At the Ovidian Pool: Christine De Pizan’s

Fountain of Wisdom as a Locus for Vision

Patricia Zalamea

In memory of Rona Goffen,

who first encouraged me to follow this path.

In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, pools often provide the site of transformation,

a process that is repeatedly triggered by the act of looking. Ovidian pools
sometimes function as reflective mirrors, allowing the figures to recog-
nise their transformed image, as in the stories of Io and Actaeon. In other
instances, pools serve as transparent display cases for beautiful ivory
bodies, as in Ovid’s ekphrastic descriptions of Narcissus and Hermaph-
roditus. Pools may also become the place of metamorphosis, as in the
story of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus.1 Indeed, these Ovidian pools are
a metaphor for the act of looking, where seeing involves self-conscious
realisation and contemplation, sometimes leading to a metamorphosis
or as a result of it.2 For vision is how the process of transformation
initiates and culminates: with seeing, comes desire; desire leads to
metamorphosis; metamorphosis invites self-reflection. As Leonard
Barkan has noted, “Metamorphosis becomes a means of creating self-
consciousness because it creates a tension between identity and form,
and through this tension the individual is compelled to look in the
mirror.”3

1 For Io’s vision of herself, see Met. 1.639–641; for Actaeon, see Met. 3.200–201.
For Ovid’s ekphrastic description of Narcissus, see Met. 3.416–423, and of Herma-
phroditus, see Met. 4.352–355.
2 On the nature of water and its transformative qualities as a binding element in
Ovid’s Metamorphoses, see Viarre, L’image et la pensée, 336–347. Although Viarre does
not suggest this specific metaphor, she discusses the Ovidian pool as a mirror that
“represents the soul or consciousness” and allows figures to discover their transformed
selves (342–343).
3 Barkan, “Diana and Actaeon,” 322.
92 Metamorphosis: The Changing Face of Ovid

After the twelfth century’s renewed interest in the Metamorphoses and

the subsequent development of an Ovidian poetic tradition, pools become
a powerful means for investigating love and self simultaneously. The pool
as mirror turns into a recurrent theme, as in the Roman de la rose, whose
fountain of Narcissus has been described as a “poetic image for the anatomy
and physiology of human vision.”4 In late medieval poetry, the Ovidian
pool is slowly transformed into an elaborate fountain of love and poetic
inspiration, in which vision plays an essential role in the poetic process, as
in Guillaume de Machaut’s La Fonteinne amoureuse, where the fountain
serves “as a kind of emblem” for the poem itself.5 Similarly, in late-medieval
imagery, Ovid’s locus amoenus, the original location of such pools, is
reshaped by the Garden of Eden and later turned into the so-called Garden
of Love, an iconographic type that includes a combination of standard
motifs associated with love: a flowering garden, a marble fountain, and a
series of courtly figures often dancing or playing music.6
This context illuminates Christine de Pizan’s fountain iconogra-
phy. In her representation of the Fountain of Wisdom in the Livre du
chemin de long estude or Book of the Path of Long Study (1402–1403),
Christine reinvented the Ovidian pool as a locus for vision and a site of
poetic activity. Written immediately after the renowned literary debate
in which Christine criticised the Roman de la rose for its misogynistic
associations, the Chemin de long estude is an allegorical dream vision that
describes the narrator-protagonist’s search for knowledge and culmi-
nates in a celestial debate about the ideal values needed to govern the
world. In the Chemin, Christine inserts her narrator-protagonist (also
called Christine) into the mythological landscape of the origins of
poetry, where ‘Christine’ and the Cumaean Sibyl, her guide along the
path of study, stand at the Fountain of Wisdom and gaze at the nine
Muses who bathe in it.7

4 For the fountain as a locus for vision in the Roman de la rose, see Fleming, “The
Garden of the Roman de la Rose,” 217–219. For the relationship between love and
vision in the fountain of the Roman de la rose, see Knoespel, Narcissus, 11.
5 See Brownlee, Poetic Identity in Guillaume de Machaut, 198.
6 See Watson, The Garden of Love, 23 and 61 for the various traditions and pictorial
elements that compose the Garden of Love. For examples of the Garden of Love
beginning in twelfth-century courtly poetry from Provence and other Mediterranean
areas, and its later literary development, see Pearsall, “Gardens as Symbol and Setting,”
239–251.
7 For an analysis of Christine’s use of autobiographical narrative as a means of
constructing “her authorial persona,” see Brownlee, “Literary Genealogy,” 365–369.
 At the Ovidian Pool 93

