Buettner Profane Illuminations, Secular Illusions Manuscripts in Late Medieval Courtly Society

Profane Illuminations, Secular Illusions: Manuscripts in Late Medieval Courtly SocietyAuthor(s): Brigitte BuettnerSource: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 74, No. 1 (Mar., 1992), pp. 75-90Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3045851 .

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Profane Illuminations, Secular Illusions:

Manuscripts in Late Medieval Courtly Society Brigitte Buettner

During the loosely delimited period of the late Middle Ages, artistic production underwent several important shifts, the outcome of which would ultimately define the art market of modern times as a primarily lay and urban phenomenon, be it in a courtly or mercantile incarnation. In patronage, the

upper ranks of lay society became the most influential art

clients, forcefully invading a territory previously guarded by ecclesiastical figures and religious orders. By the end of the fourteenth century in France, kings and their relatives were

intensively encouraging the creation and diffusion of new textual and visual artifacts. Perhaps for the first time, the notion of "cultural policy" can pertinently be used to charac- terize the actions of King Jean le Bon, his sons Charles V, Louis I d'Anjou, Jean, duc de Berry, and Philippe le Hardi, duke of Burgundy, and his grandsons Charles VI, Louis

d'Orlkans, and Jean sans Peur.' Unlike earlier noble collec-

tors, such as Charlemagne or Louis IX, the entire Valois

family2 fervently devoted large amounts of money and their

subjects' time and labor to the arts, including literature, architecture, sculpture, painting, illumination, and the so- called minor arts. Laying the foundations for a veritable state

humanism, the king and his brothers appointed clerics

steeped in classical studies to key positions in major chancel-

leries.3 The Valois publicized themselves as "wise rulers,"4 an ideal image that would enhance the claims of the omnipres- ent courtly patrons of the Renaissance.

As manuscript patrons, the Valois family indulged in "vello-mania" unmatched until the nineteenth century.5

From roughly 1350 onwards, French royal and princely families assembled impressive private libraries, collections that were continuously enlarged by lavish manuscripts ordered directly from authors, translators, and illuminators, received as gifts, or purchased on the nascent book market.6 While the ownership of books was still limited to a privileged few, the upper stratum of the aristocracy was certainly not the

only class of book owners: humanists, royal secretaries and

chancellors, clerics of the parliament, and university and ecclesiastical institutions also collected and accumulated books. Published inventories, however, reveal that princely libraries were not pale imitations of existing ecclesiastical ones. Among sacred books, Bibles and devotional texts

largely outnumbered patristic and theological corpora, which formed the bulk of university libraries. In the secular sphere all genres were represented, though unevenly owing to differentiated literary tastes. Where the library of Charles V was particularly well supplied with scientific, legal, and historical works, the ones of Jean de Berry and Philippe le Hardi included a larger number of romances and poetry.' A few common features can nonetheless be singled out, such as the presence of a comparable number of religious and secular works, an impressive number of richly decorated

manuscripts, and a large body of texts written or recently translated into French.

At the end of the Middle Ages, Latin had become a foreign language to the noble audience, confined to some formulaic

phrases repeated during religious services or private read-

For having read earlier drafts of this essay, I wish to thank Carl Klaus- berg, Kathryn Horste, and Myra Orth; for helping me turn drafts into an article, all my gratitude goes to Mimi Hellman, Brent Maddox, and James Marrow.

'We still lack a comprehensive study on artistic policies of the first Valois. C. Lord, Royal French Patronage in the Fourteenth Century: An Annotated Bibliography, Boston, 1985, remains the best bibliographical tool. For broader perspectives on the history of art patronage including our period, see J. von Schlosser, Die Kunst- und Wunderkammern der Spatrenaissance. Ein Beitrag zur Geschzchte des Sammelwesens, Leipzig, 1908; M. Warnke, Hofkunstler. Zur Vorgeschichte des modernen Kiinstler, Cologne, 1985; K. Pomian, Collectionneurs, amateurs et curteux: Paris, Venise XVIe-XVIIIe szicle, Paris, 1987, esp. 15-59.

2 The role of their wives and the whole question of women's patronage have received far less attention for this period. However, see C. Richter Sherman on Jeanne de Bourbon: "The Queen in Charles V's 'Corona- tion Book': Jeanne de Bourbon and the 'Ordo ad Reginam Benedicendam,' " Viator, viii, 1977, 255-298, and "Taking a Second Look: Observations on the Iconography of a French Queen, Jeanne de Bourbon (1338-1378)," Feminism and Art Hzstory. Questzonzng the Litany, ed. N. Broude and M.D. Garrard, New York, 1982, 101-117. For Margaret of Flanders, see de Winter; and M.J. Hughes, "The Library of Philip the Bold and Margaret of Flanders, First Valois Duke and Duchess of Burgundy," Journal of Medzeval History, Iv, 1978, 145-188. For Isabeau de Baviere, A. Vallet de Viriville, "La Bibliotheque d'Isabeau de Bavieire," Bulletin du bibliophile, xxxvi, Jan. 1858, 663-687; S.L. Hindman, "The Iconography of Queen Isabeau de Baviere (1410-

