Accession number
MS M.1038
Object title
Le pèlerinage de la vie humaine.
Created
France, second quarter of the 14th century.
Binding
Bald silk velvet over alum-tawed leather over wooden boards, rebacked in sheepskin; boards and leather perhaps date from the 15th-century, the textile cover and rebacking are later.
Credit line
Purchased in 1982.
Description
119 leaves (2 columns, 31 lines), bound : vellum, ill. ; 212 x 150 mm
Provenance
Payne and Foss; Sir Thomas Phillipps (Ms. 4219); Katharine Fenwick; Thomas FitzRoy Fenwick; Alan George Fenwick; William H. Robinson, Ltd.; Robinson Trust; H.P. Kraus, New York.
Notes
Ms. Le pèlerinage de la vie humaine; written and illuminated in northern France in the second quarter of the 14th century. Three miniatures are dated to ca. 1455 by the Index of Christian Art.
Texts: Le pèlerinage de la vie humaine (fols. 1-114) and acrostics on the Pater Noster and Ave Maria in Latin (fols. 114-119).
Decoration: 109 small miniatures, 1 illuminated initial with border extension, numerous filigree initials.
The illumination of M.1038 is unfinished. The miniature on fol. 22r (Carpenter's Square) is unfinished.
Many miniatures are worn down to the underdrawings.
According to Michael Camille, M.1038 is very closely related to Paris, BnF, MS Fr. 1818, which he dated ca. 1340. He suggests that the illustrations in M.1038 seem directly copied from the latter manuscript, owing to their similar shape and placement in the manuscripts. Most pages with miniatures and some pages without have iconographical descriptions written by the scribe, placed in the side or lower margins and framed with a shield-shaped outline in brown ink. In Camille's opinion, since the illustrations were copied from another manuscript, the marginal notes were not intended as instructions to the illuminator but rather as a type of rubric to the text, which does not have prefatory rubrics at section divisions.
Texts: Le pèlerinage de la vie humaine (fols. 1-114) and acrostics on the Pater Noster and Ave Maria in Latin (fols. 114-119).
Decoration: 109 small miniatures, 1 illuminated initial with border extension, numerous filigree initials.
The illumination of M.1038 is unfinished. The miniature on fol. 22r (Carpenter's Square) is unfinished.
Many miniatures are worn down to the underdrawings.
According to Michael Camille, M.1038 is very closely related to Paris, BnF, MS Fr. 1818, which he dated ca. 1340. He suggests that the illustrations in M.1038 seem directly copied from the latter manuscript, owing to their similar shape and placement in the manuscripts. Most pages with miniatures and some pages without have iconographical descriptions written by the scribe, placed in the side or lower margins and framed with a shield-shaped outline in brown ink. In Camille's opinion, since the illustrations were copied from another manuscript, the marginal notes were not intended as instructions to the illuminator but rather as a type of rubric to the text, which does not have prefatory rubrics at section divisions.
Script
bastarda
Language
Old French and Latin
Resources
Century
Catalog link
Classification
Department