Undeniably, the Ovidian poetic tradition provides an important

reference point for the Chemin de long estude; mythological allusions are
interspersed throughout the text, the most significant being the Fountain
of Wisdom or Fontaine de Sapience.8 As has been noted on a number of
occasions, Dante’s Commedia is also one of the models for Christine’s
journey along the path of study. Her description of Parnassus, in fact, is
based both on Dante’s Earthly Paradise in the Purgatorio and the Jardin
de Deduit in the Roman de la rose.9 As suggested by Kevin Brownlee,
Christine’s rewriting of the Commedia may be seen as part of her response
to the Roman de la rose; by invoking Dante as an “authoritative coun-
terexample,” she is able to oppose the authority of the Roman de la rose
while simultaneously validating her authorial position and differentiat-
ing herself from Dante.10 Most significantly, in her rewriting of Dante,
Christine references the authoritative figures who have stood by the
same fountain and have influenced her poetic identity, one that, as we
shall see, is uniquely shaped by her gender.
Since scholars have skilfully analysed the textual links between the
Commedia and Christine’s presentation of Parnassus, this article will
focus on the images of the Fountain of Wisdom in the illuminated
manuscripts of the Chemin, while discussing the verbal and visual
representations of the scene as interrelated iconographic types deriving
from the Ovide moralisé, and contextualising them within the pictorial
tradition that associated fountains with poetic activity. Although the
illuminations of Christine’s Fountain of Wisdom do not seem to have
influenced later depictions of the theme, they provide a significant
alteration of traditional iconography which may be seen as part of a
larger strategy present in Christine’s work, in which the Ovidian poetic
tradition is meaningfully reinterpreted in terms of the relationship
between vision, knowledge, and the female body.

Although the narrator-protagonist of the Chemin is only named “Christine” towards

the end of the poem (v. 6329), this article will refer to the author as Christine and to
the narrator-protagonist of the text as ‘Christine.’
8 The fountain is named by the Sibyl (vv. 984–985): Qui de Sapience est nommee |
Fontaine. All references to the French text of the Chemin are from C. de Pizan, Le
Chemin de longue étude, ed. A. Tarnowski; the translations into English are by R.
Blumenfeld-Kosinski and K. Brownlee in Selected Writings.
9 Brownlee, “Literary Genealogy,” 375.
10 Brownlee, “Literary Genealogy,” 370; 384–387.
94 Metamorphosis: The Changing Face of Ovid

Seeing and Knowing in the Chemin de long estude

Christine’s work is marked by her sensitivity towards visual experience
and the didactic power of images. Various scholars have proposed that
Christine participated closely in the illumination and material produc-
tion of her works.11 Questions concerning visuality are also highlighted
throughout her writing; for example, in Le livre de la mutacion de Fortune
(1403), pictures provide the inspirational source for the book’s narrative.
Likewise, vision plays a particularly significant role within the Chemin
de long estude: as an allegorical dream vision, the Chemin is essentially a
visionary experience.12
Throughout the Chemin, ‘Christine’ carefully conveys her road to
knowledge in visual terms, making repeated references to eyesight and
the power of blinding light.13 Her first significant visual experience
occurs as she observes the Fountain of Wisdom (787–882) upon entering
a paradisiacal setting. The theme of vision is later developed when she
reaches the sky, where she expresses her desire to know through her eyes,
evoking an image that recalls the mythic figure of Argus, the guardian
whose body was covered with eyes: “I was so desirous to know, to
understand, and to perceive all the aspects of this heaven that I would
have liked, if it were possible, for all my bodily parts to be transformed
into eyes” (Mais tant os desire de savoir | Et cognoistre et appercevoir | Toutes
les choses de cel estre, | Que bien voulsisse, s’il peut estre, | Que tous mes
membres fussent yeulx, 1809–1813).14 Her desire ultimately culminates in
her ability to see beyond initial appearances and understand comets and
eclipses as astrological signs (2179–2202). As we advance in the text, we
find that the protagonist has been transformed through her experience:
she has learnt to read these visual signs and has progressed to a different
level of visual experience, from physical to prophetic.
In contrast to the stars and other celestial bodies visually appre-
hended by ‘Christine’ in the Chemin, the fountain of the Muses remains
a very grounded and physical image within the text itself. Set amidst the

