Niobé transformée en statue devant les cadavres de son mari et de ses enfants · Centre for Early Modern Visual Culture

Title: Niobé transformée en statue devant les cadavres de son mari et de ses enfants
Period: 1400-1450;
Geographic: Thebes
Description: Niobe, in the center of the image wearing a blue gown and a crown, is surrounded by her dead husband and children. Her pride got the best of her when she gave birth to seven boys and seven girls. All of her children wound up dying of a plague – this lead to the suicide of her husband, Amphion. Niobe is said to have been so miserable after the death of her family that she became more of a motionless stone than a woman. This is represented in the image where she stands as a statue, surrounded by her family’s bodies.
Image Creator: Master of the Cleres Femmes of the Duke of Berry (Illuminator)
Type: Text; Illumination
Identifier: mta:19810
Language: fre
Source Name: Livre des Femmes Nobles et Renommées
Parent Collection: 1403 Paris; 1403 Paris
Image: mta_19810_OBJ.png
Collection: Early Modern Women
Subject: Death; Suicide; Fortune; Niobe; Plague