’Le Sceptre et la Quenouille’. Being a woman between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

This could have been the umpteenth failed exhibition on women (see article), but it isn’t. Le Sceptre et la Quenouille. Being a woman between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance is remarkable in every way. Curated by Elsa Gomez, curator in charge of the Antiquity, Middle Ages and Renaissance collections at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Tours, and Aubrée David-Chapy, agrégé and doctorate in modern history at the Sorbonne, with the support of a strong scientific committee of art historians, historians and archaeologists specialising in the period, the multidisciplinary exhibition offers an unprecedented overview of the last thirty years of research into the history of women and gender. Three decisive decades that saw women "for a long time [...] faded into the shadows of history", as Georges Duby and Michelle Perrot wrote in the preamble to the five volumes of their pioneering Histoire des femmes en Occident published in 1991, become a legitimate and privileged subject.

1. Joos van Cleve (1485-1540/1541)
Portrait of a Woman, known as Presumed Portrait of Princess Isabeau of Austria, c. 1525-1530
Oil on panel - 67.4 x 52 cm
Tours, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours
Photo: Tours, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours

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2. Hans Baldung Grien (1484/1485-1545)
The Witches’ Sabbath, 1510
Colour wood engraving - 37.4 x 26 cm
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France
Photo: BnF

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Nearly one hundred and twenty works have been brought together, including manuscripts, prints, paintings, sculptures, tapestries, archives, objets d’art and archaeological objects from some thirty French public collections, foremost among them the Bibliothèque nationale de France, a partner in the exhibition, the Musée du Louvre and the Musée national de la Renaissance-château d’Écouen. From the collections of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Tours, only a very small number of sculptures and paintings are on display, including the…