11 For a discussion of Christine’s role in the making of her manuscripts and their
images, see Hindman, Christine de Pizan’s “Epistre Othéa,” 62–99.
12 Note how Christine is careful to differentiate between a vision and an illusion:
Que j’oz estrange vision; | Ce ne fus pas illusion (453–454). Translated in Selected Writings,
66: “I had a strange vision that was not an illusion.”
13 Note the repeated use of words (1785–1817) that make reference to vision: eyes,
blindness, light, etc. I thank Ana Pairet for pointing out the parallel with Argus (1813).
14 Translated in Selected Writings, 83.
 At the Ovidian Pool 95

conventions of courtly gardens, the fountain is described in a traditional

way: its clarity and profundity are highlighted (806), while the fountain’s
streams are compared to shining silver, endowed with a soft murmuring
sound and whose waters keep the trees safe from the sun (823–852).
The Muses are initially described by ‘Christine’ as nine unidentified
ladies bathing nude in a fountain: “I therefore stopped to look at what
I am about to tell you: I saw nine ladies bathing nude in the fountain;
they truly seemed to have great authority, worth, and wisdom” (Si
m’arrestay pour aviser | Ce que vous m’orrés deviser: | La vi ge .ix. dames
venues | Qui se baignoient toutes nues | En la fontaine; en verité | Moult
sembloient d’octorité | Et de grant valour et savoir, 811–817).15
The scene is later re-presented by the Sibyl, who reveals its name,
location, and origins, as well as the identity of the bathing ladies:
La montaigne que vois lassus
Est appellee Pernasus.
Ou mons Helicon est de moult
Appellé ce tres beau hault mont.
Et la fontaine que sus vois…
Qui de Sapience est nommee…
Et le nom te veuil enseigner
Des dames que tu vois baigner,
A quoy ententivement muses.
On les appelle les .ix. muses.
Celles gouvernent la fontaine
Qui tant est belle, clere et saine;…
Le cheval que tu vois qui vole,
Jadis par lui fu celle escole
Establie, chose est certaine;
Car de son pié vint la fontaine (977–1000)

(The mountain upon which you gaze is called Parnassus; or, as many
people also call this noble height, Mount Helicon. The fountain that you
see up there … is named the Fountain of Wisdom … And I want you to
know the names of the ladies whose bathing you observe so attentively:
they are called the nine Muses. They control the fountain which is so
beautiful, clear, and healthy … The flying horse that you see truly
constructed this school long ago, for the fountain resulted from a powerful
blow of his foot).16

15 Translated in Selected Writings, 70.

16 Translated in Selected Writings, 72.
96 Metamorphosis: The Changing Face of Ovid

The Sibyl then tells ‘Christine’ of the various authorities who have
frequented the fountain, starting with philosophers such as Aristotle,
Socrates, and Plato, and following with poets such as Vergil, Homer,
Ovid, and Orpheus. At the end of the list of philosophers, the Sibyl
includes Christine’s father, who had been a physician and astrologer at
the court of King Charles V (1018–1074).17 The Sibyl also conflates the
fountain with the place where Cadmus, the legendary founder of the
Greek alphabet, defeated the dragon (1075–1080), and ends by recalling
Pallas, who spent considerable time at this fountain and whose presence,
the Sibyl suggests, lingers at the site (1094–1096). The mention of
Cadmus and Pallas, figures associated with knowledge, thus reinforces
the fountain as a source of wisdom.18 Finally, at the end of her speech,
the Sibyl reveals the name of their path as that of Lonc estude (1103).
The site’s double description – first presented in the narrator-pro-
tagonist’s words and then in the Sibyl’s – follows the narrative device
used by Ovid to enhance and reinforce a setting or object, but reverses
the original arrangement of the passage in the Metamorphoses, in which
the mirabile fountain of the Muses is first recalled for its fame and only
later observed. In the Metamorphoses, the spring’s fame and origins are
initially reported by Athena who journeys to Helicon, home of the
Muses, to see it; Athena is then led by Urania, the Muse of astronomy,
to admire the sacred waters, at which point Athena’s viewing of the site
is described in particularly visual terms (Met. 5.256–266). Thus, the
spring is doubly rendered: the marvellous object is anticipated through
Athena’s second-hand report of its fame and origins, but its actual image
takes shape through Athena’s observation. This same arrangement was
kept and expanded in the Ovide moralisé (5.1678–1699). Christine
rearranges the process by placing visual experience before knowledge,
thereby making a commentary on the didactic nature of imagery as well
as on the process of learning through images. This emphasis is especially
significant in this scene, where her protagonist-narrator is standing at
the very source of knowledge in its visualised form.

17 See Brownlee, “Literary genealogy,” 375–376, on Christine’s relationship to her

father as a figure of authority.
18 Christine seems to have inserted Cadmus by condensing two references from
the Ovide moralisé, where the fountain of Cadmus is described in similar terms to that
of the fountain of the Muses and both are named Fontaine de Clergie (III.v.209,
V.v.1674).
 At the Ovidian Pool 97

