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Royal MS 20 C V
- Record Id:
- 040-002107685
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002105724
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000338.0x0003cc
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100165177215.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Royal MS 20 C V
- Title:
- Des cleres et nobles femmes, an anonymous French translation of Boccacio's De mulieribus claris
- Scope & Content:
-
Boccaccio's De mulieribus claris is a moralizing compilation of biographical sketches of famous women begun in 1361 and revised several times before his death in 1375. The work was very popular, as attested by the number of translations and including this anonymous French translation, Des cleres et nobles femmes, completed in the early 15th century. The French translation of the De mulieribus claris typically includes a cycle of miniatures. This manuscript contains the oldest redaction of this translation (see: McKendrick, Lowden and Doyle, Royal Manuscripts (2011), no.70).
Contents:
ff. 1r-168r: Des cleres et nobles femmes, an anonymous French translation of Boccacio's De mulieribus claris.
Decoration:
106 miniatures in colours and gold with partial bar borders and large foliate initials in colours and gold (ff. 2v, 5r (in four panels with a full border), 7r, 8v, 11r, 12r, 13r, 15r, 16v, 17v, 19r, 20r, 20v, 22r, 24r, 26r, 27v, 29r, passim). Partial bar border in colours and gold with foliate motifs, and a large initial in colours and gold with the Beaufort badge of a portcullis and chains surmounted by a coronet (f. 1r). Partial bar border in colours and gold with foliate motifs and a large initial in colours and gold (f. 167v). 'Champ' initials in colours and gold. Line fillers in blue, red, and gold. Capitals marked in yellow.
The decoration is attributed to the Master of Boethius, who illuminated the French translation of Boethius's De consolatione philosophie in a manuscript now Paris, BnF, MS fr. 12459 and who was active in Paris c. 1410. The miniatures are not based directly on the earlier Parisian manuscript of Des cleres et nobles femmes made for the dukes of Burgundy and Berry (see: McKendrick, Lowden and Doyle, Royal Manuscripts (2011), no.70).
The subjects of the illustrations are as follow:
f. 2v: Boccaccio presenting the work to Andrea Acciaioli, Countess of Altavilla.
f. 5r: A frontispiece in four panels of Boccaccio reading a book, Boccaccio presenting the book to Andrea Acciaivoli, countess of Altavilla, a messenger presenting a letter to Semiramis and a queen with four female musicians.
f. 7r: Eve and the serpent.
f. 8v: Semiramis enthroned, with her son Ninus.
f. 11r: Opis enthroned.
f. 12r: Juno in the sky, protecting women.
f. 13r: Ceres enthroned.
f. 15r: Minerva with armourers.
f. 16v: Venus with admirers.
f. 17v: Isis in a boat.
f. 19r: Europa is abducted by Jupiter.
f. 20r: Libya, Queen of Libya, with admirers.
f. 20v: Marpesia and Lampeto.
f. 22r: Thisbe finding the body of Pyramus.
f. 24r: Hymnestra being arrested on the order of Danaus.
f. 26r: Niobe viewing the dead bodies of her husband Amphion and two of her children.
f. 27v: Hypsipytle helping Thoas.
f. 29r: Medea uttering a spell.
f. 30v: Arachne weaving.
f. 31v: Orithyia and Antiope.
f. 32v: Erythraea writing.
f. 33r: Medusa in a ship.
f. 34v: Iole and Hercules.
f. 37r: Deianira, Nessus and Hercules.
f. 37v: Jocasta commits suicide, her sons kill each other.
f. 38v: Almathea reading.
f. 39v: Nicostrata inventing the Latin alphabet, with her son Evander.
f. 42r: Pocris and her husband Cephalus.
f. 43v: Argia discovering the body of Polynices.
f. 45v: Manto practsing pyromancy.
f. 46v: The wives of the Minyans.
f. 49r: Penthesilea riding to battle.
f. 49v: Neoptolemus sacrificing Polyxena.
f. 50v: Hecuba witnesses the death of her son Hector.
f. 51v: Cassandra.
f. 52v: Clytemnestra orders the murder of Agamemnon.
f. 54r: Helen and Paris.
f. 58r: Circe and Ulysses.
