Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Deipyle.
The gallery
Deipyle, one of the Nine Worthy Women (Sala Baronale, detail)
Master of Castello della Manta (anonymous; sometimes attributed to Jacques Iverny), c. 1420
A detail from the celebrated Late Gothic fresco cycle in the Baronial Hall (Sala Baronale) of the Castello della Manta in Piedmont, painted soon after 1420 by the anonymous Master of Castello della Manta. The hall arrays the Nine Worthies opposite their female counterparts, the Nine Worthy Women, drawn from the chivalric poem 'Le Chevalier Errant' by Marquess Thomas III of Saluzzo. Among them stands Deipyle (rendered 'Deiphille'), the Argive princess and mother of the hero Diomedes, shown as an elegant courtly lady beneath an inscribed scroll and a heraldic shield (argent a griffin vert). The same figure was later identified with Eleonora of Arborea, but in the fresco she represents the mythological Deipyle herself, a rare instance of the otherwise barely depicted heroine being singled out by name.
The Nine Worthy Women, Baronial Hall of Castello della Manta (view I)
Master of Castello della Manta (anonymous), c. 1420
A wide view of the frescoed wall of the Sala Baronale at the Castello della Manta, where the Nine Worthy Women (Neuf Preuses) process in courtly costume beneath painted trees and identifying scrolls. Painted around 1420 by the anonymous Master of Castello della Manta and inspired by Thomas III of Saluzzo's 'Le Chevalier Errant', the cycle is one of the finest surviving secular fresco ensembles of northern Italian Late Gothic art. Deipyle appears within this gallery of heroines, set among figures such as Sinope, Hippolyta, Menalippe, Semiramis, Lampedo, Tomyris, Teuta and Penthesilea, each presented as a model of female worth.
The Nine Worthies and Worthy Women, Baronial Hall of Castello della Manta (view II)
Master of Castello della Manta (anonymous), c. 1420
A further view of the fresco cycle in the Baronial Hall of the Castello della Manta, showing the long procession of the Nine Worthies and their female counterparts that runs around the room. Executed soon after 1420 by the anonymous Master of Castello della Manta, the program pairs legendary male champions (Godfrey of Bouillon, Charlemagne, King Arthur, Judas Maccabeus and others) with the Nine Worthy Women of myth and antiquity. Deipyle, mother of Diomedes, is numbered among these heroines, each standing in elaborate early-fifteenth-century dress with a scroll naming her, a vivid testimony to how Greek-myth figures were absorbed into medieval ideals of chivalric virtue.