Middle English is an aid in reading both. When the French is obscure, the English helps, and vice versa. As others have noted, Ansley's translation follows the French almost word for word, so that someone with French, and whose Middle English is weak, could use the French to familiarize themselves with Middle English, or the other way around. I suspect that this will make the edition of use to students of both languages. The ease of comparison also promises 'multiple interpretative possibilities for future scholars to consider' (p. li). This is a very careful, scholarly edition. If it has any fault, it is that it is so careful not to go beyond the available evidence that it offers no interesting new speculations concerning the circumstances of the translation or the influence of it and its French original on later English political debates concerning women's capacity to rule. We learn that the translator was a yeoman who attended Henry VII's funeral and the coronation of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. Both events took place in 1509, and at the latter event he was assigned to the 'Queen's Chamber' (p. xl). He was a yeoman of the cellar, married to Anne Polsted, and lived in Kent not far from William Thynne, the 1532 editor of Chaucer's Works. Thynne's nephew, Sir John Thynne, acquired one of the surviving copies of the translation, that at Longleat, which bears the name of William Brereton, who was charged and executed on the grounds of adultery with Anne Boleyn' (pp. xliii, lxi). Given the timing of its production—when after eleven years of marriage, Catherine of Aragon had provided Henry VIII with only a female heir—, and in the light of Susan Groag Bell's discoveries relating to the contemporary 'city of ladies' tapestries', which are mentioned...

Medici Women: The Making of a Dynasty in Grand Ducal Tuscany, ed. Judith C. Brown and Giovanna Benadusi

This volume of ten essays, edited by Judith C. Brown and Giovanna Benadusi, focuses on nine women—six outsiders who married into the Medici dynasty, and three Medici princesses who married into other princely families. The absences, perhaps surprisingly, are the two most famous Medici women of the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries—the French queen consorts, Catherine and Marie. That is not to deny the considerable value of this cohesive collection, as an exploration of the Medici family in European dynastic politics through the specific roles played by various female members. Throughout the collection there is an understandable emphasis on gender. The introduction sets the pitch emphatically, with a clear historiographical survey that looks back ultimately to the great eighteenth-century histories of the Medici, considering how Medici women have been marginalised over the course of more than two hundred years. As the introductory essay also notes, the balances in more recent scholarship have quite rightly shifted, and considerably more attention is paid now to female agency in court history across Europe more broadly; it might be added, the suggestions (made a couple of times in the volume) that the subject of female princely power remains an unstudied aspect of court history seem slightly wide of the mark in this respect.

The Game of Politics: Catherine de' Medici and Chess

[Extract] This essay explores the performative capacity of chess for the sixteenth-century French queen and regent, Catherine de' Medici. It argues that ludic activities such as chess, along with other games and pastimes at court, must be understood in their gendered political context. A number of scholars have considered whether the replacement of the vizier piece by a queen, the increased mobility of this game piece over the Middle Ages, and the connection to women in the sixteenth-century version of the game's name in various European languages (such as scacchi de la dama and les eschecs de la dame enragee) may have reflected changing perceptions about powerful women at European courts in the period.1 However, such shifts need not be attached to the visibility of specific women to be of significance to gender analyses of early modern power. Courts were intense political environments that brought together women and men and required the development of a range of activities to promote conduct that reinforced hierarchies. Courtly play was, therefore, a performance of power.

La princesa de Éboli: Cautiva del rey. Vida de Ana de Mendoza y de la Cerda (1540–1592) by Helen H. Reed and Trevor J. Dadson

