"Chevaleresse" to "Dame Amaczon": A Woman's Vision of Femininity at the Court of René d'Anjou

Abstract: Le Livre de Thezeo , the first translation into French of Boccacio's Teseida delle Nozze d'Emilia , was produced at the court of René d'Anjou (1409–80) during the second half of the fifteenth century. In La Théséïde , its single extant illustrated manuscript, the clear focus on Princess Emilia's moral struggles, between her Amazonian culture and the Athenian world in which she followed her sister Queen Hyppolita, reflects the debate on love and gendered roles that engaged the highly educated Angevin-Provençal courtiers. Considering René's second wife Jeanne de Laval (1433–98) to be the book's commissioner, this essay examines her reimagined archetype of femininity in conjunction with Christine de Pizan's (c. 1364–c.1431) image of the Amazon queen in her Livre de la Cité des dames . Keating argues that the manuscript commissioned by Jeanne paints a commemorative portrait of Isabelle de Lorraine (1400–53) as Emilia the "Dame Amaczon," depicting René's first wife as a model of female political authority and Jeanne's vision of the role of noble women in the Early Renaissance society. Barthélemy d'Eyck's visualization of the Greek legend for his contemporary audience and of Emilia's internal debates makes this book a remarkable manuscript that strengthened Jeanne's reputation as a cultured bibliophile.