‘Pleasure and Politics at the Court of France. The Artistic Patronage of Queen Marie of Brabant (1260-1321)‘ by Tracy Chapman Hamilton has been awarded with the 2020 Annual Book Prize of the International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA).

“Tracy Chapman Hamilton presents an intellectually rich recuperation of an understudied Gothic patron, refined aesthete, and politically savvy survivor in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Paris. In this exquisite, impeccably researched and abundantly illustrated cultural history, the author examines ways in which a medieval queen asserted political influence through systematic patronage. Marie also created the model later queens, such as Marie’s granddaughter, Jeanne d’Evreux, would emulate at the end of the Capetian dynasty, and long into the tumultuous Valois period of the Hundred Years’ War. Given the author’s extensive firsthand experience with developments in feminist art historical practice since the 1990s, the book doubles as a historiographic journey of both medieval and modern struggle and renewal, supplying an exemplary model of herstory for others to follow. Manuscripts, shrines, seals, funerary sculpture, reliquaries, and stained glass illustrate an extraordinary medieval life in which one royal woman, Marie, exerted Brabantine influence over courtiers in Paris, supplied a catalyst for the development of vernacular French traditions in verse, lyric and song, cultivated pilgrimage, and supplied a cultural linchpin fostering the arts at the turn of the fourteenth century in medieval France.”
Citation from the ICMA Book Prize Committee

More Info

Pleasure and Politics at the Court of France.
The Artistic Patronage of Queen Marie of Brabant (1260-1321)
by Tracy Chapman Hamilton

ISBN 978-1-905375-68-4

 

About the Author

Tracy Chapman Hamilton
Virginia Commonwealth University

More Info: tracychapmanhamilton.com