SOURCE: Riddy, Felicity. “‘Abject odious’: Feminine and Masculine in Henryson's Testament of Cresseid.” In The Long Fifteenth Century: Essays for Douglas Gray, edited by Helen Cooper and Sally Mapstone, pp. 229-48. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.

In this essay, Riddy compares The Testament of Cresseid with the anonymous painting “Les Amants trépassés,” and analyzes the symbolism and imagery of both works.

In the cathedral museum in Strasbourg there is a late fifteenth-century painting attributed to an unknown Swabian Master called ‘Les Amants trépassés’. It depicts the dead lovers naked, standing side by side on what looks like a stone floor which dissolves into an impenetrably black background. Their bodies are already decomposing; through their emaciated flesh the bones are visible; the skin on their faces is pulled back so that they are almost grinning skulls. They wear their winding sheets, and the woman is holding hers...