AGNES SOREL
ture—the Visit of the Magi—Charles the Seventh, accompanied by his Scottish guard, and with the Castle of Loches in the background, himself kneels as one of the kings before the Virgin, here also represented in the likeness of Agnes. And so on, throughout the series, in many of the scenes of the Virgin's life we find her bearing the features of Agnes until an older and sadder type becomes necessary in the Crucifixion, the Entombment, and the Announcement of the Death and the Death of the Virgin. When, however, death has transfigured age and sorrow, the likeness of Agnes reappears in the Assumption, and Coronation, and, the crowning glory, the Enthronement of the Virgin.
In a Book of Hours, at Munich, painted about 1500 a.d. for Jacques Cœur's grandson (in part perhaps by Jean Bourdichon, the artist of the superb Book of Hours of Anne de Bretagne now in the Bibliothèque Nationale, or at least by some pupil or follower of his), there are three miniatures that seem of special interest in connection with Agnes Sorel. One is a representation of the Virgin of the Annunciation, and another that of the Madonna with the Holy Child. In both these the features of the Virgin Mother appear to faintly echo those of Agnes as we know her, as the crowned and ermined queen in the picture at Antwerp. Still more interesting is the third miniature, giving a view—here used as a setting for the Procession to Calvary—of the front of Jacques Cœur's stately dwelling
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