Material Culture at the Guise ‘Court’: Tapestries, a Bed and a Devotional Dollhouse as Expressions of Dynastic Pride and Piety in Seventeenth-Century Paris

Abstract

Abstract The deepening study of courts and courtly societies in the early modern world has provided political, social, and cultural historians with new insights into how (and why) such societies functioned, but have too often focused exclusively on the singularity of a monarch, or at best, his immediate family. This essay explores similar themes of the functionalities of patronage, dynasticism and piety in the context of the high court aristocracy, represented here by the House of Guise, and in particular by its women, caretakers of family image. Using inventories from two periods in the seventeenth century, and, more specifically, key pieces of material culture representative of familial pride and piety, it demonstrates how court families shifted their behaviour in a climate of increased centralization and royal domination. In line with current revisionism of notions of ‘absolutism’, this study also reinforces the more nuanced vision of a courtly society driven by crownnoble co-operation and competition rather than control.