Cy apres sensuit hystoire des femmes des menies qui surent compagnons Iason · Centre for Early Modern Visual Culture

Title: Cy apres sensuit hystoire des femmes des menies qui surent compagnons Iason
Subject: Jason; Wives of the Minyans; Important Women; Famous Women; Greek Mythology; Minyans
Period: 1400-1450;
Geographic: Sparta; Ancient Greece; Lacedaemon
Description: There are three figures leaving a jail in the foreground of the illustration. 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 in the background of the image with an executioner about to swing his axe at 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: Anonymous (Illuminator)
Type: Text; Illumination
Identifier: mta:18443
Language: frm
Source Name: Livre que fist Jehan BOCACE de Certalde des cleres et nobles femmes, lequel il envoia à Audice de Accioroles de Florence, contesse de Haulteville [Book from Giovanni Boccaccio of Certaldo called the cleric and noble women, of which he sent to Audice Accioroles of Florence, Countess of Haulteville]
Parent Collection: 1401 Florence
Image: mta_18443_OBJ.jpg

Media: mta_18443_OBJ.jpg