Portraits of the Queen Mother

Polemics, Panegyrics, Letters

Order:

Catherine de Médicis was portrayed variously in her day as a foreign usurper, a loving queen and queen mother, a patron of the arts, and a Machiavellian murderer of Protestants. Leah L. Chang and Katherine Kong assemble a diverse array of scathing polemic and lofty praise, diplomatic reports, and Catherine’s own letters, which together show how one extraordinary woman’s rule intersected with early modern conceptions of gender, maternity, and power.

Winner of the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women’s
Josephine Roberts Award for a Scholarly Edition

“Leah Chang and Katherine Kong have created a new genre…. The aims and realization of this volume should serve as a model for future work on women of the past.”
–Tracy Adams, author of Christine de Pizan and the Fight for France