37

For two decades now, significant studies have dealt with French princesses and queens from the Late Middle Ages. My article fits into this field of study, in the wider context of the history of women, and I continue some work begun several years ago on the place and role of women in the medieval art trades. I have sought here to consider another side of the relation of women to art and culture, regarding the history of taste and the history of gender; this line of inquiry was already broached at a 2012 colloquium in Lille about the seals of the French princesses and queens. I have considered a small number of manuscripts by Jean Pucelle and his successor Jean le Noir, already well known, or so it seems, and intended for the royal family and court. Those manuscripts have been approached along three main lines. The first one regards the workshops—this ‘Pucelle cluster’ that comes to light from the scholarly literature, in particular since Kathleen Morand in 1961–1962. The second line concerns the persons who commissioned or owned the manuscripts, highlighting family networks. This was an essential aspect of our inquiry since it had a bearing, in particular, on the commission and ownership of one of the most important Pucelle manuscripts, the Bréviaire de Jeanne de Belleville, a key item in understanding the production of other Pucelle and ‘post-Pucelle’ manuscripts at the royal court in the fourteenth century. It was necessary to grasp this Jeanne de Belleville’s personality, overlooked by historians (with the noteworthy exception of John Bell Henneman) and hidden behind her Breton legend as an adventuress. The last line, related to the second one, is the chronology of commissions, which has been revised for some items, including the Heures de Jeanne de Navarre. In conclusion, it turns out that beyond the type of books commissioned—most of them devotional ones and whose contents make them books owned mostly by women—, it is a matter of taste that prompted those French princesses and queens to commission illuminated manuscripts. Apparently, it is those women indeed who brought into fashion Jean Pucelle and a style whose characteristics will be adopted until the 1380s by a very small group of artists, Jean le Noir being the most gifted.