Eleanor of Austria's large jaw, Mary of Hungary's masculine appearance
If Brantome’s particularities about the Anne’s reveal a nervousness about the power of two women whom he also genuinely admired, his descriptions of Eleanor of Austria (1498—1558), sister of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (r.
1519—56) and second consort of Franpois I (1494—1547), suggest something quite different. Eleanor has been called “one of the most neglected of the French queens,” “a forgotten queen,” and “among the most invisible of the queens of France.”[402] A number of recent studies have begun to remedy the situation, revisiting the primary sources to uncover a much richer story than the traditional one of an effaced and little-loved woman. Art historians have highlighted how Eleanor asserted her Habsburg identity through her Spanish-style clothing choices in her portraits and through her patronage of the arts, while cultural historians emphasize the size and quality of her entourage, along with its “cosmopolitan air,” and suggest that the far from being effaced, the queen was a vibrant presence.Still, she remains understudied. Although Brantome in fact pays Eleanor little attention, blame for her invisibility cannot be laid at his door: she does not figure prominently in other French primary sources, either. Had he written about the queen in the effusive and glowing terms he reserved for the French women he praised she might have been more present in the history of French royalty, and she might also have been remembered differently. But along with a few neutral and/or banal words, he relates two rather grotesque anecdotes about her.[403] Before focusing on these, however, I create some context for re-interpreting what they might mean.
Comparing how Eleanor was regarded by her own family and other witnesses favorable to the Habsburgs to Brantome’s bizarre representations reveals a profound discrepancy.
Eleanor, eldest the six children of the Philip the Handsome of Burgundy and Juana, sometimes called La Loca, of Castile, was well-prepared, along with her sisters, Isabella and Marie, to promote the dynasty’s interests. The three girls were raised by their aunt Marguerite of Austria alongside their brother Charles, later Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, at her court in Malines—the two youngest children Ferdinand and Catherine grew up in Spain with their mother. Marguerite’s court (into which Anne Boleyn was welcomed in 1514), was122 | Queens, Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting renowned for its brilliance in letters, art, and music. The siblings’ pride in each other and their devotion to family manifests itself in their epistolary exchanges. In the massive collection of letters that Marie and Charles produced during the years 1532 and 1533 alone, they record their attention to the details of governing and profess mutual affection. They also manifest a tender attention to Eleanor’s situation at the French royal court.[404]
Recent scholars, aided in some cases by letters between Habsburg brides and their families, have revealed the ways in which the Habsburg women contributed to the flourishing of the dynasty from their new homes, Anne J. Cruz noting that the “vast correspondence produced by Habsburg women has allowed for a close examination of their relations with their families and political allies, as they formed virtual communities of letters across borders.”[405] Anne-Marie Jordan Gschwend writes that the “veneration of the Habsburg house ignited by Maximilian, and actively promoted by his grandson, Charles V, evolved into a collective family consciousness....”[406] Gschwend’s point finds reinforcement with the energetic support upon which Charles V drew throughout his life, the support of Marguerite of Austria, his brother, and his four sisters, Eleanor, Isabella, Marie, and Catherine. During Charles’s minority, his aunt Marguerite assumed the role of governor of the Netherlands.
On Marguerite’s death in 1530, Charles assigned the post to Marie, who had been freed for service by the death of her husband Louis II of Hungary.When Eleanor entered the French royal court as the queen of France, however, she stepped into a world in which she was immediately cast as an enemy. The Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor Charles V was the foremost rival of the French king, and, even though Eleanor’s marriage to Francois I was meant to seal the peace between the dynasties, the union brought no fundamental change.
For the reader, moving from a context where Eleanor was valued to one in which she was so little prized produces a shock. The first of Brantome’s particularities about Eleanor involves a bit of gossip that he claims to have learned from Madame de Fontaine-Chalandray, Claude Blosset, lady-in-waiting to the queen. Also known as the La Belle Torcy, Claude Blosset had served Eleanor from a young age first in Flanders and then France. Brantome describes La Belle Torcy as one of the wisest, most beautiful, virtuous and honest ladies it was possible to be; he then adds a particularity about her character, that “she let herself be effaced
Unpacking Brantome’s “Particularitez” ∣ 123 by no Spanish, German, Flemish, Italian, or any other woman.”[407] La Belle Torcy apparently was able to hold her own wherever she went.
Whatever positive qualities La Belle Torcy may have possessed, kindness seems not to have been one of them; in particular, she was not kind about her mistress. Brantome reports that he heard La Belle Torcy recount that Eleanor, when dressed, seemed to be a very beautiful princess, a verifiable assessment, as Brantome explains, because several people still at court in his day had actually seen the queen in person. She had indeed been of rich and lovely stature. But undressed, La Belle Torcy’s story goes, the queen appeared to have the body of a giant and the legs of a dwarf.[408]
The particularity feels like a betrayal, the most negative type of gossip, an exposure of something intimate, to a gawking listener.