Christine’s reordering of the description is also significant in

relation to the protagonist’s overall transformation and acquisition of
knowledge throughout the Chemin. While she stands at the Fountain of
Wisdom, still at an early stage in the narrative, the protagonist’s visual
experience is separate from her knowledge. She intuitively sees that
these nude women sembloient d’octorité (816), but does not recognise
them.19 Only after the Sibyl has identified the figures and the path of
Lonc estude (1103) does ‘Christine’ recall that she had already frequented
this site, as well as read of it in Dante, who traversed this same path with
Vergil (1109–1138).20 The implication is that she had visited it through
her earlier bookish experience, one that had imaginatively allowed her
to enter this site. As the narrative unfolds, we find that her visual abilities
progress; ‘Christine’ learns to see on her own and eventually no longer
needs the Sibyl to guide her vision (2179–2202). Her ability to see
beyond appearances and understand astrological signs in the later part of
her voyage would seem to confirm not only that she has had a taste of
her father’s astrological knowledge, but also that she has advanced in her
path to knowledge and that her ability to learn is closely connected to
(in fact, often preceded by) visual experience.
Given the development of the protagonist’s experience in the Chemin,
one might say that the connection between seeing and knowing is
developed through a two-fold process, where one feeds into the other. An
initial sight may provide a first impression that is later reinforced through
acquired knowledge. A case in point is Christine’s first sighting of the Sibyl,
when she mistakes her for the goddess of knowledge, “whom Ovid teaches
us is named Pallas” (480–481).21 This encounter has significant implica-
tions, since it associates two female figures of authority while providing an
insight into the later connections established at the site of the fountain,
where the Sibyl recalls Pallas’ presence: “Formerly this was the habitation
of Pallas, and I think she is still here, for she does not change with the

19 See Holderness, “In the Muses’ Garden,” 136–139 and 158–159, for the
different types of intelligence embodied by the Muses, and for how Christine’s
unification of the philosophical and poetic Muses (previously separated and opposed
in Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy) provides a significant development in
Christine’s acquisition of knowledge.
20 See Brownlee, “Literary Genealogy,” 377–379, on Christine’s first explicit
reference to Dante as her model and the source of her poem’s title.
21 For the entire passage describing Christine’s initial sighting of the Sibyl, see vv.
458–485. The original quoted verses are Dont Ovide nous fait savoir | Quë ellë est Pallas
nommee (480–481). For the translation, see Selected Writings, 66.
98 Metamorphosis: The Changing Face of Ovid

passage of time” (Et jadis y ot son repaire | Pallas, et croy qu’elle a encore, | Car
telle qu’elle fu est ore; 1094–1096).22
In the case of Christine’s acquired knowledge while standing at the
fountain, the process becomes even more intricate: the Sibyl’s naming
of the fountain, its elements, and its history allows ‘Christine’ to
remember something that she already knew through her readings. This
prior knowledge explains her intuitive recognition of the ladies’ author-
ity without any specific visual reference that would allow her to reach
this conclusion. This would then suggest that images trigger remem-
brance. The matter is complicated, as Christine seems to acknowledge
in carefully laying out its subtleties. The complexity behind this double
rendering of the Muses in their fountain is multiplied when the scene
is turned into a physical image on paper, thereby complicating further
the correlation between vision and knowledge.

Disrobing the Muses: An Iconographic Construction

Although the mythic foundation of the fountain of the Muses and its
qualities were celebrated in ancient texts, the connection between the
fountain and knowledge was not clearly established. While the Muses
were acclaimed as sources of wisdom, memory, and inspiration, this was
kept separate from the description of their abode, as in the Metamor-
phoses, where the Muses are not physically placed inside the spring. This
is also true of the visual representations of the Muses in antiquity and in
the Middle Ages before the Ovide moralisé.23 Following their initial
visualisation in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C.E., a tradition of
representing the Muses was established, as can be seen in Hellenistic
reliefs and Roman funerary sarcophagi. In such objects, the Muses are
fully dressed and often placed inside an architectural structure, possibly
referencing libraries as a site for knowledge.24 The Muses were also
clothed in their rare appearances throughout the medieval period and
were often represented as inspirational figures appearing next to a poet
or philosopher.

22 Translated in Selected Writings, 74.

23 See Bzdak, “Wisdom and Education,” 47, for a summary of the Muses’ principal
meanings in antiquity, and 46–49, on the visual representations of the Muses in
antiquity and their rare appearance in the Middle Ages.
24 For the increasing depiction of the Muses in the visual arts after the classical
period, in connection to their role as teachers of the written word, see Small, Wax
Tablets, 76. See also Bzdak, “Wisdom and Education,” 49; 52.
 At the Ovidian Pool 99

