Courtly Images Far From Court The Family Saintfloret Representation And Romance Amanda Rosenstock Luyster by Amanda Rosenstock Luyster instant download after payment.

The murals at the chateau of Saint-Floret (France, Auvergne, c. 1350) provide the most extensive depiction of romance in surviving French wall-painting. They are also, most unusually, accompanied by substantial extracts of painted text. Life-size images of jousts and lovers' meetings cover the walls of a large hall, depicting a romance of Tristan and Iseut, two of the most famous doomed lovers in western culture. Only a few pages have been dedicated to these wall-paintings in published scholarship, sometimes naming the paintings “courtly” (while ignoring the apparent contradiction of their rural surroundings) and largely devoted to identifying the text to which the images relate.
My argument addresses the paintings' role in courtly culture and their use of visual rhetoric. In particular, I argue that the chateau and its wall-paintings provide evidence of a considered relation to at least three traditions of courtliness. By means of the style and form of the narrative which they present, the murals visually negotiate between the courtly visual culture of Paris, that of papal Avignon, and the locally-rooted troubadour society in southern France. The murals, therefore, provide evidence not only of sophisticated cultural production in areas outside the heavily-studied “centers” of the Middle Ages, but also of the strength of various strands of courtly tradition.
What emerges most pointedly from the analysis is the vital social role of the paintings, the realization that the narrative images at Saint-Floret were not “mere decoration”; they mattered. They create an arena in which certain topics had already been put into play, and they act as an invitation to enter a dialogue. The viewing experience at Saint-Floret shapes viewers' consciousness of being part of a social group and simultaneously allows the opportunity for monologue, dialogue and performance. The paintings at Saint-Floret highlight the role of romance material in constructing and presenting an image of a self—particularly a noble self—in the Middle Ages. They allow their patron to show himself as a cosmopolitan member of the nobility, accomplished in the courtly codes and the material of romance, to the extent that he could “author” a visual text.