The remark may have been essentially correct, if hyperbolic; perhaps Eleanor’s legs were short relative to her torso. Still, the literal information, whether true or false, conveyed by the piece of gossip is not its most important function. More interesting is what it implies about how Eleanor was regarded. La Belle Torcy, member of the old Norman family Estouteville and the Blosset family of Champagne,[409] was cultivating an exclusionary bond with her French listeners. Given Eleanor’s situation as sister of the French king’s greatest enemy, it is not surprising that loyal courtiers were prejudiced against her. But the particularity is more precise than that, mocking a mismatch between the queen’s appearance and reality. The sumptuous dress created the illusion of stature; it was a cover for something that was smaller than it appeared. The description as a whole suggests that Eleanor demonstrated a pride to which she she was not entitled. Also interesting in this context is that La Belle Torcy may herself have been a genuinely stately woman. Franpois I’s accounts record a gift of cloth to make dresses for some ladies in the queen’s household. She received 11 aulnes whereas the other ladies received 10.[410]Brantome reinforces the impression that Eleanor was perceived as inordinately proud in his second grotesque anecdote. He has just noted that Eleanor’s sister Queen Marie of Hungary was very beautiful, or so he gathers from the reports of people who had seen her and according to the portraits that he has seen. These portraits of Marie show “nothing of the ugly, nothing to reproach, except for her large mouth, thrust out in the Austrian manner.”[411] But, he hastens
to add, the mandibular prognathism did not in fact originate with the House of Austria but the House of Burgundy, from which she and Eleanor descended, their grandmother being Mary of Burgundy, as his anecdote confirms.
Having introduced the famous Habsburg jaw, Brantome goes on to associate it with Eleanor as well.
He claims that he heard a lady at court at the time recount thatonce Queen Eleanor, passing through Dijon, had stopped to pray at the monastery of the Chartreux there and visit the venerable sepulchers of her ancestors, the dukes of Burgundy. She was curious to have them opened, as several kings had had done for theirs. She saw there several [bodies] so well preserved and whole that she recognized several features, and, among others, the mouth in their face.[412] [413] On seeing these mouths, Eleanor revealed a deep fascination. She cried out Ha! I thought that we got our mouths from our Austrian ancestors, but now, according to what I see, we got them from Marie of Burgundy, our ancestor, and other dukes of Burgundy, our ancestors. If I ever see my brother the emperor I will tell him....'l6 The woman who had observed the incident assured Brantome that the queen had uttered the words as if the sight of the long-dead ancestral faces with their protruding jaws gave her pleasure. As for Brantome, he interprets Eleanor’s presumed remark as an avowal that the House of Burgundy was the equal of the House of Austria. Brantome agrees with the assessment, noting that the House of Burgundy had been founded by a son of France, Philip the Bold, and great good had come from it. Never had he seen four greater dukes than the dukes of Burgundy. In his deadpan acceptance of the hereditary mandibular prognathism as sign of something to be proud of Brantome is making fun of the queen’s smug attribution of the Habsburg jaw to her Burgundian relatives, that is, to the immediate family among whom she had grown up, rather than her Austrian relatives, like her grandfather Maximilian, with whom she would have had less personal contact. And yet, the particularity offers further intriguing information. Odd as it sounds, Eleanor genuinely may have regarded her own possession of the trait Unpacking Brantome’s “Particularitez” ∣ 125 as a valuable sign of her lineage. Once a particular trait—say, that jaw—entered the canon of Habsburg portraiture, it was in the sitter’s interest to have an artist paint him or her with it to signal their membership in the dynasty.... What better way to “prove” one’s purebred status as a Habsburg than to have a portrait painted with the trademark trait?[414] Or, as Lisa Mansfield notes, “portraits played a vital role in transmuting the Habsburg dynasty’s genetic disfigurement of mandibular prognathism (Habsburg jaw) into a powerful physiognomic symbol of imperial resolve.”[415] Eleanor, after all, was well pleased to be a member of the glorious House of Habsburg, a pride she demonstrated in her dress. When she first moved to Portugal she retained her Flemish fashion, and her heritage was honored by the adoption of the fashion by her new countrymen. An account of her marriage to her first husband, Manuel of Portugal, in Crato on 24 November 1518 describes “the splendid events, sumptuous clothes, rich gems and elaborate ceremonial, both Portuguese and Burgundian, observed by the Portuguese court. In honor of the new queen, king and courtiers wore Flemish clothes.”[416] During her entry into Lisbon 20—21 January 1521, the city drew on the long tradition of Flemish civic pageants and festivities to welcome the new queen. Moreover, the king and the court dressed themselves in Flemish clothing during the ceremonies, and Eleanor and her ladies continued to wear Flemish dress during her short ten- ure.