Hard-coded id of currently selected item: . JSON version of its record is available from Blacklight on e.g. ??
Metadata associated with selected item should appear here...
Royal MS 19 C VIII
- Record Id:
- 040-002107618
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002105724
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000338.0x00036c
- LARK:
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Royal MS 19 C VIII
- Title:
- Hugues de Lannoy (?), Imaginacion de vraye noblesse, with the preface by Quentin Poulet
- Scope & Content:
-
The manuscript contains the Enseignement de la vraye noblesse attributed to Hugues de Lannoy with the title changed to the Imaginacion de vraye noblesse and prefaced with a dedication to Henry VII by Quentin Poulet, royal librarian and the scribe of this manuscript.
ff. 1r-2v: Quentin Poulet, Preface, incipit: 'A vous tres doubte souverain', followed by a table of contents.
ff. 3r-97v: Hugues de Lannoy, Enseignement de la vraye noblesse, incipit: 'Par la grace de nostre seigneur ihesuchrist dont tous biens procedent.'
Decoration:
6 large miniatures in colours and gold, with illuminated initials and full trompe l'oeil borders, at the beginning of books (ff. 3r, 11r, 18v, 32v, 41r, 90r).
1 historiated initial in colours and gold, with a partial trompe l'oeil border, at the beginning of the preface (f. 1r).
Small initials and paraphs in blue and white on red grounds with penwork decoration in gold.
The subjects of the miniatures are:
f. 1r: Initial 'A'(vous) of Poulet presenting the book to Henry VII.
f. 3r: The Knight kneeling and addressing Lady Imagination, with the city of Halle in the background.
f. 11r: Lady Imagination introducing the Knight to the Three Virtues (or the Three Aspects of Nobility).
f. 18v: A prince enthroned, with supplicants surrounding him, and God the Father above.
f. 32v: Lady Imagination showing the Knight a man with severed arms (representing a man without chivalry or honour).
f. 41r: An archer and a carter as models for a prince.
f. 90r: Lady Imagination taking leave of the knight, with the city of Halle in the background.
The illuminations are by the Master of the Prayer Books of around 1500 (see Kren and McKendrick, Illuminating the Renaissance (2003)).
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Royal Collection
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002105724
040-002107618 - Is part of:
- Royal MS 1 A I-20 E X : Royal Manuscripts
Royal MS 19 C VIII : Hugues de Lannoy (?), Imaginacion de vraye noblesse, with the preface by Quentin Poulet - Hierarchy:
- 032-002105724[1765]/040-002107618
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Royal MS 1 A I-20 E X
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
-
Parchment codex
- Digitised Content:
- http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Royal_MS_19_C_VIII (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- French
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1496
- End Date:
- 1496
- Date Range:
- 1496
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
Please request the physical items you need using the online collection item request form.
Digitised items can be viewed online by clicking the thumbnail image or digitised content link.
Readers who have registered or renewed their pass since 21 March 2024 can request physical items prior to visiting the Library by completing
this request form.
Please enter the Reference (shelfmark) above on the request form.If your Reader Pass was issued before this date, you will need to visit the Library in London or Yorkshire to renew it before you can request items online. All manuscripts and archives must be consulted at the Library in London.
This catalogue record may describe a collection of items which cannot all be requested together. Please use the hierarchy viewer to navigate to individual items. Some items may be in use or restricted for other reasons. If you would like to check the availability, contact our Reference Services team, quoting the Reference (shelfmark) above.
- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: 310 x 215 mm (text space: 255 x 150 mm).
Foliation: ff. i + 97 (+ 2 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves and 1 unfoliated medieval parchment flyleaf [after f. i*] at the beginning and at the end; f. i is a medieval parchment flyleaf); original foliation in red (from f. 3r) referring to a table of contents (ff. 1v-2v).
Collation: ff. i*, [i*] are singletons; i2 (ff. 1-2); ii-v8 (ff. 3-34); vi6 (ff. 35-40); vii-xi8 (ff. 41-80); xii8-1 (ff. 81-87; 1 leaf excised after f. 81); xiii10 (ff. 88-97). Catchwords written vertically.
Script: Gothic hybrid (Bastarda).
Binding: Post-1600. Late 18th-century binding of brown leather with the royal arms and a date of 1757. Gilt edges.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: England (Sheen); illuminations: southern Netherlands (Bruges).
Provenance:
Quentin Poulet, scribe, illuminator (his name included in a Bruges list of apprentice illuminators from 1472-1473) and keeper of Henry VII's library from 1492, written by him in 1496, at Sheen, as a presentation copy to Henry VII: his colophon, 'Explicit Limaginacion de vraye noblesse / paracheve le derrenier jour de Juyn au Manoir / de Shene Lan mil cccc iiiixx et xvi. p[ar] Q Poulet' (f. 97v).
