A Medieval Feminist Manuscript Makes Its Getty Museum Debut

In her opening to The Book of the City of Ladies (French, about 1404–5), Christine de Pizan considers a small volume written by a contemporary male author: “But just the sight of this book, even though it was of no authority, made me wonder how it happened that so many different men…have been and are so inclined to express…so many wicked insults about women and their behavior.”

These words—and Christine de Pizan’s book-length response to the negative treatment of women by men—were memorialized in a luxurious French copy of her proto-feminist prose recently acquired by the Getty Museum. The acquisition of this imposing manuscript, which measures about a foot and a half in height (42 cm) is being announced just in time to celebrate Women’s History Month in March. The volume not only introduces over 100 new images of women into the collection but also represents the first female-authored work to join the holdings of the Department of Manuscripts.

A medieval feminist

Christine de Pizan (“de Pizan” is not her last name, but rather an indication of where she was from) is often characterized as the first professional female author and one of the earliest feminist writers. Her above-mentioned work in this manuscript was inspired by Giovanni Boccaccio’s Concerning Famous Women (Florentine, 1361–62), which contains 106 short biographies of celebrated and notorious women across time, starting with the biblical figure of Eve and ending in Boccaccio’s own period. Christine’s text takes its general structure from Concerning Famous Women but insists that male authors have grossly mischaracterized women throughout history. She uses her authorial powers to create a City of Ladies that will celebrate the accomplishments and virtues of the female gender. Each of the narrative biographies functions as a building block for the city, which itself is the book.

The Getty manuscript pairs the texts by Boccaccio and Christine de Pizan and was originally created around 1450–75, while the accompanying 108 illustrations devoted to the famous women were added over 40 years later by Étienne Colaud, his workshop, and the so-called Master of François de Rohan. Significantly, these images are distributed unevenly across the works. Whereas Boccaccio’s biographies feature over 100 paintings, Christine de Pizan’s were deemed worthy of only three. Yet, as unbalanced as this apportionment is, given the fact that Christine de Pizan was railing against the historic power of men to tell women’s stories, it doesn’t undermine the importance of this female author’s literary legacy. Indeed, three proves to be a purposeful number for the City of Ladies, as three female personifications serve as guides for Christine de Pizan as she writes her text: Reason, Rectitude, and Justice.

Reason: A gendered paradox

During the Middle Ages, reason was celebrated in men as a mark of divine wisdom but dismissed in women as arrogance. Christine de Pizan’s text challenged this double standard, insisting that women’s intellectual contributions should be honored.

A telling example can be found in the differing accounts by Boccaccio and Christine de Pizan of the Greek myth of Arachne, a gifted weaver whose story became the focus for how women’s reason was considered and assessed. In Boccaccio’s Concerning Famous Women, Arachne’s story is framed as a failure of judgment: her pride in her famed weaving skills leads her to challenge the goddess Athena to a contest, but when Arachne loses, she is so distraught that she dies by suicide. Boccaccio fixates on her arrogance, calling her “ludicrous” and a “blockhead” for rating her own abilities so highly. The image in the Getty manuscript devoted to Arachne underscores this interpretation by omitting any visual reference to her artistry in weaving and instead focuses solely on her suicide, becoming a warning against women’s “madness” and “presumption.”

The same story in the hands of Christine de Pizan, however, dismantles this narrative. Her interpretation refuses to reduce Arachne to a cautionary symbol of the sin of vanity. She does not even mention Arachne’s suicide, a pointed rejection of the premise that women’s ambition is a form of self-destruction. Instead, she reframes Arachne, whom she credits as the inventor of textile dyeing, nets, and linen weaving, as proof of innate female ingenuity. Whereas Boccaccio uses the myth to equate female talent with moral failing, Christine de Pizan wields female reason as a tool in “service of the world.”

Rectitude: The currency of moral authority

In one of the images accompanying the City of Ladies, the personification of rectitude (a sense of righteousness and integrity) stands before Christine de Pizan, who is shown actively writing at her upright desk. This image is one of collaboration, with Rectitude urging Christine de Pizan to construct the City of Ladies using each biography as a building block and her ink as mortar. Whereas Reason helped Christine de Pizan lay the City’s foundation, Rectitude helps give it form. The City—meaning here both the book itself and the metaphorical city constructed within the text—serves as a sanctuary for virtuous women. This scene of female partnership, as well as authorship, is well matched by other images in the volume, including those depicting the ancient poets Sappho, Proba, and Cornificia.

Justice: When the margins speak

The word “justice,” defined as an equitable adjudication of rights, remained elusive for medieval women, who were constrained by patriarchal guardianship and societal traditions that equated femininity with inferiority. The Getty Museum aims to acknowledge and subvert this historical struggle by prioritizing ethical stewardship, shown through its practices related to the acquisition, research, and display of medieval manuscripts. Acquiring works that highlight women, either through their imagery, subject matter, or authorship, like this copy of the City of Ladies, helps to reframe the context of justice and redefines it as a reparative act, one that centers voices that have historically been suppressed by enduring feudal norms.

For Christine de Pizan, justice demanded moral-intellectual vindication, asserting women’s capacity for governance and wisdom. She critiqued the exclusion of women from education as a violation of natural law, advocating for a cultural recalibration to honor female labor and ethics. These concepts take visual form throughout the volume in the shape of individual women throughout history who embodied Christine de Pizan’s high opinion of their abilities and strengths. Her message is as relevant today as it was over 600 years ago for women seeking justice. The new manuscript will appear soon on the Getty Museum’s Collections page with an entry devoted to every image so that viewers can identify and learn about each of these amazing women.