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[edit] Renaissance depictions

Renaissance relief of the Queen of Sheba meeting Salomo (At the gate of the Florence Baptistry)
Renaissance relief of the Queen of Sheba meeting Salomo (At the gate of the Florence Baptistry)

Boccaccio's On Famous Women (Latin: De Mulieribus Claris) follows Josephus in calling her Nicaula. Boccaccio goes on to explain that not only was she the queen of Ethiopia and Egypt, but also the queen of Arabia. She supposedly also had a grand palace on "a very large island" called Menroe which was located someplace on the Nile "practically on the other side of the world." From here Nicaula crossed the deserts of Arabia, through Ethiopia and Egypt, and up the the coast of the Red Sea, to come to Jerusalem to see the great King Solomon. Boccaccio also explains that Nicaula was also known as the Queen of Sheba in the "Sacred Scriptures".[1]

Christine de Pizan's The Book of the City of Ladies continues the convention of calling the Queen of Sheba, Nicaula. Piero della Francesca's frescoes in Arezzo (ca 1466) on the Legend of the True Cross, contain two panels on the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon. The legend links the beams of Solomon's palace (adored by Queen of Sheba) to the wood of the crucifixion. See the Piero della Francesca entry for images. The Renaissance continuation of the metaphorical view of the Queen of Sheba as an analogy to the gifts of the Magi is also clearly evident in the Triptych of the Adoration of the Magi, ca. 1510 by Hieronymus Bosch. Bosch chooses to depict a scene of the Queen of Sheba and Solomon in an ornately decorated collar worn by one of the Magi.[2] For some reason, the Queen of Sheba is usually depicted as having hairy feet, or being entirely cover in hair, thousands of years after the fact. Marlowe's Doctor Faustus refers to the Queen of Sheba as "Saba", when Mephistopheles is trying to persuade Faustus of the wisdom of the women with whom he shall supposedly be presented every morning.[3]


  1. ^ Giovanni Boccaccio’s Famous Women translated by Virginia Brown 2001, p. 90; Cambridge and London, Harvard University Press; ISBN 0-674-01130-9;
  2. ^ Web Gallery of Art, http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/b/bosch/91adorat/01tripty.html, website accessed August 2, 2006
  3. ^ Marlowe, Christopher; Doctor Faustus and other plays: Oxford World Classics, p. 155.