Cy apres sensuit histoire des femmes des menies qui surent compangnons de Iason · Centre for Early Modern Visual Culture

Title: Cy apres sensuit histoire des femmes des menies qui surent compangnons de Iason
Period: 1400-1450;
Geographic: Sparta; Ancient Greece; Lacedaemon
Description: There are men depicted on the right side of the illustration wearing women’s clothing as they leave a jail. They are Minyan men who had been sentenced to death for their crimes against their city. They are wearing women’s clothing so they could escape the jail unnoticed. Boccaccio explains that the Minyan’s wives had gone into the jail and swapped clothing with their husbands and switched places with them. The men in disguises slipped past the guards unnoticed and into freedom, while their wives were executed in their place. The women, disguised as their husbands, are illustrated on the left side of the image with an executioner about to stab them. Boccaccio explains that he chose to write on these women to demonstrate that there is no greater love than a wife’s love for her husband.
Image Creator: Master of Boethius (Illuminator)
Type: Text; Illumination
Identifier: mta:19864
Language: frm
Source Name: Des cleres et nobles femmes, De claris mulieribus in an anonymous French translation
Parent Collection: 1410 Paris; 1410 Paris
Image: mta_19864_OBJ.jpg
Collection: Early Modern Women
Subject: Important Women; Famous Women; Greek Legend; Minyans