Textual and Iconographical Ambivalence in the Late Medieval Representation of Women CYNTHIA J. BROWN Department of French and Italian, University of California, Santa Barbara In December 1491 Margaret of Austria, betrothed to Charles VIII from a young age and raised at the French Court, was abruptly displaced by Anne of Brittany, who, as a result of political machinations, unexpectedly married the French king. This manoeuvre, which exacerbated already-existing hostilities between France and the Austro-Burgundian dynasty, set the stage for a bitter, if distant, rivalry between two of the most important women of rank in Continental Europe during the late medieval period. 1 Although adversaries on the political stage and even in the literary arena, as evidenced by competition between their respective courts for the writer Jean Lemaire de Beiges,2 a striking number of similarities bound Anne of Brittany and Margaret of Austria, whose political and cultural achievements set an impres­ sive benchmark by which to measure the status of female authority at the dawn of the Renaissance. Each was twice a foreign bride with no surviving male children; each outlived at least one husband and benefited from the independence that widowhood afforded medieval women. Although traditional political pawns during their early years, when the men who ruled their lives were constantly reshaping European alliances, Anne and Margaret gained prom­ inence as autonomous female rulers: Anne controlled Brittany 1 This antipathy eventually ended up in a showdown over the future of much of Europe when Margaret's nephew, Charles V, whom she herself had raised following her brother's death, was elected Emperor in 1519 over Francis I, king of France and husband of Anne's daughter, Claude. 2 For details, see Pierre Jodogne, Jean Lemaire de Beiges, ecrivain franco-bourguignon (Brussels: Palais des Academies, 1972), 113-15, 127-31, and Cynthia J. Brown, The shaping of history and poetry in late medieval France (Birmingham: Summa, 1985), 136-7, n. 54. 205 206 BULLETIN JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY from her father's death in 1488 until her own in 1514; Margaret served as regent (1507-15) and then governor (1518-30) of the Netherlands almost continuously from 1507 until she died in 1530. While Anne played a critical role in the negotiation of her marriages to two successive French kings (Charles VIII, Louis XII), Margaret's direct involvement in negotiating the Treaty of Cambrai in 1508 and the so-called Paix des Dames in 1529 provides evidence of her significant diplomatic influence. In a more far-reaching manner than their husbands, who were less inclined to support literature and the arts, Anne of Brittany and Margaret of Austria were also responsible for royal culture at the time over a considerable geographical area. My current research project explores the larger issues surrounding female modes of empowerment in late-medieval Europe, by means of a comparative study of the images of Anne of Brittany and Margaret of Austria, of their models (including Anne of Beaujeu, Jeanne of Navarre, Margaret of York and Mary of 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 measure on the books that defined them: those for and about them, those commissioned by them, those they inherited and received as gifts.4 In the belief that such books are virtual repositories of late medieval image-making in both verbal and visual terms, I consider 3 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 on earlier centuries, on English women of rank, and on religious figures. See, for example, The cultural patronage of medieval women, ed. June McCash (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996); Women's lives in medieval Europe, ed. Emilie Arm (New York: Routledge, 1993); Women and sovereignty, ed. Louise Fradenburg (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992); Women and power in the Middle Ages, eds Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988); Joan Ferrante, Woman as image in medieval literature from the twelfth century to Dante (New York: Columbia University, 1985). More often than not these studies constitute edited volumes of significant scholarly contributions, but they do not form a coherent, theoretical whole. With the exception of work by Elizabeth McCartney 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 has taken account of French female sovereignty in the late medieval period; even less attention has been given to related questions in the Netherlands. Figures like Margaret and Anne have been examined through the histories of their respective countries, but never together in 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: The British Library, 1997)), have begun to offer more than a bibliographical study of the central role of books in the lives of medieval women. Their latest volume in particular promotes the multidisciplinary study of text-image relationships. See also Patricia Stirnemann, '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 Legare, 'Reassessing women's libraries in late medieval France: the case of Jeanne de LavaP, Renaissance Studies, 10 (June 1996), 209-36..