The association between inspiration, knowledge, and the feminine

has roots that go back to classical antiquity. Such connections were
upheld particularly by Boethius in his Consolation of Philosophy – another
significant source for Christine – and later revived by mystical writers
of the twelfth century, such as Hildegard of Bingen.25 Although the
female personification of inspirational figures such as the Muses, the
liberal arts, and wisdom goes back to antiquity, the emphasis on their
physical bodies is a later phenomenon. The depiction of the Muses as
nine nude women hovering together in a pool seems to have been first
visualised in the Ovide moralisé and later adopted by Christine in the
Chemin de long estude. Despite being a short-lived form, the Muses’
appearance in these late-medieval manuscripts is particularly interesting
for its revelations about narrative and poetic identity.
The image of the Muses in a late fourteenth-century manuscript of
the Ovide moralisé (BnF Ms. fr. 871 fol. 116v) has been recognised as the
source for the images in a number of the surviving manuscripts with
illuminations made during Christine’s lifetime.26 Interestingly, the
Muses’ nudity is not mentioned in the text of the Ovide moralisé.27
Christine’s direct source seems to be the illumination in the Ovide
moralisé and not its text. The move from image (Ovide moralisé) to text
(the Chemin) and back to image (the illuminations in the Chemin
manuscripts) again points to the importance of images for Christine’s
work and to her emphasis on knowledge based on visual experience.
In contrast to the classical tradition previously noted, the image of
the Muses in the Ovide moralisé Ms. fr. 871, itself deriving from an earlier
exemplar now in Lyon (BM Ms. 742), is highly unconventional. In the
image of the Ovide moralisé Ms. fr. 871, the Muses bathe in a stream that

25 Bzdak, “Wisdom and Education,” 106–111, on the role of female allegories

including the Muses, the liberal arts, and philosophy in Boethius’ Consolation of
Philosophy. Also see Bzdak (chap. 4) on Hildegard of Bingen and the reconnection of
knowledge and learning to the feminine in other twelfth-century authors.
26 That Christine knew the illuminations from at least two fourteenth-century
manuscripts of the Ovide moralisé (Ms. fr. 373 and Ms. fr. 871, now in the Bibliothèque
nationale in Paris) has been demonstrated through comparison to the images used in
her own manuscripts. See Hindman, Christine de Pizan’s “Epistre Othéa,” 83 n. 69;
Meiss, The Limbourgs and their Contemporaries, 1:24–48. For a list of the nine surviving
manuscripts of the Chemin (of which two were made after Christine’s death and two
are not illustrated), see C. de Pizan, Le Chemin, 59–61. For the relationship amongst
one another and their dating, see C. de Pizan, Le Chemin, 63–64.
27 All references to the text of the Ovide moralisé are from de Boer’s edition.
100 Metamorphosis: The Changing Face of Ovid

flows directly from Pegasus’ foot. Apollo sits atop the stream while
playing a lyre; a crowned female figure – labelled Pallas – stands on the
right, separated from the Muses by the stream that runs down and across
the composition. The birds on the Muses’ side of the composition are
a reference to the nine Pierides sisters who challenged the Muses to a
musical contest. The story of this contest is the subject of Book Five of
the Metamorphoses, where the various songs are narrated to Pallas by one
of the Muses. Book Five, a typical Ovidian example of embedded
narratives, is thus collapsed into a single image. The presence of the first
poet, Apollo, who does not appear at the scene in the Metamorphoses,
reinforces the idea of singing a song, or telling a tale, within a larger
song. The composition of the image and gestures of the Muses, all of
whom – except for one, who seems to be addressing Pallas – are looking
in Apollo’s direction, suggests that this is the visualisation of a compe-
tition, as sung to us by the poet/narrator (fig. 5.1).
Indeed, it has been suggested that the Ovide moralisé emphasises the
idea of a continuous retelling of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, as it translates the
text and restructures its organisation through a series of amplifications
and additive digressions, to the point that the author of the Ovide moralisé
progressively develops into what may be seen as another of the internal
narrators of Ovid’s carmen perpetuum.28 This is also implied at the end of
the fifth book, where the author recapitulates for the third time the story
of the Muses; in choosing words that specifically refer to the narration
and transmission of a tale, he emphasises the theme of a story within a
story and ends with an allegorical reading of the competition, one whose
very subject is tale-telling: “Above I have told you the story just as the
Muse told it to Pallas, when she recounted the controversy and disso-
nance between the nine Muses and the Pierides” (Dessus vous ai conté le
conte, | Si come la Muse le raconte | Qui a Pallas dist et recorde | La controverse
et la discorde | Des neuf Muses de la montaigne | Et des pies, 5.3904–3909).
While the illuminators of the Chemin keep the general structure of
the Ovide moralisé image, they also introduce significant changes: Apollo
and the Pierides sisters are eliminated; ‘Christine’ and the Sibyl replace
Pallas. In each illumination, the Sibyl indicates the fountain to
‘Christine.’ The emphasis of the story thus changes significantly; in the
various Chemin images, the main point is the encounter with the

