The profile of Claude de France has long been at a discouraging low amongst French queens. Although pictured an uncommon number of times as a child or youth, her adult face is particularly hard to grasp: Henri Pigaillem's 2006 monograph sports on its cover, tellingly, a portrait of someone other than the queen. Historians have had trouble tracing the contours of Claude's queenly persona, too. Even in Nantes, where the cult of Anne de Bretagne overflows into the streets and squares, the 2007 exhibition dedicated to the history and myth of the queen-duchess cast a rather somber light on the daughters who survived Queen Anne and King Louis XII. In the eyes of Odette Turias, both Claude and Renée were content to bow to the will of King François Ier; and Claude's virtues – modesty, discretion, prudence – fostered a self-abnegation unworthy of a princess of royal descent. The tone of Guillaume Michel de Tours's Elegies threnes et complainctes sur la mort de tresilustre dame Madame Claude …, printed two years after the queen's death, could hardly be more at odds. Michel exhorts Jean de Paris (Jean Perréal) to design a sepulchre for this ‘lady of distinction’ and position her heart of gold on its dexter right; and he proposes adding Claude to Boccaccio's list of illustrious women, deeming her a ‘femme forte’ no fewer than four times. Closer readings of historical fact, texts, and images should help ascertain whether Michel was a base flatterer or if, rather, the oft belittled Claude was a worthy scion of Anne de Bretagne and Louis XII.

Before the Wheel of Fortune Turned

Louise de Savoie, generally cast as Claude's greatest badgerer, had no trouble whatsoever getting her dates straight: her journal informs us that Claude de France was born in Louise's castle of Romorantin on 13 October 1499, at 8:54 p.m. This astrologically precise data is but one of many signs that Princess Claude benefited from a truly exceptional start in life. For seven days bonfires were lit in her honor throughout the realm; hence she entered the collective psyche of French subjects just after birth. Months later, her grateful mother undertook a pilgrimage to thank St Claude for his assistance in procreation; and her daughter would gaze upon her namesake bishop at the beginning and the end of her primer as she was learning to read.