Froissart of Louis of Gruuthuse (BnF Fr 2643-6)

The Froissart of Louis of Gruuthuse (BnF Fr 2643-6) is a heavily illustrated deluxe illuminated manuscript in four volumes, containing a French text of Froissart's Chronicles, written and illuminated in the first half of the 1470s in Bruges, Flanders, in modern Belgium. The text of Froissart's Chronicles is preserved in more than 150 manuscript copies. This is one of the most lavishly illuminated examples, commissioned by Louis of Gruuthuse, a Flemish nobleman and bibliophile.

The four volumes are now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris as BnF, MSS Français 2643-6, and contain 110 miniatures of various sizes painted by some of the best Brugeois artists of the day. The page size is approximately 44 x 33 cm, with miniatures of various sizes, from 3/4 page and half-page, to historiated initials. The French text is in two columns and there is extensive marginal decoration of scrolling stems and other plant motifs, with some human and animal figures among them.

Loiset Lyédet did the sixty miniatures in the first two volumes. He was a very successful, if somewhat formulaic, illuminator, working mainly on secular manuscripts for Philip III, Duke of Burgundy (Philip the Good) and his court. He probably used assistants, but it is hard to detect separate hands in his work. The last two volumes, which are in general finer, were worked on by the anonymous illuminators known as the Master of Anthony of Burgundy (identified by some writers with Philippe de Mazerolles), the Master of Margaret of York, and the Master of the Dresden Prayer Book, the last as an assistant to the Master of Anthony of Burgundy. These masters are named after prominent works or patrons of theirs. It appears that the project was split in half from an early stage, as the scribes who wrote the text and the style of border decoration (also the work of specialists) differ between volumes 1-2 and 3-4. The large miniatures by the Master of Anthony of Burgundy are especially sophisticated in style, and those by the young Master of the Dresden Prayer Book (above) are notable for "their startlingly ambitious palette and combination of colors, agitated and vibrantly modelled drapery, an apparently inexhaustible range of well-designed figure poses, and challenging placement of figures within complex spaces" (McKendrick). All the illustrations below are from the first two volumes, unless otherwise stated.

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