AGNES SOREL 



confiscated, and his life in danger, was obliged 

 to fly the country, and died fighting, in the 

 Pope's service, against the Turk. 



Of the beauty of Agnes Sorel there can be 

 no doubt, for all contemporary chroniclers and 

 poets tell of it. Even the Pope, Pius the Second, 

 allowed himself to add his tribute of praise to 

 the general homage. Considering that there 

 are so many types of physical beauty, appealing 

 to as many different temperaments, there must 

 have been something rare and remarkable in 

 Agnes to have attracted and held bound all who 

 came in contact with her. We can but conclude 

 that this unanimous judgment could only have 

 been the result of that mysterious union, so 

 illusive, so indefinable, of spiritual with physical 

 beauty. The records of the time merely tell us 

 that she had blue eyes, and fair hair in abund- 

 ance. The only picture, and this not done from 

 life, by which we can judge her for the minia- 

 tures by Fouquet, at Chantilly, from Etienne 

 Chevalier's Book of Hours, though exquisite in 

 delicacy, are too minute for much characterisa- 

 tion is, even if we accept it as the original 

 from Fouquet's hand, an overcleaned work in 

 the Museum at Antwerp. 1 This, or the original 

 painting, formed a wing of the so-called diptych 

 painted to adorn the tomb of Etienne Chevalier 

 and his wife in the Cathedral of Melun, the 

 other wing now in the Royal Museum, Berlin 



1 Du Fresne de Beaucourt, Hist, de Charles VII, t. iv. p. 171^ 

 note 2. 



M 



