The lost tapestries of the City of ladies : Christine de Pizan's Renaissance legacy / Susan Groag Bell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bell, Susan G.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Tapestry, Renaissance.

Christine, de Pisan, approximately 1364-approximately 1431. Livre de la cité des dames--Illustrations.

Christine.

Women in art.

Kings and rulers.

Art patronage.

Europe--Kings and rulers--Art patronage.

Europe.

Genre:

Pictures.

Physical Description:

xvii, 254 pages, 8 pages of plates : illustrations (some color), map ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, [2004]

Summary:

This Richly Textured Book follows tantalizing clues in the author's hunt for a group of missing artistic masterpieces. Susan Groag Bell recounts both her long search for a series of sixteenth-century tapestries that celebrated women and her efforts to understand the meaning of these tapestries for Queen Elizabeth I of England and the other powerful women who owned them. Opening a new window on the lives of noblewomen in the Renaissance, on the brilliantly colored tapestries that were the ultimate artistic luxury of the day, and on the popular and influential writer Christine de Pizan (c. 1364-c. 1430), Bell pursues an absorbing mystery from centuries past to today.

The tapestries around which this story revolves are linked to Christine de Pizan's Book of the City of Ladies, orginally published six hundred years ago, in 1405. The book honors two hundred women: warriors, scientists, queens, philosophers, and builders of cities. Although twenty-five manuscripts of the City of Ladies still exist, references to the tapestries based on them are elusive. Bell takes us along as she tracks down records of six sets of the tapestries whose owners included-in addition to Elizabeth I of England-Margaret of Austria and Anne of Brittany, Queen of France. Bell examines the intriguing details of these women's lives-their arranged marriages, their power, their affairs of state-asking what interest they had in owning these particular tapestries. Could the tapestries have represented their thinking? As Bell reveals the historical, linguistic, and cultural aspects of this unique story, she also gives a fascinating account of medieval and early-Renaissance tapestry production and of Christine de Pizan's remarkable life and legacy.

Contents:

The first clue

Christine de Pizan

Queen Elizabeth's tapestries

Tapestry production in the early Renaissance

Margaret of Austria and the Tournai tapestries

Anne of Brittany's "Cité des Dames"

An eight-panel French set

The "Cietie of Dammys" in Scotland

The "Citie of Ladies" at the English court

Christine de Pizan's legacy to the Renaissance.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 225-240) and index.

ISBN:

0520234103

OCLC:

55207738