OF SIX MEDLEVAL WOMEN 



in the habit of the Order strewn with the arms 

 of Artois. Jean Aloul, of Tournai, has been 

 suggested as the sculptor, since it is known 

 from the accounts that he was working for the 

 Countess at Arras in 1323. This statue (known 

 to us through a drawing, now at Brussels, made 

 in 1602) is of interest to-day because, judging 

 from the character expressed in the face, it 

 seems probable that it was a portrait, and not 

 simply imagery. This conjecture seems all the 

 more likely when we compare the statue with a 

 miniature painted more than a hundred years 

 later by Jean Fouquet in Les Grandes Chroniques 

 de France (Bib. Nat.), portraying the marriage 

 of King Charles the Fourth with his second 

 wife, Marie de Luxembourg. In this picture a 

 lady, heavily coiffed, and with features suggestive 

 of those of the statue, but with anguish written 

 upon them, turns away from the ceremony as if 

 it were all too painful. If this unwilling guest 

 represents Mahaut, her woeful look is intelligible 

 when we recall the sad story connected with 

 Charles's first wife, Mahaut's daughter Blanche, 

 married when she was but fifteen, and whose 

 beauty was so dazzling that Froissart records 

 that " she was one of the most beautiful women 

 in the world. " Accused of an intrigue with a 

 gentleman of the Court, she was imprisoned in 

 the Chateau-Gaillard, where she remained, with 

 ^shorn head, until, shortly after Charles ascended 

 the throne, the Pope declared the marriage null. 

 Then, whilst the, king wedded another, the sad 



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