Transformations of Minerva in Renaissance Imagery

perfectly plain he puts at the end of the original MS2 his own coat-of-arms next to that of his wife, adding : Icy sont les armes, dessoubz ceste couronne, Du bergier dessus dit et de la bergeronne. He accompanies the picture with two personal emblems, apparently invented by him for the occasion.3 By the side of his wife's shield there appears a twig of gooseberry with two doves, a rather romantic symbol of happy love, by his own a dead stump out of which a new branch is growing as a sign of his regeneration through love. Both emblems reappear on medals which the king commissioned from Francesco Laurana who worked at his court in the sixties. The twig with the two doves, tied together by a chain, decorates the reverse of a medal struck in honour of the queen in 1461, and the old stump with the new branch occurs on another medal of 1463 (P1. 36b).4 This bears on the reverse the inscription "Pax Augusti," and shows in the centre a goddess with an olive branch, holding out a helmet in her left hand, while a cuirass stands on the ground. On the obverse the portraits of the couple are represented, together with a legend which expresses a strictly religious attitude in a humanist idiom : "The god-like heroes famous through the lily of France and the cross (of Laval) tread always together the path to the Divine."5 A mediaeval Christian idea couched in classical terms appears also in the words "Pax Augusti" on the reverse. Taken together with the supernatural aim of the legend on the other side ("incedunt ad superos"), it calls to mind the Augustinian conception of eternal peace which remained very much alive right through the Middle Ages.6 1 Cf. Le Comte de Quatrebarbas, (Euvres compldtes du Roi Rend, 1844, II, p. 97 ff.; A. Lecoy de la Marche, Le Roi Rene', 875, II, p. I69 ff. 2The original MS was brought to Leningrad in 1792. Quatrebarbas (p. 151) reproduces an illustration from a copy (Paris, Bibl. Nat., cod. Fr. I2178). Cf. also A. Heiss, Les Midailleurs de la Renaissance. Francesco Laurana. 1882, p. 24. 3 For the text of the poem cf. Quatrebarbas, op. cit., p. I24 ff. ' Cf. Hill, A Corpus of Italian Medals, 1930, nos. 57,59 with further references. About Ren6's emblems cf. particularly Magasin Pittoresque, 1853, p. 207 f. and Willemin, Monuments FranGais inidits. Paris, 1839, II, P1. 209. 5"Divi heroes Francis liliis cruceque illustris incedunt iugiter parantes ad superos iter." Cf. Heiss, op. cit., p. 23 ff. The epithet of ancient emperors, "divus," used for German emperors during the Middle Ages (Schramm, Kaiser, Rom und Renovatio, 1929, I, pp. 52, 264, etc.) became quite common in Laurana's circle, also with minor sovereigns. Cf. Heiss, op. cit., p. I83 and W. Rolfs, F. Laurana, I907, p. 246. 6 E. Bernheim, Mittelalterliche Zeitanschauungen, 1918, pp. 29, Ioo ff. The official cult