Louise of Savoy’s Epistles of the Heroines as a Fashion Statement

Abstract: This article examines issues that surround portraits of ancient heroines in a manuscript commissioned by the French noblewoman Louise of Savoy at the end of the fifteenth century. With a focus on the images of Phaedra and Laodamia, this article explores how clothes worn by the sitter amplify, confirm, and transform the subject’s identity in relation to the many roles women played at the French court, such as wives and regents, and through which they exercised their influence. Through meaningful representations of dress, the manuscript emerges as a subtle commentary on contemporary court politics in light of the ancient examples and moral principles they illustrate, and in particular as an implicit and subtle argument in support of the significant role and efficacy of women in politics. The multiplicity of identity that clothing constructs for the sitter ushers in new understandings of royal- and noblewomen’s political, social, and intellectual aspirations.