Henry VII (b. 1457, d. 1509), King of England and lord of Ireland, dedicated to him: 'A vous mon tres redoubte souverain seigneur le tres hault tres excellent tres puissant et tres victorieux prince Henry septiesme de ce nom Roy dangleterre et de france' (f. 1r); royal arms of England surmounted by a crown, with a white rose of York and a red rose of Lancaster (f. 3r).
Press-mark of a very large number in brown ink (Carley's 'Old Large Number') '57' (f. 1r).
The Old Royal Library (the English Royal Library): included in the list of books at Richmond Palace of 1535, no. 98; and in the catalogue of 1666, Royal Appendix 71, f. 13v.
Presented to the British Museum by George II in 1757 as part of the Old Royal Library.
- Publications:
-
H. Omont, 'Les manuscrits français des rois d'Angleterre au château de Richmond', in Etudes romanes dédiés à Gaston Paris (Paris: É. Bouillon, 1891), pp. 1-13 (p. 10).
J. A. Herbert, Illuminated Manuscripts (London: Methuen, 1911), p. 317.
George F. Warner and Julius P. Gilson, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King’s Collections, 4 vols (London: British Museum, 1921), II, p. 336.
Anglo-Flemish Art under the Tudors: An Exhibition held in the Department of Prints and Drawings (London: British Museum, 1954), no. 17.
Gordon Kipling, The Triumph of Honour: Burgundian Origins of the Elizabethan Renaissance (The Hague: Leiden University Press, 1977), p. 37.
Janet Backhouse, The Illuminated Manuscript (Oxford: Phaidon, 1979), pl. 63.
Andrew G. Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c. 700-1600 in The Department of Manuscripts: The British Library, 2 vols (London: British Library, 1979), I, no. 913.
Janet Backhouse, 'Founders of the Royal Library: Edward IV and Henry VII as Collectors of Illuminated Manuscripts', in England in the Fifteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1986 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. by David Williams (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1987), pp. 23-42 (pp. 32-33, pl. 11).
Janet Backhouse, 'A Salute to the Tudor Rose', in Miscellanea Martin Wittek: Album de codicologie et de paléographie offert à Martin Wittek, ed. by Anny Raman and Eugène Manning (Louvain: Peeters, 1993), pp. 1-13 (p. 8, n. 50).
Janet Backhouse, 'Illuminated Manuscripts Associated with Henry VII and Members of his Immediate Family', in The Reign of Henry VII: Proceedings of the 1993 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. by Benjamin Thompson (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1995), pp. 175-87 (p. 176).
James P. Carley, 'Marks in Books and the Libraries of Henry VIII', Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 91 (1997), 583-606 (p. 605).
Maurits Smeyers, Flemish Miniatures from the 8th to the mid-16th Century (Leuven: Brepols, 1999), pp. 467-48, pl. 72 on p. 467.
The Libraries of King Henry VIII, ed. by James P. Carley, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 7 (London: The British Library, 2000), H1.88.
Scot McKendrick, Flemish Illuminated Manuscripts, 1400-1550 (London: British Library, 2003), pl. 106.
Thomas Kren and Scot McKendrick, Illuminating the Renaissance: The Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe (Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003), no. 121, pp. 403-05.
James P. Carley, The Books of King Henry VIII and His Wives, preface by David Starkey (London: British Library, 2004), pl. 39.
Livia Visser-Fuchs, 'The manuscript of the Enseignement de vraie noblesse made for Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, in 1464', in Medieval Manuscripts in Transition: Tradition and Creative Recycling, ed. by Geert H. M. Claassens and Werner Verbeke, Mediaevalia Lovaniensia, Series I, Studia, 36 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2006), pp. 337-62.
Bernhard Sterchi, 'Hugues de Lannoy, auteur de L’Enseignement de vraie noblesse, de L’Instruction d’un jeune prince et des Enseignements paternels', http://www.cairn.info/revue-le-moyen-age-2004-1-page-79.htm, 79-115 (p. 80) [accessed on 14. 09. 2009].
Henry VIII: Man and Monarch, ed. by Susan Doran (London: British Library, 2009), no. 20 [exhibition catalogue].
Lieve De Kesel, ‘Heritage and Innovation in Flemish Book Illumination at the Turn of the Sixteenth Century: Framing the Frames From Simon Marmion to Gerard David’, in Books in Transition at the Time of Philip the Fair: Manuscripts and Printed Books in the Late Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Century Low Countries, ed. by Hanno Wijsman (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 93-130 (p. 125 n. 74).
Scot McKendrick, John Lowden, and Kathleen Doyle, Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination (London: British Library, 2011), no. 69 [exhibition catalogue].
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)