1415): An Essay in Method," Gazette des beaux-arts, cII, ser. 6, 1983, 102-110, and idem, Christzne de Pzzan's 'Epistre Othea'. Painting and Politics at the Court of Charles VI, Toronto, 1986, 133-138. A more general insight is provided by S.G. Bell, "Medieval Woman Book Owners: Arbiters of Lay Piety and Ambassadors of Culture," Signs, vii, 1982, 742-768.

3 On French humanism, see in particular G. Ouy, "Paris, l'un des principaux foyers de l'humanisme en Europe au debut du XVeme siecle," Bulletin de la Socrite de l'Histoire de Parts et de l'lle-de-France, 1967-68, 71-98; idem, "L'Humanisme et les mutations politiques et sociales en France au XIVWme et XVeime siecles," L'Humanisme frangazs au dibut de la Renaissance, Paris, 1973, 27-44.

4 For this notion, see C. Richter Sherman, "Representations of Charles V of France as a Wise Ruler," Medievalia et humanistica, n.s. 2, 1971, 83-96.

5 After the characterization of Sir Thomas Phillipps in A.N.L. Munby, Portrait of an Obsession. Sir Thomas Phillipps, London, 1967, 174. 6 The classic study remains P. Delalain, Etude sur le libraire parnsien du XIlle au XVe siecle, Paris, 1891. See also P.M. de Winter, "Copistes, 6diteurs et enlumineurs de la fin du XIVeme siicle: La Production a Paris de manuscrits a miniatures," Actes du 1 00me Congres National des Sociztis Savantes, Paris, 1975, 173-198; R. and M. Rouse, "The Book Trade at the University of Paris, c. 1250-c. 1350," La Production du livre universitaire au Moyen Age. Exemplar et pecia, Paris, 1988, 41-123.

7 La Librairie de Charles V, exh. cat., Bibliothbque Nationale, Paris, 1968; L. Delisle, Recherches sur la librairie de Charles V, Paris, 1907; J. Guiffrey, Inventaires dejean, duc de Berry (1401-1416), Paris, 1894-96; de Winter.



76 THE ART BULLETIN MARCH 1992 VOLUME LXXIV NUMBER 1

ings of devotional texts.8 Despite Christine de Pizan's claim, the many translations commissioned by Charles V leave some doubts about his fluency in Latin.' But translations, while responding to precise linguistic needs, also had broader cultural implications concerning the rise of a national iden-

tity, the appropriation of alien idioms and cultures, or the

re-appropriation of a mother tongue.'o What remains to be understood is the role played by images in this process of

defining national and class identities, and at the same time the significance of enshrining thousands of miniatures in

privately owned manuscripts whose restricted access could not satisfy the same political and institutional needs as monumental art.

When trying to explain the prodigious proliferation of secular illuminated manuscripts" among the dominant social strata during the late Middle Ages, scholars ordinarily adduce economic and aesthetic causes. Miniatures aug- mented the beauty of a manuscript and hence its price, and since many of the new texts in circulation were secular, then

logically the number of secular illuminated manuscripts rose.

Surviving princely inventories and accounts amply demon- strate that illuminated manuscripts were indeed pricey items. The cost of such books generally ranged from one hundred to six hundred francs, more than even the most expensive type of horse (evaluated at three hundred francs),'2 and

considerably more than the average of ten francs paid by a cleric for a common book.'" Such figures, however, provide only a comparative measure of the most literal sort, since artifacts produced in a highly articulated process can hardly be compared to natural products.1

Then, as today, art works were status symbols, indispens- able signs of distinction that secured their owners a superior place within the social hierarchy. For the noble patron, manuscripts afforded not only access to knowledge; they

were also objects with added value, worthy of collecting, exhibiting, offering, and exchanging. The reification of books was certainly favored by a rapidly expanding market

economy, and some categories of books, like Books of Hours, were virtually mass-produced. In France, this was also the time when easel painting appeared: unlike wall painting, this medium could be put into circulation in much the same way as small luxury items, tapestries, or, indeed, manuscripts. Significantly, all such objects could be purchased from the same source-the powerful Italian merchants operating in the French capital. One of these was the Rapondi family, originally from Lucca but naturalized French; in addition to

lending the Valois large sums of money, the Rapondi also sold them expensive textiles, vessels of precious metal,

jewelry, and illuminated manuscripts." The increasing diversification of social actors and factors

participating in the diffusion and consumption of cultural

products also spurred competition. From outside the family enclave, the Valois had to contend with ecclesiastical dignitar- ies, other aristocrats, and wealthy merchants for control of the market; from inside, rivalry escalated among the Valois brothers themselves, each of whom tried to secure the services of the most renowned writers and artists. Inventories and other written accounts suggest that the nobles attempted to surpass each other during the New Year's exchange of

presents," or emulated one another by ordering similar manuscripts. Even the development of portraiture can be viewed within this context, since an identifiable patron's portrait functioned as a sort of self-celebratory mark of visual

ownership, the mimetic equivalent of a heraldic device.

