Concerning Christine de Pizan

Christine de Pizan was born in Venice around 1364 and died in France around 1429. She moved to Paris at an early age with her family. She wrote in French and is considered the first French woman writer and publisher as well as one of the first feminists. After the early death of her husband, a French nobleman, she supported her children and herself by means of her prolific writingher subjects being love, politics, and the defense of women. She had patronage within the royal circl e and she herself closely supervised the artists and scribes who worked on the production and illumination of her manuscripts. She acted as scribe on some of her manuscripts and at one time was also thought to be her own illustrator. Her most famous work is The City of Women. Its illuminations depicting women building their own city employ architecture as a metaphor for writing and self-validation. Her last poem, written in 1429, extols Joan of Arc, who had just achieved victory at Orleans. Christine de Pizan's insistence that women could be artists, scholars, and heroes reflects her faith in art, literature, and religion as much as the birth of feminism.