Reed, Helen H. and Trevor J. Dadson. La princesa de Eboli: Cautiva del rey. Vida de Ana de Mendoza y de la Cerda (1540-1592). Madrid: Centro de Estudios Europa Hispanica y Marcial Pons Historia, 2015. 539 pp.Two distinguished scholars of early-modern literary history have come together to examine and contextualize the remarkable life of Ana de Mendoza y de la Cerda (1540-1592), the Princess of Eboli (hereafter Eboli or Dona Ana). Reed and Dadson anchor their study in the primary-source documents they compiled and glossed for an earlier partnership, the Epistolario e historia documental de Ana de Mendoza y de la Cerda, princesa de Eboli (Madrid, Iberoamericana; Frankfurt am Main, Vervuert, 2013). A collaborative spirit towards scholarly labors animates the book. As the authors explain in the preface, Reed had prepared a biography of Eboli in an initial draft in English. Dadson then joined her, translating this text into Spanish, adding material from his own archival work along the way. The authors also take great care to recognize the works on which they build, most notably Gregorio Maranon's classic biography of Antonio Perez and Esther Alegre Carvajal's series of studies on the Princess of Eboli.Reed and Dadson's foremost aim is to peel away the layers of myth and caricature that have accumulated around Eboli. In theater history, a particularly durable fiction took shape when Giuseppe Verdi-following Friedrich Schiller-transformed a complicated noblewoman from the storied Mendoza family into a Romantic character informed by stereotypes of Spain, blending motifs of Moorish allure with the darker visions of Inquisitorial oppression associated with the Black Legend. In his Don Carlos (debut 1867), Eboli is a secondary character who complicates the tragic love story, as she vies with Isabel de Valois for Don Carlos's love. The crowning moment of this mezzo-soprano part is the Veil Song of Act 2 (Au palais des fees; Nel giardin del bello in the Italian version). In Hispanic studies, Eboli has also assumed a somewhat villainous profile as the estranged patron responsible for subjecting Teresa of Avila to Inquisitorial scrutiny.To provide an accurate assessment of the full life in all its complexity, the authors present ten chapters organized with the precise chronology of traditional biography. Thus, they begin with a first chapter on Familia, infancia y educacion de Ana de Mendoza, continuing with nine more chapters focused on the following milestones: betrothal and marriage to the up-and-coming courtier Ruy Gomez de Silva (Chs. 2-3); the court of Isabel of Valois (Ch. 4); the organization of Pastrana as a ducal village (Ch. 5); her widowhood and fateful entanglement with Antonio Perez (Chs. 6-7); and finally, the murder of Juan de Escobedo and the resulting imprisonment (Chs. 8-10).Theater scholars will find Chapter 4 (En la corte de Isabel de Valois) of special interest, with its analysis of documents that record the emergence of a sophisticated palace theater in the milieu of Philip Il's third queen consort. Isabel of Valois sponsored over forty performances by professional actors between 1561 and 1567 in the room of the Alcazar palace known as the salon de comedias o saraos. Eboli, as a close contemporary and companion of the French queen, was a key protagonist among the court damas who acted in invenciones teatrales on such occasions as the feast of the Epiphany in 1564. The alluring portrait of Dona Ana in pastoral costume by Sofonisba Anguissola (ca. 1565) records the extent that popular literature informed the courtly pastimes. But the levity and sophistication here would contrast with the horrific consequences of Don Carlos's mental unraveling. Indeed, the chapter closes with the double tragedies of the royal heir's death while imprisoned by his father and the young queen's death in childbirth. Here, Reed and Dadson draw attention to the letter of condolence Eboli writes to Isabel's mother, France's queen mother Catherine de'Medici. …

The Little White Dress: Politics and Polyvalence in Revolutionary France

The slim, simple chemise of the 1800s came into fashion at the outbreak of the French Revolution. Believed to be a sartorial tribute to democracy modeled on an ancient Greek women’s gown, the dress became a staple of neoclassical style. In fact, however, its genealogy is much more complex. It was first worn by the French queen, whose reference was Caribbean, not Greek. Thereafter, Napoléon used the dress in an imperial context, shifting its meaning from Greece to Rome in line with his political agenda. Women’s magazines depicted the dress differently still: they presented exotic accessories to go along with the dress, such as liana-vines, Oriental-style tunics, and chain-link necklaces. Looking at these accessories, and at magazine descriptions, backgrounds, and stories, this essay shows how polyvalent the dress was. It brought to discussion a number of changing ideas about social politics, including colonialism, Jewish emancipation, and the abolition of slavery.