Contemporary intellectuals engaged by courtly patrons were certainly aware of the particular response inspired by luxurious manuscripts. In 1395, the poet Jean Froissart described the presentation of one of his manuscripts to King Richard II in very revealing terms:

He opened and looked into it with much pleasure. He

ought to have been pleased, for it was handsomely written and illuminated [enlumin6, escript et histori6], and bound in

crimson velvet, with ten silver gilt studs, and roses of the same in the middle, with two large clasps of silver-gilt, richly worked with roses in the center. The King asked me what the book treated of: I replied, "Of love!" He was

pleased with this answer, and dipped into several places, reading parts aloud, for he read and spoke French

perfectly well, and then gave it to one of his knights, called Sir Richard Credon, to carry to his oratory [chambre de

retraite] and made me many acknowledgments for it.

8 For a fine account of the interplay between vernacular and Latin with silent and oral reading, see P. Saenger, "Book of Hours and the Reading Habits of the Later Middle Ages," Scrzttura e civiltd, IX, 1985, 239-269; rev. ed. in The Culture of Prnt. Power and the Uses of Print in Early Modern France, ed. R. Chartier, Princeton, 1989, 141-173.

9 Livre des faits et bonnes meurs du sage roi Charles V, ed. S. Solente, Paris, 1936-40, In, 11.

'0 As emphasized by S. Lusignan, Parler vulgairement. Les Intellectuels et la

languefran(wase aux Xlllme et XIVtme szdicles, Montreal, 1986. See also B. Cerquilini, Eloge de la variante. Histozre critique de la philologze, Paris, 1989, 42, who speaks of the "euphoric appropriation of the literature by mother tongue." For the history of specific translations, see J. Monfrin, "Humanisme et traductions au Moyen Age," Journal des savants, July- Sept., 1963, 161-190; idem, "Les Traducteurs et leur public en France au Moyen Age," Journal des savants, Jan.-Mar., 1964, 5-20; H. Lucas, "Mediaeval French Translations of the Latin Classics to 1500," Specu- lum, XLV, 2, 1970, 225-253. " "Secular" is here opposed to "ecclesiastic" rather than "religious" in the sense defined by G. de Lagarde, Naissance de l'esprit lazque au dichn du

moyen age, Louvain, 1956-70. '2 A. van Nieuwenhuysen, Les Fznances du duc de Bourgogne, Phzlippe le Hardi (1384-1404). Economie etpolitzque, Brussels, 1984, 385-404.

"3 C. Bozzolo and E. Ornato, Pour une Histoire du livre manuscrit au Moyen Age. Trois Essais de codicologie quantitatzve, Paris, 1980, esp. 28-43.

'4 For the complexion of late medieval production structures and the art market, see B. Geremek, Le Salariat dans lartzsanat parzsien aux Xlllme- XIVIme szicles. Etude sur le marche de la mazn-d'oeuvre au Moyen Age (Warsaw, 1962), French trans. A. Posner and C. Klapisch-Zuber, Paris, 1982; and H. Huth, Kunstler und Werkstatt der Spatgotzk, 2nd rev. ed., Darmstadt, 1967.

'" Dine (Dino), the most prominent member of the family, served equally as a financial and political adviser to Philippe le Hardi, whereas his brother Jacques seems to have specialized in the commercialization of illuminated manuscripts. The question still remains open if there was a

manuscript workshop in their own house. See L. Mirot, Etudes lucquozses, Paris, 1930; Meiss, 1967, 45-47; de Winter, 104; B. Buettner, "Jacques Raponde, marchand de manuscrits enlumines?" Mdze'vales, xrv, 1988, 10-23. 16 In another place, I will come back to the itrennes as a courtly ritual that was instrumental in the periodic and public reaffirmation of family and social alliances. 17 Sir John Froissart's Chronzcles of England, France, Spazn and Adjoznzng Countries, trans. T. Johnes, London, 1806, xI, 153; orig. ed. K. Kervyn de Lettenhove, Oeuvres de Froissart, Brussels, 1871, xv, 167.



