Photo. Giraudon.
QUEEN CLAUDE OF FRANCE. RENEE OF FRANCE, DUCHESS OF FERRARA.
Attributed to J. Perréal. About 1515. Attributed to Jean Clouet.
Musée Condé.
To face page 21.
A slight sketch shows Madeleine de Valois as a child. This princess was married at the age of seventeen to King James V of Scotland; and she is said to have been so delighted at the prospect of becoming a Queen that she soon consoled herself for having to leave la douce France for so rigorous a climate. She was, however, extremely delicate and died six months later, to the unbounded grief of her husband, who for years could not be persuaded to remarry. Princess Marguerite, on hearing of her elder sister’s untimely death, shut herself up in her own apartments and refused food to the great injury of her health; and it was only by the urgent persuasions of her aunt Marguerite d’Angoulême that she was induced to resume her morning walks in the gardens of Fontainebleau and so by degrees to recover. A variety of drawings at Chantilly present this young princess at different periods of her life; and in the earlier of these, as in the portraits of her sister and two brothers, we can trace the handiwork of Jean Clouet. A painted portrait of her (which formerly belonged to Gaignières) in the Tribune at Chantilly, is attributed to Corneille de Lyon, and on the margin is written “Marg. de France, Duchesse de Berry.” She is represented with auburn hair and blue eyes like her brother the Dauphin, whose portrait hangs in the same room. The words “Corneille fecit” are written on the back of the frame by Gaignières himself, who in so doing settled its authorship. Whilst the Dauphin seems in his portrait to be but eighteen years of age his sister Marguerite looks thirty, so that we may conclude that she sat at a much later period. The numerous drawings that François Clouet made of this Princess[100] reveal that amiable disposition so much praised by Brantôme. He speaks of her as “la bonté du monde, charitable, magnifique, liberale, sage, vertueuse, si accostayle et douce que rien plus.” She remained unmarried until she had reached the age of thirty-six, because she declined (it is said) to marry one of her brother’s subjects and yet did not wish to leave her beloved France. When quite young she had accompanied her aunt Marguerite to Nice, where she fixed her choice upon the heir of the House of Savoy, to whom after twenty-one years’ interval she was, when adverse political complications had finally passed away, eventually united.
She was meanwhile much admired at the French Court for her learning. A Latin and Greek scholar of merit, she studied Aristotle’s Ethics and is reported to have sent to Paris for at least three different editions of Cicero. She had no special gift in the use of the pen like her versatile aunt,[101] the authoress of the Heptameron, although she occupied her mind with continual study and much careful reading. She patronised the poet Du Bellay, who translated for her Bembo and Naugerius and she induced him to assert that no century would ever extinguish the memory of Boccaccio and Petrarch. Moreover, she attracted to the French Court Baccio del Bene, of whom Ronsard said that he was the only Italian author worthy of earnest consideration at this period. Her learning acquired for her the sobriquet of “Pallas”; her emblem was an olive-branch; and she was looked upon as the symbol of Platonism in its highest form. Her father, King Francis, paid but little attention to her; but her brother, Henri II, loved and esteemed her greatly and when she married ordered for her adornment magnificent robes, costly lace and jewels, and organised great festivities. It was on the occasion of these nuptials, however, that the terrible tragedy occurred which brought about His Majesty’s death. Like her aunt Rénée at Ferrara Marguerite[102] in her home in Piedmont never ceased to long for her “sweet France”; and every Frenchman who passed through Turin, on presenting himself at her Court, was warmly welcomed and munificently entertained. With her enlightened views she was able to act as mediator in the religious differences which raged so violently in France during the sixteenth century, and which extended into the country of her adoption; and she protected, as far as she was able, the persecuted Waldenses. The last years of her life were devoted chiefly to the education of her son, Charles Emmanuel of Savoy; and Michel de l’Hôpital declared that this Prince owed the success of his career entirely to her. The French Ambassador at Constantinople left to her his entire fortune, and the poet Du Bellay on his death-bed wept bitterly because he was unable to take a last farewell of her. When she herself died there perished with her all that was best in the spirit of the neo-Platonism initiated by her aunt, the first Marguerite; so that it presently fell entirely to pieces under the influence of the third Marguerite, youngest daughter of Catherine de Medicis.