[417] When Eleanor moved to France as queen of Francois I, she deliberately represented herself as Spanish, demonstrating her pride in the expansion of the House of Habsburg to include its Spanish territories. “During her formal entry into Bayonne in 1530, in Spanish dress, she bore herself ‘like a princess conscious of her line, source of all virtue and of imperial luster.’ ” writes Gschwend.[418] Chroniclers specifically refer to the Spanish mode of dress of the queen and her 126 | Queens, Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting ladies, an impression confirmed by portraits of the queen revealing the Spanish style of her hair, clothing, and jewels.[419] And it seems that Eleanor’s pride in her lineage may have extended to her jaw. Whether or not Brantome’s tale of the Burgundian origins of the Habsburg jaw is literally true, it reinforces the impression of a proud princess, visually displaying her heritage, and the amused reactions of the courtiers she had not won over precisely because of that heritage. Brantome effectively diminishes the arrogant queen by reducing the most prominent outward sign of her lineage to a joke. Different from his tepid attitude toward Eleanor, Brantome sings the praises of the queen’s sister, Marie of Hungary, who served as the emperor’s regent for the Habsburg Burgundian territories after the death of the siblings’ aunt Marguerite. As I have noted, Brantome mentions Marie’s beauty, except for her Habsburg jaw, and refers to her several times as a valiant foe of the French during her regency. Following his discussion of Eleanor’s visit to the sepulchers in Dijon, he returns to Marie, remarking again that she was beautiful, pleasant, and very loveable. However, he then undercuts his praise with a particularity, adding that she was actually a bit what we might call “butch” (“hommasse”).[420] He does not intend the adjective as a compliment, as his earlier declaration that Catherine de Medicis was not “hommasse” indicates. No woman rode a horse more skillfully, writes Brantome of Catherine, and yet, she was not “hommasse” in form or manner, like “a bizarre Amazon,” rather, she was a “refined princess, beautiful, most agreeable, and sweet.”[421] As for Marie, Brantome quickly notes that she was not any the worse in love because of her masculine air, or in war, which was her principal exercise. In Eleanor’s case, the queen’s pride in her jaw gave Brantome an excuse for relating some snide gossip. As for Mary, he seems to be doing something different. The particularity in this case surely evinces anxiety at Mary’s effectiveness as a Habsburg, as protecting the family lands. Brantome compares the queen’s combativeness to that of her aunt and predecessor as regent, Marguerite of Austria, who had “ruled the Low Countries with as much sweetness as her niece ruled with rigor.”[422] But he also discusses Marie’s effectiveness. For 23 years, she helped her brother Charles V, who could not have ruled his massive territories without his sister. That was indisputable. The particularity in this case serves to acknowledge Marie as powerful while snidely commenting on her lack of femininity, a classic case of Brantome’s gossip, giving with one hand, taking with the other. In other words, he does not find the Habsburg jaw attractive and wields it as a weapon to puncture the proud Habsburg sisters. Brantome’s particularities cannot be taken as literally accurate descriptions of a woman’s features or actions, but, approached as pieces of gossip, they reveal something about how Brantome’s “dames” were regarded within court circles. As we have seen, Brantome often offers a particularity in the form of a remark that someone shared with him, even describing the circumstances under which he received the information. Like the stories that circulate about the private lives of public figures or even colleagues, Brantome’s recountings of particularities evoke the image of friends deepening their ties by creating a temporary foil against whom to define themselves as a group, and, like such stories, the particularities often suggest a distorted anxiety or jealousy. “Gossip’s precondition is physical intimacy,” writes Karen Adkins, comparing gossip to primate grooming: The symbolism in grooming is clear: yes, hominids are checking in with one another, but the checking-in is all immediate and direct. The transition from grooming to language marks the ability to check in about each other in part by discussing somebody or something else; with gossip, then, indirection emerges.[423] The word gossip began as a noun, Adkins points out, noting that the “ ‘godsibbe,’ or god-sibling, wasn’t simply a casual declaration of family intimacy; it was a formal role of pastoral and baptismal sponsorship.”[424] Gossip is by definition not officially verified, but it demonstrates what the gossipers imagine might be possible about the object of their talk. Their emotional reactions to a piece of gossip—sympathy, glee, horror—create bonds among the gossipers and reveal as much about them as the one under discussion. Brantome’s assessment of Eleanor in particular reveals how the court of Franpois I felt about the queen, even when the memoirist resorts to bizarre details. Brantome’s parting comment on the queen summarizes nicely in neutral language what his nasty anecdotes imply and what the courtiers knew to be true: she became the queen of France at the request of the emperor, in order to serve as the firm seal of peace and public tranquillity, but the seal did not serve long; because war followed, cruel as ever, but it was not the fault of the poor princess, because she did all she could. And, for all this, the king her husband did not treat her any better, for he cursed the alliance.[425]