f. 59v: Camilla, queen of Volscians, hunting.
f. 61v: Penelope weaving with suitors.
f. 64r: Lavinia gives birth to Julius Silvius in the forest.
f. 65r: Death of Dido.
f. 71v: Nicaula, Queen of Sheba, visits Solomon.
f. 72v: Pamphila weaving.
f. 73r: Rhea Ilia is buried alive, while her sons Romulus and Remus are suckled by a wolf.
f. 75r: Gaia Cyrilla at her loom.
f. 75v: Sappho reading.
f. 76v: Lucretia stabs herself.
f. 78v: Thamyris, Queen of the Scythians, beheads Cyrus in battle.
f. 80r: Leana is tortured.
f. 82r: Athaliah, Queen of Jerusalem, has her relatives murdered.
f. 85r: Cloelia crosses the river Tiber on horseback.
f. 86r: Hippo drowning herself.
f. 86v: Megullia Dotata marries and her husband receives her dowry.
f. 87v: Veturia and Volumnia meeting Coriolanus.
f. 90r: Tamaris painting a picture of Diana.
f. 93v: The death of Virginia.
f. 96r: Irene painting a picture.
f. 96v: Leontium reading and being seduced.
f. 97r: The death of Olympias.
f. 98v: Claudia defending Appius Claudius.
f. 99v: Virginia in the temple of Pudicitia.
f. 101r: Flora with revellers.
f. 102v: A young Roman woman breastfeeds her mother.
f. 104r: Marcia with mirror and sculptor's tools.
f. 105r: Sulpicia swinging a censer.
f. 106r: The death of Harmonia.
f. 107r: Busa of Canosa di Puglia takes care of surviving soldiers from the defeated Carthaginian army.
f. 108v: Sophonisba taking poison.
f. 110v: Theoxena fleeing in a ship.
f. 112v: Berenice Pontica, queen of Cappadocia, in a war chariot.
f. 113v: The wife of Orgiago presents him with the head of her rapist.
f. 115v: Tertia Aemilia with her husband Scipio committing adultery.
f. 116v: Dripetrua serving her father.
f. 117r: Sempronia.
f. 118r: Claudia Quinta.
f. 119r: Mithridates VI and Hypsicratea.
f. 121r: Sempronia on trial.
f. 123r: the wives of the Cimbrians hang themselves.
f. 124r: The death of Julia, daughter of Julius Caesar.
f. 124v: Death of Julia, daughter of Caesar.
f. 125r: Portia kills herself by swallowing burning coals.
f. 126v: Curia hiding her husband Quintus Lucretius.
f. 127v: Hortensia pleading with the triumvirs (Caesar Augustus, Mark Anthony and Marcus Aemillius Lepidus).
f. 128r: Sulpicia leaving her friends.
f. 129r: Cornificia with a book.
f. 129v: Mariamme, wife of Herod, is executed.
f. 131v: The death of Cleopatra.
f. 135v: Antonia, widow of Drusus.
f. 136v: Agrippina, widow of Germanicus.
f. 137v: Paulina in the temple of Isis.
f. 139r: The death of Agrippina, mother of Emperor Nero.
f. 141v: The torture of Epicharis.
f. 143r: Pompeia Paulina and Seneca attempt suicide.
f. 144v: Sabina Poppaea riding on a litter.
f. 146v: Triaria goes into battle with her husband Lucius Vitellius.
f. 147v: Proba writing.
f. 149r: Faustina Augusta has her portrait engraved on coins.
f. 150v: Symiamira, woman of Emesa.
f. 152v: Zenobia, queen of Palmyra.
f. 156r: Pope Joan giving birth.
f. 157r: Irene being crowned Empress.
f. 158v: Gualdrada before the Roman emperor.
f. 160r: Constance, Queen of Sicily, marries Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI.
f. 161v: Camiola marries Roland to save him from captivity.
f. 165v: Joanna, Queen of Jerusalem and Sicily.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Royal Collection
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002105724
040-002107685 - Is part of:
- Royal MS 1 A I-20 E X : Royal Manuscripts
Royal MS 20 C V : Des cleres et nobles femmes, an anonymous French translation of Boccacio's De mulieribus claris - Hierarchy:
- 032-002105724[1826]/040-002107685
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Royal MS 1 A I-20 E X
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
-
A parchment codex.
