Marguerite’s Bedroom at Clos Lucé

Marguerite’s Bedroom at Clos Lucé

In 1499, six-year-old Marguerite, her four-year-old brother François and their mother Louise of Savoy joined the court in Amboise. Referring to themselves as The Trinity, they lived in Clos Lucé for nine years, six years before Leonardo moved in. Marguerite and Leonardo were her brother’s closest confidants.

As a child she studied Socrates, Juvenal, Cicero, and Virgil and read Ovid, Boccaccio, Petrarch and Dante in French. As an adult she was a prolific and acclaimed writer of novels, poetry and plays. Marguerite moved in artistic circles so was able to help Rabelais publish his famous and funny Third Book of the Heroic Deeds and Sayings of Good Pantagruel. He dedicated the book to Marguerite.

History books are kinder to Marguerite than to her brother or mother. Unlike them, she was kind, as sweet as the portrait in the glass cabinet depicts her. She appreciated a joke and had a good sense of humour.

Marguerite raised funds for hospices and almshouses where orphans, abandoned children, the old and the sick were looked after. Unmarried mothers had food and shelter before and after giving birth and she persuaded her brother to found and fund L’ Hôpital des Enfants Rouges (children were dressed in red) in Paris for abandoned or orphaned children.

Post by Pamela