Under the Rubble: Renée de France and Fragments of Art from Her Italian Years

Abstract

Showing the role of artworks in breaking down prevailing and oversimplified binary oppositions, this chapter contributes to an on-going revision of Renata di Francia’s image by examining a sampling of Ferrarese art connected with the Estense ducal court, as well as other female and male ruling kin. Upon her arrival in late 1528, Renata’s interactions with Isabella d’Este began amid splendid French tapestries, signs of a deep-seated on-going Franco-Italian cultural exchange. She went on to employ personally a series of artists who served the legitimate and illegitimate Este dynasty, including Girolamo da Carpi, while Primaticcio and no doubt Serlio served as bridges to the French court and Marguerite de Navarre. Wilson-Chevalier investigates a variety of often-overlooked artistic media to reassess Renata’s position in the line of descent of the preceding duchesses of Ferrara, considering ways she and her Italian “Nicodemite” allies inflected the superb Sala della Vigna frescoes in the Este delizia of Belriguardo and fleshing out Renée’s profile as a formidably resilient French princess during an uncomfortably complex age of religious and political change. Wilson-Chevalier demonstrates that Renée, due to her commanding rank and particularly fine education, assumed a more important place in Ferrara’s tendentially tolerant mainstream culture than has generally been acknowledged.