- Digitised Content:
- http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_100165177215.0x000001 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- French, Middle
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1405
- End Date:
- 1415
- Date Range:
- c 1410
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Material: Parchment.
Dimensions: 390 x 280 mm (text space: 235 x 170 mm) in two columns.
Foliation: ff. ii + 168 (+ 1 unfoliated parchment flyleaf at the beginning + 3 unfoliated parchment flyleaves at the end, where ff. i-ii are parchment flyleaves).
Collation: Gatherings of 8 leaves.
Script: Gothic.
Binding: Post-1600. White parchment; marbled endpapers; gilt fore-edges; spine stamped with gilt crowns and roses.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: France (Central, Paris?).
Provenance:
A member of the Beaufort family: added initial 'D'(e) in colours and gold with the Beaufort badge of a portcullis and chains surmounted by a coronet (f. 1r); 'possibly to be identified as the "greatte volume of velom named John Bokas lymned" owned by Lady Margaret Beaufort' (see James Carley, The libraries of king Henry VIII, (2000) p. xxiv).
Inscribed in a late 15th-century hand: 'The booke of the noble ladyes in French' (f. [ii]).
The Old Royal Library (the English Royal Library): Westminster inventory number 'no. 478' (f. 1r), included in the inventory of books in the Upper Library at Westminster of 1542; in the catalogue of 1666, Royal Appendix 71, ff. 11v or 12v.
Presented to the British Museum by George II in 1757 as part of the Old Royal Library.
- Information About Copies:
- Select digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts at http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/welcome.htm.
- Publications:
-
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. 372.
Fritz Saxl and Hans Meier, Verzeichnis astrologischer und mythologischer illustrierter Handschriften des lateinischen Mittelalters, ed. by Harry Bober, 4 vols (London: Warburg Institute, 1916-66), III: Handschriften in englischen Bibliotheken (1953), pp. 222-23.
Carla Bozzolo, Manuscripts des traductions françaises d'oeuvres de Boccacce, XVe siècle (Padua: Antenore, 1973), pp. 23-25, 153-54.
Millard Meiss, with Sharon Off Dunlap Smith and Elizabeth Home Beaton, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry: The Limbourgs and Their Contemporaries, 2 vols (London: Thames and Hudson, 1974), I, p. 370.
Catherine Reynolds, 'Illustrated Boccaccio Manuscripts in the British Library (London)', Studi sul Boccaccio, 17 (1988), 113-81 (pp. 171-80).
Maureen Quilligan, The Allegory of Female Authority: Christine de Pisan's 'Cité des Dames' (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), figs. 3, 11-13, 20-22, 24-26.
Brigitte Buettner, Boccacio's Des cleres et nobles femmes: Systems of Signification in an Illuminated Manuscript (Seattle: College Art Association and University of Washington Press, 1996), 100, 112, 114-15, 117-18.
Boccaccio visualizzato: Narrare per parole e per immagini fra Medioevo e Rinascimento, ed. by Vittore Branca, Biblioteca di Storia dell'arte, 30, 3 vols (Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 1999), I: Saggi generale con una prospettiva dal barocco a oggi, pp. 109, 110, 136; and III: Opere d'arte d'origine francese, fiamminga, inglese, spagnola, tedesca, pp. 12, 42-46, 53, 54, 267, 316.
The Image of Time: European Manuscript Books (Lisbon: Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, 2000), no. 64 [exhibition catalogue].
The Libraries of King Henry VIII, ed. by J. P. Carley, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 7 (London: The British Library, 2000), H2.301, p. xxiv.
James P. Carley, The Books of King Henry VIII and His Wives, preface by David Starkey (London: British Library, 2004), p. 49, pl. 44.
John Lowden, Scot McKendrick and Kathleen Doyle, Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination (London: British Library, 2011), no. 70 [exhibition catalogue].
- Exhibitions:
- The Venus Paradox, A. G. Leventis Gallery, Nicosia, 29 September 2017 - 15 January 2018
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)