28 For the innovative aspects of the Ovide moralisé as a project of translatio, see Pairet,
’Les mutacions des fables,” 102–107.
 At the Ovidian Pool 101

fountain, not the hearing or telling of stories. Although the Muses’

nudity is kept in the Chemin images, the illuminations also depart in a
significant way from both the image of the Ovide moralisé and the text
of the Chemin. In spite of the emphasis in the text of the Chemin on the
clarity and transparency of the fountain the lower bodies of the Muses
are never seen in the Chemin images. This choice stands in sharp contrast
to the illumination of the Ovide moralisé, in which the Muses’ bodies are
clearly visible under the water and it constitutes another careful revision
of the Ovide moralisé (figs. 5.2–5.3).

Reshaping the Ovidian Landscape: Christine as Muse

and Spectator
By standing at this pool, ‘Christine’ also places herself within the
problematic landscape of the Ovidian tradition, where the woods are
the larger containing structure of the pools: shady groves as sites for
voyeurism, desire, and rape.29 A particularly painful image of rape is
provided in the Muses’ account of the myth of Proserpine, where the
nymph Cyane’s pool – into which she then dissolves and which becomes
a metaphor for her own self – is violently traversed by Pluto (Met.
5.409–437). Indeed, in Ovid, the mention of a pool within a cool and
shady landscape setting – often in the middle of the day when the sun
is at its highest point – is a signal of something to come. The experienced
Ovidian reader learns to recognise the cue: it signals the preparation of
a violent scene triggered by desire.30 Though later merged with the
Garden of Eden and turned into a flowering Garden of Love, the
inherent violence of Ovid’s landscapes lingers on in the misogynistic
metaphors of courtly poetry.
What role does ‘Christine’ then play in this story of landscapes
largely dominated by males, where the female body provides the source
of inspiration? What does it mean for a female poet, who is seemingly
conflated with the protagonist of her narrative, to be placed at this very
site and to be confronted with female bodies as the direct source of
knowledge, a theme traditionally associated with male inspiration? Most
significantly, why emphasise the Muses’ nudity, albeit halfway?

29 See Hinds, “Landscape with Figures,” 130–134, for a discussion of Ovid’s

treatment of the locus amoenus combined with inherent sexual violence.
30 See Parry, “Violence in a Pastoral Setting,” 268–282.
102 Metamorphosis: The Changing Face of Ovid

There are subtle yet significant differences amongst the various

Chemin illuminations that point to Christine’s reshaping of the Ovidian
landscape by reversing traditional, gendered roles. Two of the earlier
manuscripts, dating to ca. 1402–1403, depict a more extensive landscape
where the different pathways – a type of crossroads – are clearly visible
(Brussels BR Ms.10982 and Paris BnF Ms. fr. 1188; fig. 5.2). The images
in later manuscripts such as the BnF fr. 836 (ca. 1408) and Harley 4431
(1410–1411) differ from the earlier examples; the Muses and the two
witnesses are placed closer to one another and it is clear that the Muses
are looking back at ‘Christine’ and the Sibyl (fig. 5.3). This is unlike the
earlier images, where the two groups are more distanced and do not
interact.31 In addition, the Muses in the later manuscripts are not placed
in a natural pool, but inside an artificial font. These changes should be
considered significant, because we know that Christine revised and
amplified her text as well as the illustrations for the Harley 4431
manuscript of her collected works.32 Even in the revised image, the
Muses’ nudity is maintained, but their heads are redressed with contem-
porary headdresses like the protagonist’s, a type that consistently iden-
tifies the protagonist-narrator in other works by Christine de Pizan, as
in the illuminations of the Cité des dames.
One might speculate how the changes in the later manuscripts of
the Chemin – the closer interaction and redressing of the Muses, so that
they appear as mirror images of ‘Christine’ – might be connected to
Christine’s poetic identity. In the 1404 epistolary exchange between
Christine and Eustace Deschamps, Deschamps replied with a ballad in
which he addressed her as “Eloquent Muse among the nine,” a reference
that points to the complexity of Christine’s position as a female writer.33

31 The image in the Brussels Bibliothèque Royale Ms. 10983 fol. 13r shares
characteristics of both the earlier and later manuscripts. In composition, it is closer to
the later images where the focus is on the interaction between the Muses and the two
witnesses, but the Muses are placed inside a natural pool, much like the earlier
illuminations. The Brussels BR Ms. 10983, along with another illuminated manuscript
at Chantilly, Musée Condé 493, has been dated as the earliest of the surviving
manuscripts of the Chemin (probably late 1402 – early 1403). For the dating of the
various manuscripts, see C. de Pizan, Le Chemin, 63–64.
32 Le Chemin, 67. The Harley 4431 is the base manuscript for Tarnowski’s edition.
Harley 4431 was a collection of Christine’s works put together for Isabeau de Bavière;
BnF Ms. fr. 836 was originally part of such a collection made for the Duc de Berry.
33 For the translation of Christine and Deschamps’ exchange, see Selected Writings,
109–113. For an analysis of this epistolary exchange and of how Deschamps is
 At the Ovidian Pool 103

