The Queen's Library: Image-Making at the Court of Anne of Brittany, 1477-1514

Introduction

Introduction I begin my investigation with a revealing image. The stunning miniature that appears in the lavishly illuminated royal copy of the French translation of Petrarch’s Remèdes de l’une ou l’autre Fortune (BnF ms. ffr. 225) features Anne of Brittany holding her rather adult-looking four-year-old daughter, Claude of France, on her lap, surrounded by ladies of the court (fol. 165r) (Figure 1).1 One of the few extant images of Anne together with Claude, future queen of France herself,2 this portrayal of the queen, her daughter, and her circle of dames d’honneur seemingly venerates the females of the French court as its own self-contained unit. Yet, staged at the lower left section of the miniature, below the larger, more imposing figure of Reason and the accusatory figure of her husband, King Louis XII, backed up by his male protégés (including Cardinal Georges d’Amboise), Anne of Brittany and Claude of France are not in fact presented here in all their glory, as one might have expected. For in its mise en scène of Louis XII’s confrontation with Reason in the context of “Adverse Fortune,”3 this visual rendition of Petrarch’s chapter on “Being a King Without Son” conveys contemporary royal anxieties about the lack of a male heir.4 Whether or not this scenario is directly related to the recent death of the royal couple’s three-week-old son,5 this image confirms that just five years after Anne’s marriage to her second husband, Louis XII, and four years after the birth of their daughter Claude, considerable concern had surfaced at the French court about the absence of a male heir.6 The text that accompanies the BnF fr. 225 miniature reinforces this visual staging of royal apprehensions through the voice of Douleur (Sorrow). Presumably the French king’s alter ego, she complains at length about the lack of a male successor. Yet Rayson continuously responds with arguments demonstrating that the absence of a male heir has its advantages.7 Thus, the text offers critical insight into the scene depicted in the miniature, in which Rayson essentially consoles the French king, who seems to take to task his own wife and daughter. Indeed Anne’s portrayed position is a humble one—her eyes 1. Francesco Petrarch, Les Remèdes de l’une ou l’autre Fortune (translation), Paris BnF ffr. 225, fol. 165r: Louis XII confronts Reason about the absence of a male heir. Bibliothèque Nationale de France. 3 introduction are cast down—one that contrasts with most other images of the queen I discuss below in which she appears alone or alongside one of her husbands in regal splendor and in a dignified pose. Depicted in this miniature as a female unit that essentially emblematizes Anne of Brittany’s failure in her most anticipated function as royal spouse, mother and daughter appear at first glance to be visually celebrated, but are in fact pictorially and textually questioned. In the end, Rayson’s argument as presented in the accompanying text implicitly supports the status quo, and even offers hope that God will rectify the situation.8 However, this supposedly consolatory text-image combination belies court realities. For the absence of a male heir to the French throne would, despite Rayson’s efforts to provide solace in this translation of Petrarch ’s famous work,9 continue to weigh on the royal couple.10 In a sense, Rayson’s silence in this passage about female offspring suggests that producing a daughter had little bearing on a ruler’s current power or on the future force of the realm.11 In reality, the marriage of a royal daughter could impact the future of the kingdom, and the designation of a husband for Claude proved in fact to be another particularly sensitive issue during Anne’s queenship. While one of the French queen’s few powers involved matching appropriate husbands with the females at her court, in particular her own daughters, Anne would ultimately lose her battle to marry Claude to a non-French prince in an effort to protect the independence of her duchy of Brittany. Although the queen orchestrated Claude’s engagement to Charles of Luxembourg of the House of Austria through the 1504 Treaties of Blois, Louis XII outwitted his wife, manipulating circumstances that led...