| This dissertation examines Catherine de' Medici's multifaceted patronage in the context of French and European social history during the thirty years following the death of Henri II in 1559. It considers the wide range of media she patronized and investigates the importance of the roles played by the intersecting Medici and Valois traditions in the expression of Catherine's personal taste and agenda. The first chapter is dedicated to Catherine's passion for architecture, focusing on the numerous buildings she commissioned or modified and extended. Also discussed is the transition from dependence on Italian models to the blossoming of a true French Renaissance architectural style under her patronage. The second chapter is dedicated to Catherine's interest in gardens, the exceptional role they were assigned as outdoor extensions to the buildings they surrounded, and how they became backdrops for entertainments and political meetings. Chapter three considers different manifestations of Catherine's munificence through the presentation of festivals, ceremonies, and royal entries organized in honor of the Valois dynasty. A detailed examination of the iconography of the sculptural projects she commissioned is the basis of the fourth chapter; sculpture, like architecture, is shown to play a key role in conveying Catherine's political and religious convictions, as it became the quintessential expression of her understanding of the propagandistic qualities intrinsic to the arts. The fifth chapter addresses the collections of painting and objets d'arts that Catherine amassed over the years as expressions of her public and private personae. In conclusion, Catherine's patronage of the arts is presented as a deliberate attempt to consolidate her position as de facto ruler of France. It is shown to be at the origin of numerous innovations that prefigure seventeenth-century endeavors, because it celebrates the omnipotent monarch and establishes a government whose triumphs would be intimately linked to that of the arts. |
