Description
The use of gold and blue half-fleur-de-lys devices in the decoration of this large and impressive volume identifies it as part of a small group of surviving manuscripts which were produced for Charles V, the Duc de Berry and other members of the French royal family – that is, the single greatest bibliophilic family of the entire Middle Ages. The distinctive decoration in known in the French royal inventories as “enluminé tout au long des colombes de fleur de lis d’or et d’assur” (Delisle, Cabinet des Manuscrits, III, p.139), and seems to have been a preserve of a group of manuscript artists when working solely for this noble and bibliophilic kin-group. The copy of Les Grandes Chroniques with one full-page miniature and 33 small miniatures sold by Sotheby’s, 8 December 1981, lot 94, was made c. 1380 by Parisian court scribes and painters for Jean, Duc de Berry (1340-1416), son of Jean le Bon and brother of Charles V, and has near-identical decoration, variegated initials using gold, and dimensions (see Sotheby’s cat. p. 120). The contemporary fragmentary Histoire Ancienne, now British Library, Egerton MS. 912, is part of this same group, and to these should be added the Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Historiale, sold by Sotheby’s, 7 December 1982, lot 53, later Schoenberg collection (see Transformation of Knowledge, 2006, no. IX:11, p. 137), and the present volume.
In addition, the present volume has great individual merit. While it, like the Vincent of Beauvais listed above, cannot be easily located among the French royal inventories, it is unlikely to have been produced for a patron outside the royal house. The scribe and artist will have known the French royals intimately, and careful study will probably detect their influences in other books made for the court. The sermon collection is also apparently unrecorded and unstudied, and may contain further links to the devotions of this noble family which could point towards to a particular individual.
