Hortensia Delivering a Speech; Sulpicia Following Her Husband into Exile

From the Getty Museum record

Two narratives said to have taken place during the period of the triumvirs in ancient Rome are depicted on this page. During this period, women were heavily burdened by taxes. No men were willing to advocate for the over-encumbered women, but Hortensia, daughter of the great orator Quintus Hortensius and the subject of the image on the left, stepped forward. She delivered an effective and eloquent plea to the triumvir on behalf of all Roman women and freed them of their unfair taxation. Such a narrative would have resonated with the “dispute of women” (*querelle des dames*), a literary debate on the role of women in society that was contemporaneous to the creation of this manuscript, especially because the accompanying image depicts not only a sixteenth-century style interior, but figures adorned in sixteenth-century style dress. Meanwhile, elsewhere on this page, another story from the period of the triumvirs is found. The Roman consul Lentulus Truscellio fled to Sicily after being condemned by the reigning triumvirs for his father’s role in the civil war. Sulpicia was detained by her mother and guards from following her husband into exile, but one day, she dressed herself as an enslaved woman and escaped with her servants. She followed her husband’s trail through forests, over mountains, and across seas until she finally found him. Her journey from castle to wilderness with two servants is commemorated in the image using a method called “continuous narrative.” The group first appears on the right, emerging from a portcullis, and then again on the left among the trees of the forest. The figures’ small size indicates their receding into the distance. A touch of blue at the very back of the image shows Sulpicia’s deep trek into the woods.