While holding the status of a professional writer, her female body placed
her on a different plane from male writers. As suggested by the revised
images of the later Chemin manuscripts and in Deschamps’ address,
Christine’s body could also position her as a Muse of inspiration. While
standing at the fountain of poetic inspiration – a site where, as recounted
by the Sibyl, the most authoritative philosophers and poets have spent
time – ‘Christine’ is thus confronted with her intellectual legacy (a
tradition of male authors) and simultaneously with her own existence
within a female body. The presence of ‘Christine’ at this site reinforces
Christine’s own position as an author, for ‘Christine’ (the narrator-pro-
tagonist) is also a reader, writer, and compiler in the narrative.34 Much
like her narrator-protagonist, whose female body allows her to be
visualised as a counterpart to the Muses, Christine (the author) is a
female writer who could be equated to a Muse, as was made explicit in
Deschamps’ ballad.
Concurrently, the depiction of a female spectator standing at the
Fountain of Wisdom disrupts the standard pictorial tradition that showed
male poets standing or reclining next to fountains; examples include
panels of the Garden of Love and the illuminated manuscripts of
Machaut’s La Fonteinne amoureuse (fig. 5.4).35 Interestingly, the pictorial
association between fountains and poetic activity coincides with the
period when the line between the poet-narrator and the lover-protago-
nist becomes blurred.36 Unlike such male narrators, however,
‘Christine’ cannot embody the position of the lover-protagonist; thus,
she remains detached, standing at the scene as a female voyeur who is
also the poet-narrator.
Unlike her male poet-narrator counterparts, ‘Christine’ could
embody the very object of desire; her body (and her headdress in the

responding to Christine’s petition in her own terms, see Richards, “The Lady Wants
to Talk,” 109–122.
34 The question of Christine’s status as a female writer has been much discussed;
for a bibliography on the subject, see Holderness, “In the Muses’ Garden,” 239–244;
246–255. Holderness argues that Christine does not claim the status of an auctor
(understood in the medieval tradition as a ‘figure of authority’), and instead proposes
the role of ‘compiler’ as Christine’s preferred mode of identification (255–288).
35 For a Garden of Love painting, based on Boccaccio’s Amorosa visione and which
shows three poets (recognisable through their laurels) discoursing next to a fountain,
see Watson, figure 1.
36 See Brownlee, Poetic Identity, 9–12, on the development of the narrator in the
different genres of Old French literature.
104 Metamorphosis: The Changing Face of Ovid

later manuscripts) suggests that she could be like a Muse, the embodi-
ment of knowledge itself. So, rather than assuming the stance of the
lover-protagonist, a female narrator-protagonist might reverse the tra-
ditional roles by placing herself in the position of the beloved, the carrier
of inspiration. As a Muse, Christine has natural access to the Fountain
of Wisdom. Indeed, Christine’s wisdom was confirmed by Deschamps
in the lines that followed his initial address, in which he expounded on
her knowledge and its validating sources.37 A certain degree of knowl-
edge is transferred to Christine in her initial confrontation with the
Muses. As we shall see, her emphasis on the visual aspects of the
cognitive operation that leads to this acquisition of knowledge suggests
that knowledge may begin as an intuitive experience.
By not including the ancient authors named by the Sibyl and by
focusing instead only on the elements initially described by ‘Christine,’
the Chemin illuminations seem to depict a specific moment of the
narrative (that is, the protagonist’s first sight of the fountain), while
complementing the Sibyl’s following revelation. In their synthetic and
focused presentation, the images simulate the protagonist’s inadvertent
initial vision, depicting only the two witnesses to the scene and the
elements described by ‘Christine’: the nine Muses and Pegasus, initially
described by ‘Christine’ as “a great winged horse in the air above the
rock, flying over the ladies” (820–822).38 The images force the viewer
to acknowledge the unusual inclusion of two female figures standing
next to a fountain – a role traditionally reserved for male poets – while
gazing at nine nude female bodies. The Sibyl’s naming of the Fountain
of Wisdom, its inhabitants and the path reinforces the impact of the
image, for it explicitly situates ‘Christine’ at the traditional site of
philosophical and poetic authority. The step-by-step learning process of
‘Christine’ is duplicated in the reader’s visual experience of the manu-
scripts, where the initial vision of the scene is also confirmed by
subsequent knowledge.39

