Part of early 13th century window at Chartres cathedral depicting the life of St Nicholas. These panels depict the birth of St Nicholas, and his first bath. The bottom quatrefoil shows two merchant, merchants are also depicted in the bottom corner panels. The top quatrefoil relates to the legend than St Nicholas would only feed from his mother's breast on Wednesday and Friday.
Women Theme Pages
Representations of women.
This panel from the Life of the Virgin Mary window at Chartres Cathedral depicts wine growers, a man and woman, pruning vines. The window was paid for by the Vintners of the town of Chartres in 1217-1220.
This finely carved figure of a servant girl forms part of the expanded Presentation in the Temple ensemble on the central portal of Reims Cathedral. Added around 1252, slightly after the completion of the core group of Mary and Simeon (c. 1235), she represents the next stylistic phase within the Reims workshops, and her features reflect the evolving naturalism of mid-13th-century sculpture.
This finely modelled figure group forms part of Jehan Soulas’s celebrated Renaissance ensemble depicting the Birth of the Virgin in the ambulatory of Chartres Cathedral. Created in 1521, the scene shows a maidservant kneeling as she prepares to wash the newly delivered infant Mary, a moment drawn from late medieval and early Renaissance visual tradition in which domestic attendants play an active role in the nativity narrative.