Valentina Visconti, Duchess of Orleans

1368-1408 (the birthdate on her statue is actually wrong!)

Valentina here is an interesting lady to put in this collection.  I had only heard of her in passing previously, so all this information is rather new to me.  She is mostly remarkable because of various intrigues and family ties (and family intrigues) but she certainly had an interesting and tumultuous life.

Firstly, she was Italian, and born to the very powerful Visconti family of Milan, her father being the first duke of Milan.  I talked a bit about the influence Italian Renaissance families had on art and culture in this post, at the beginning.  Although the Viscontis more or less rose from the business class to form an oligarchy in Milan, they were soon considered noble enough to intermarry with the royal houses of Europe.  Valentina's mother Isabelle was a French princess, making her grandfather the king of France (Jean II).  Isabelle's marriage dowry was the area of Vertus, in Champagne, near Germany.  For reasons I don't fully understand, Valentina's father did not take control of this region, and instead Isabelle was named its sovereign countess, a title which eventually passed to Valentina herself.

Being already a member of the French royal family, I suppose it made sense for her to remarry into the line, and at 21 she married her cousin, Louis, the duke of Orleans and second son of the French king.  She was her parents' only child, although she had younger half brothers, and thus she was an heiress in her own right, which is why she inherited that small region in France.

Valentina's life at the French court was always on a bit of a fragile footing.  Court life was fraught at this time, anyway, being right in the midst of France's low point of the Hundred Years' War with England.  The king at the time, her brother-in-law Charles VI had periodic bouts of psychosis which ranged from believing he was made of glass to forgetting he was king, not recognizing his children, and thinking his name was George for a full year.  (It was his madness and inept ruling which led to the conditions that allowed Joan of Arc to be accepted in the French army, in fact.) So he was not the most reliable king, and it fell to his close family and advisers to run the country and take custody of his children - and his family member who had the most power was his brother, Valentina's husband, Louis.

However, Louis was known as a womanizer and generally not a very nice person and he was very unpopular.  The duke of Burgundy, a mostly independent area that nonetheless was a vassal of France proper, Jean "the Fearless" was much more popular, and eventually named regent during the king's madness.  Louis disputed this bitterly and their feud lasted many years.

In the meantime, Valentina grew very close to her sick brother-in-law in the first years of her marriage.  She appears to have been a friend to him (never rumors of any affair, so it was definitely not romantic) and his queen was jealous.  The queen might well have been jealous - there were also strong rumors that she was having an affair with Louis.   The climate was all around nasty, and more rumors were started because of the power struggles.  People were worried that the king would die, leaving Louis as king.  Valentina is recorded to have backed her husband in this, naturally, and developed a rivalry with Jean the Fearless' wife, because the royal family was afraid he'd try to steal the throne.  Gossip began to say that Valentina had actually used witchcraft to make the king ill.  Because of all this and Louis' disputes with men of power at the court, Valentina was exiled and never really allowed back at court for the duration of her marriage. 

At this point matters were made worse because when Valentina's doting father heard about her exile he also threatened to declare war on France.

Things finally came to a head in 1407, when Jean the Fearless had Louis assassinated rather gruesomely.  One day he was coming from visiting the queen in the Marais, with a number of unarmed men with him.  Fifteen thugs hired by Jean the Fearless attacked him while he was on his horse and repeatedly stabbed him until dead.  Despite the very public and violent nature of the assassination Jean the Fearless had enough support that he was able to nearly acknowledge his role in it, and had a theologian write an essay in defense of killing tyrants to justify it.

Valentina was apparently devastated by her husband's death and only lived for one year after it.  On her deathbed her sons swore vengeance against the Burgundians, but by her death her eldest son also entered the line of succession for the territory of Milan.  He was unfortunately captured during battle with the English and held captive because of his possibility of ascending the French throne.  His son in turn claimed the dukedom of Milan after Valentina's half-brothers died without sons, causing one of the periods of wars known as the "Italian Wars."

Although we know little of Valentina's personality and acts, it's apparent that she must have been a very strong and probably kind person.  She stood by her husband in spite of his unpopularity and poor reputation, endured her unfair exile while still supporting her family's cause, and was a friend to the king, who was not only sometimes insane and paranoid but deeply unhappy for most of his life.  She had ten children, only four of whom survived childhood, but her eldest son was a renowned poet, probably France's most famous of the Renaissance.

I would speculate that she is mostly included in the series of statues because of her tangential role in the Hundred Years' War, but I do wish more academics studied her as her own person, because I think she could be very interesting.  (And kudos to those who got through this soap opera of a life story!)