Venance Fortunat lisant ses poèmes à Radegonde et à l’abbesse dans le monastère de Poitiers

This painting depicts Venantius Fortunatus reading his poems to Saint Radegund and the abbess in the monastery of Poitiers. Venantius Fortunatus was a 6th-century Latin poet known for his ties to the religious and political elites of the Merovingian world. Radegund, a Thuringian princess who became the wife of the Frankish king Clotaire I, later left the royal court to found the Abbey of Sainte-Croix at Poitiers, where she led a religious life. The work thus stages a moment of culture and devotion in the Merovingian world while also reflecting the 19th-century taste for scholarly reconstructions of the early Middle Ages, monastic interiors, and female figures of sanctity.