No. 266. A Queen and her Damsels at Work.
Some of the more elegant female accomplishments, which were unknown in the earlier ages, were now coming into vogue. Dancing was, as already stated, a more favourite amusement than ever, and it received a new éclat from the frequent introduction of new dances, of which some of the old popular writers give us long lists. Some of these, too, were of a far more active and exciting description than formerly. One of the personages in the early interlude of “The Four Elements,” talks of persons—
That shall both daunce and spryng,
And torne clene above the grounde,
With fryscas and with gambawdes round,
That all the hall shall ryng.
No. 267. A Lady Artist.
Music, also, was more extensively cultivated as a domestic accomplishment; and it was a more common thing to meet with ladies who indulged in literary pursuits. Sometimes, too, the ladies of the fifteenth century practised drawing and painting,—arts which, instead of being, as formerly, restricted almost to the clergy, had now passed into the hands of the laity, and were undergoing rapid improvement. The illuminated manuscript of “Boccace des Nobles Femmes,” which furnished the subject of our last cut, contains several pictures of ladies occupied in painting, one of which (illustrating the chapter on “Marcie Vierge”) is represented in our cut [No. 267]. The lady has her palette, her colour-box, and her stone for grinding the colours, much as an artist of the present day would have, though she is seated before a somewhat singularly formed framework. She is evidently painting her own portrait, for which purpose she uses the mirror which hangs over the colour-box. It is rather curious that the tools which lie by the side of the grinding-stone are those of a sculptor, and not those of a painter, so that it was no doubt intended we should suppose that she combined the two branches of the art. In one of the illuminations of the manuscript of the “Romance of the Rose,” which has been quoted before, preserved in the British Museum, we have a picture of a male painter, copied in our cut [No. 268], and intended to represent Apelles, who is working with a palette and easel, exactly as artists do at the present day: both he and our lady artist in the cut are evidently painting on board. We begin now also to trace the existence of a great number of domestic sports and pastimes, some of which still remain in usage, but which we have not here room to enumerate.
No. 268. A Painter at his Easel.
Out of doors, the garden continued to be the favourite resort of the ladies. It would be easy to pick out numerous descriptions of gardens from the writers of the fifteenth century. Lydgate thus describes the garden of the rich “churl:”— Whilom ther was in a smal village,
As myn autor makethe rehersayle,
A chorle, whiche hadde lust and a grete corage
Within hymself, be diligent travayle,
To array his gardeyn with notable apparayle,
Of lengthe and brede yelicke (equally) square and longe,
Hegged and dyked to make it sure and stronge.
Alle the aleis were made playne with sond (sand),
The benches (banks) turned with newe turvis grene,
Sote herbers (sweet beds of plants), with condite (fountain) at the honde,
That wellid up agayne the sonne schene,
Lyke silver stremes as any cristalle clene,
The burbly wawes (bubbling waves) in up boyling,
Rounde as byralle ther beamys out shynynge.
Amyddis the gardeyn stode a fressh lawrer (laurel),
Theron a bird syngyng bothe day and nyghte.
And at a somewhat later period, Stephen Hawes, in his singular poem entitled “The Pastime of Pleasure,” describes a larger and more magnificent garden. Amour arrives at the gate of the garden of La Bel Pucel, and requests the portress to conduct him to her mistress—