37 See Selected Writings, 112–113.

38 For the translation, see Selected Writings, 70. The original reads: En l’air sus la
roche ravi | Un grant cheval qui avoit eles | Et aloit volant entour elles (820–822).
39 In the Chemin manuscripts, the images are usually placed before the passage
where the scene is described. Thus, the reader would encounter the image of the
fountain of the Muses before the text, much like the protagonist’s initial experience
of the site.
 At the Ovidian Pool 105

The male authors do not appear in the illuminations not simply

because Christine has eliminated the male figures that appear in the text,
in order to reinforce a female presence.40 The male philosophers and
poets, recounted by the Sibyl in the past tense (1018–1066), are not
actually at the scene; rather, they are remembered as having once been
there. It is not so much that they have been eliminated, but that the
illuminators – under the author’s direction – have chosen not to add
them. In these images, the focus is not on memory and tradition, but
on the protagonist’s experience and vision of the site. By not adding the
male authors, but by concentrating instead on the nine nude females,
which ‘Christine’ had intuitively recognised as the source of authority
(octorité), Christine seems to be making a specific point: knowledge can
be visualised by focusing directly on the source of knowledge. By
ignoring the intervening tradition, Christine collapses historical time
and defines her protagonist (or alter-ego) as the direct link to the Muses.
Similarly, Christine’s emphasis on the Muses’ nudity may be
understood in different terms when connected to a pictorial convention,
grounded in the classical notion of aidos, in which nudity symbolises
truth.41 The Muses’ nudity may also be understood in terms of the
medieval notion of integumenta, in which the truth is hidden under a veil
of poetic fiction.42 As noted by Millard Meiss, the depiction of nudity
in Christine’s manuscripts is rare, and is often used only in cases where
the story demands it, as in the myth of Diana and Actaeon in the Epistre
Othea.43 Yet, as Meiss also points out, the representations of Apollo and
Daphne in Christine’s manuscripts of the Epistre are particularly inno-
vative in their emphasis on Daphne’s bodily transformation: they are
amongst the first in post-classical art to show Daphne’s nudity as well as
the idea of metamorphosis in pictorial form (fig. 5.5).44 It is interesting

40 Gibbons, “Bath of the Muses,” 138, notes the elimination of the male authors.
41 See Ferrari, “Figures of Speech,” on the meaning of aidos as a sentiment often
evoked in literature; in the Iliad, for example, when Hector is going to war, his parents
try to dissuade him by undressing before his eyes. An example in Christine’s work is
the female figures that disrobe themselves as a sign of truth in the Cité des dames (II.50
and II.52).
42 See Holderness, “In the Muses’ Garden,” 150: “To undress the Muses is to lift
the veil of fiction and discover the truth below – to undress the Muses is to read
allegorically.” See also Akbari, in thie volume, with further references.
43 Meiss, Limbourgs and their Contemporaries, 29. As an example, see the illumination
of the Diana and Actaeon story in the Epistre BnF Ms. fr. 606 fol. 32r.
44 Meiss, Limbourgs and their Contemporaries, 29.
106 Metamorphosis: The Changing Face of Ovid

that the story of Apollo and Daphne is traditionally associated with the
origins of poetry, since the fountain of the Muses, as the source of
inspiration, is also linked to poetic activity. In both cases, the female
body provides the source of inspiration.
In her treatment of the Fountain of Wisdom, Christine follows the
Ovidian tradition that establishes the pool as an image inviting poetic
self-reflection and transformation, while re-casting the relationship
between the viewer and the pool. Christine’s fountain thus functions in
a double sense: as the source of poetry (or knowledge) and as the source
of vision (or perception). This two-fold meaning seems to echo the very
process of double description initially encountered in Ovid’s mise-en-
scène of the Muses’ fountain, later amplified in the Ovide moralisé, and
finally reversed in the Chemin, where description – an initial perception
or experience – is placed before learned or acquired knowledge.
On another level, Christine’s fountain is visualised as the carrier of
female bodies that, as tradition would have it, represent the embodiment
of knowledge and inspiration. At first sight, this might seem like a
paradoxical choice, given the misogynistic associations of the female
body as text and the erotic connotations of the body on a visual level.45
In Christine’s fountain iconography, the visual senses are invoked and
simultaneously manipulated through written description and interpre-
tation so that the female protagonist-narrator’s confrontation with the
nude body is comparable to an initiation, which must ultimately be
completed through a path of learning.46
Rutgers University

45 For the tradition of the female body as a text for translatio, see Dinshaw, Chaucer’s
Sexual Poetics, 134.
46 I am very grateful to Ana Pairet for her advice in the preparation of this article,
originally written for her seminar on Christine de Pizan (Rutgers University, 2004).