The Tomb Effigy of Eleanor of Aquitaine at Fontevraud Abbey
Eleanor of Aquitaine on her tomb at Fontevraud, carved in the early thirteenth century. Her husband and her son lie beside her with hands folded; she holds an open book. The choice was made for her monument and it is the earliest image of an English queen reading.
Eleanor spent her last years at Fontevraud, an abbey her family had endowed and where she chose to be buried among the Plantagenets rather than beside her first husband in France. The book on the effigy is not decoration. Patronage was the form of authority open to a queen who had outlived her power to rule: commissioning, endowing, choosing what got copied, sung and built. What survives of that is largely stone and charters, and this is the most eloquent piece of the stone. See noblewomen as patrons and the legacy of Eleanor of Aquitaine.
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