Painting of the Jouvenel Family

c. 1445-1449
The married women in this painting wear large headdresses. Fifth from the right, a widow wears black, in dress similar to the two nuns on the left side of the painting. This painting originally hung in the family chapel inside the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.
Musée de Cluny

Connection to Website Themes

Spousal Power Dyanmics: In this painting, the men largely stand in front of the women, but at the same time they occupy the same spatial dimensions in height. The two married women, with their status indicated by elborated headdresses, stand together, perhaps indicating that they could support each other even as they each occupied a position of lower power in relation to their husbands.

Community Social Norms: The similarity between the costume of the nuns and the widow reveals much about the attitude toward widows in the late medieval era. Widows could attain high levels of status and power in medieval society. Having proven themselves by conforming to the social expectation of operating under the authority of their husband, upon the husband’s death others accorded them a level of respect far higher than that of a single woman.

Church and State: This painting interweaves the family’s political authority with the authority of the church. The two bishops wear vestments that signify their high status in the Church. The men all wear the heraldic pattern of the house, connecting to the state authority invoked by coats of arms. The two knights’ helments sit next to prayer books, representing the routine activities of these two major institutions, battlefield action and prayer in the chapel.

What is Love: The members of the Jouevenel family, hands in prayer, here adopt dutiful poses that exude control and discipline. This painting shows a family whose members literally fall in line in service of church and king. Passionate love lays outside the bounds of this serious procession.