Inscription: "Addressed to Lucien Renault; signed “Ta soeurette [illegible]”. Historical scene showing Joan of Arc telling the dauphin of France that he will be crowned king at Reims. As is conventional for iconography of Joan during her period of combat, she wears men’s clothing—in this case, an elaborate doublet and riding boots. Conversely, this image steps outside the convention by including a halberd-bearer accompanying Joan; the footsoldier is played by a young woman dressed in a doublet and man’s cap (but wearing quite feminine-looking pumps rather than military footwear). Including an additional cross-dressed character brings this image closer to the genre of trouser roles and gallant scenes.
Cite As:
Postcards of female and male impersonators and cross-dressing, #7778. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.
This image is believed to be in the public domain in the United States by virtue of publication date, and is presented by Cornell University Library under the Guidelines for Using Text, Images, Audio, and Video from Cornell University Library Collections, http://hdl.handle.net/1813.001/CULCopyright. This collection was digitized by Cornell University Library in 2019 from materials held in the Rare and Manuscript Collections, with funding from a Digital Collections in Arts and Sciences Grant to Professor Durba Ghosh and Brenda Marston, Curator of the Human Sexuality Collection. For more information about this image, please contact the Rare and Manuscript Collections at rareref@cornell.edu. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item.
