Bill D: As stated on the first page I linked, the French title (or one of them) is Celle qui fut la belle heaulmière. I can't find a website that can translate the word heaulmière but it's taken from a 15th-century poem -- I'm guessing that this word has fallen out of use now (how many helmet makers are still out there, much less their wives?) but I am assuming that the various art museums are correct and that it did mean "helmet maker's wife" in English. The Met website also says of the statue: "In the Paris Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1890, it was called simply Old Woman (Vielle femme), suggesting that both titles, The Old Courtesan and She Who Was Once the Helmet-Maker's Beautiful Wife, may have been fanciful afterthoughts."
|