Pleasure and Politics at the Court of France. The Artistic Patronage of Queen Marie of Brabant (1260-1321)

Harvey Miller Studies in Medieval and Early Renaissance Art History (HMSAH 64) T. Chapman Hamilton Pleasure and Politics at the Court of France. The Artistic Patronage of Queen Marie of Brabant (1260-1321) Add to basket ->Add to basket 328 p., 37 b/w ill. + 140 colour ill., 220 x 280 mm, 2019 ISBN: 978-1-905375-68-4 Languages: English Hardback The publication is available. Retail price: EUR 160,00 print Share/Save/Bookmark Awarded with the 2020 Annual Book Prize of the International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA) For her commissioning and performance of a French vernacular version of the Arabic tale of the Thousand and One Nights - recorded in one of the most vivid and sumptuous extant late thirteenth-century manuscripts - as well as for her numerous other commissions, Queen Marie of Brabant (1260-1321) was heralded as an intellectual and literary patron comparable to Alexander the Great and Charlemagne. Nevertheless, classic studies of the late medieval period understate Marie's connection to the contemporary rise of secular interests at the French court. Pleasure and Politics seeks to reshape that conversation by illustrating how the historical and material record reveals the queen's essential contributions to the burgeoning court. This emerging importance of the secular and redefinition of the sacred during the last decades of Capetian rule becomes all the more striking when juxtaposed to the pious tone of the lengthy reign of Louis IX (1214-1270), which had ended just four years before Marie's marriage to his son. That Marie often chose innovative materials and iconographies for these objects - ones that would later in the fourteenth century become the norm - signals her impact on late medieval patronage. Pleasure and Politics examines Marie's life beginning with her youth in Brabant, to her entry into Paris in 1274 accompanied by her retinue of courtiers, artists, objects, and ideas from the northern courts of Brabant, Flanders, and Artois. It continues with her elaborate coronation held for the first time in the Sainte-Chapelle the following year, her years as queen of France - often full of intrigue - and her long, productive widowhood, until her death and burial in 1321. With a focus on her Brabantine and Carolingian heritage joined to her status as French queen - often expressed through pioneering styles of heraldry - her commissions included ceremonies, marriage treaties, and intercessions, as well as a stunning collection of jewels, seals, manuscripts, reliquaries, sculpture, stained glass, and architecture that she gathered and built around her. This study also reveals Marie's regular collaboration with family, friends, and artists, in particular that with the poet Adenet le Roi, women of the French court like Blanche of France (1252-1320), and relatives from the north like Robert of Artois (1250-1302). With this broader view, it also analyzes the dynamics of Marie's patronage and its impact on contemporary and future women and men of the royal house. Court, culture, politics, and gender - these are the themes that flow throughout Marie of Brabant's life and tie together the material effects of a long, pleasure-filled existence enlivened by the politics of Europe on the cusp of a new age. Review "This lavishly produced book explores the artistic and literary patronage of Marie of Brabant (.) Bringing together scattered material and research, this sprawling study gives Marie her full due." (Lindy Grant, in The Burlington Magazine, 162, May 2020, p. 456) « Ce très beau livre de Tracy Chapman Hamilton, à la belle et complète iconographie illustre parfaitement le rôle central tenu par une reine dont le patronage a inauguré celui d'une longue suite de souveraines qui ont donné une impulsion majeure aux différents arts de la fin du XIIIe et le début du XIVe siècle.» (Élisabeth Lalou, dans Francia Recensio, 2, 2020) codice articolo 012821 - Language : English text