MANUSCRIPTS IN LATE MEDIEVAL COURTLY SOCIETY 77

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Thus Froissart, himself the author of the text, acknowledged (or affected to do so) that the value of his gift resided first in its material appearance, specifically in its "wrapping." The

very beautiful opening miniature of the Morgan copy of the

Chroniques'8 immortalizes a generic Froissart in the typical position of an author presenting his work to the patron, grasping it with a gesture mirroring that of Richard II (Fig. 1). Presentation scenes certainly existed before the late Middle Ages, but never before did so many miniatures with miniaturized books decorate the object to be read, or at least, to be dipped into. Whether Richard is pleased or not, the

object in this miniature is changing hands, is circulating: it is a disproportionately large object, firmly closed by two clasps that face the recipient and, like two punctuation marks, frame a text that is unfolding elsewhere, outside the margins of the representation.

The emphasis in the Morgan Chroniques on the book as a

hermetically sealed box evokes, by contrast, a vast pictorial gamut of open books, the Last Judgment and Annunciation books, those written by the Evangelists and eaten by Saint

John, those that were read and digested." This contrast could be read as a significant trace of a metaphorical disjunc- tion. In a sermon praising Saint Anthony of Padua, the Fran- ciscan preacher Jean de la Rochelle (d. 1245) insisted that the saint "kept a booklet open in his hands" and explained: "The booklet is open because it is understood; it is in the hand, not in a coffer or a purse or a table, which is to say, it is

put into practice."20 The hefty object suspended between Froissart and Richard II differs on all points from the thin ideal of the text as spiritual enrichment. Its disproportion is

properly symptomatic, an utterly visual spot that momen-

tarily arrests the eye and interrupts the deciphering of the narrative made visible.21 As a source of other kinds of enrichments, this book was indeed destined to end up alongside other similar books in the chambre de retrazte, in the

library, or in a coffer to be brought along during the incessant travels of the aristocrats.

There could be no more ironic comment on the book-as-

object than the simulated, nameless manuscript offered to the duc de Berry by the Limbourg brothers as described in an

inventory of 1411: it was a painted piece of wood, a heavy vacuum sumptuously enshrouded in real velour, locked with two silver clasps enameled with the arms of the duke.22 This anecdote attests that costly bindings, artful script, and

dazzling illuminations were indeed the surplus that trans- muted an instrumental object into a luxurious, collectible item. This aesthetic dimension, however, was more than a mere decorative value meant to enhance the pleasures of the most fortunate members of medieval society. Medieval manuscripts were not coffee-table books. Embedded in the Neopla- tonic tradition, aesthetic responses were intimately associated with metaphysics in the Middle Ages, and the pulchritudo of the created world was conceived as a reflection of divine

beauty in living matter. If the lay elite adopted and adapted this metaphysical discourse, it was because such idealism minimized the mercantile value of art objects while promot- ing their uniqueness, their aura, that sacred radiance that, Walter Benjamin has argued, disappeared only with the rise of mechanical means of reproduction.23 Consistent with a

long medieval tradition, contemporary sources praised the

opulence of the materials or the technical appropriateness of the finished product in terms of "good" images, something that pleased the eye of the beholder as well as the Creator.24

Miniatures celebrated the art object in similar terms, and

visually sacralized the relationship between them and the viewer. In a portrayal from the famous Petites Heures commissioned by Jean de Berry (Fig. 2),25 the duke is represented in an intimate prayer before a benevolent Virgin and Child (elsewhere before the Crucified or the Trinity), a posture previously reserved for ecclesiastic patrons and holy kings, for donors and not for owners. This ostentatious display of devotion demonstrates that images gave form to what would have remained otherwise invisible and intangible (the object of devotion and the devotional act itself), and at the same time sublimated what was too visible and tangible, the labor and drives that produced such simulacra.

The mediating function of medieval images was not limited to the bonding of mundane and sacred realms. Inherited from antiquity, the medieval tradition of formal memory training (the ars memorativa codified during the Renaissance as artes memoriae) suggests that images played a key role in

establishing connections between the present and the past;26 as such, they constituted significant mnemonic tools for the

acquisition and transmission of knowledge. Imagines were one of the two means by which the orator remembered the content and the arguments of his discourse, the other

being the loci or topoi. The whole system created, as Daniel Arasse defines it, a "mnemonic space of

representation.'"27

'8 Meiss, 1974, 371.

~9 M. Camille, "The Book of Signs: Writing and Visual Difference in Gothic Manuscript Illumination," Word & Image, I, 2, 1985, 133-148; Carruthers, 164-170, for her discussion of the "stomach of memory" metaphor. J.M. Gellrich, The Idea of the Book zn the Middle Ages. Language Theory, Mythology, and Fzction, Ithaca, 1985, is disappointing in this regard. 20 Quoted in A. Boureau, "Franciscan Piety and Voracity: Uses and

Stratagems in the Hagiographic Pamphlet," The Culture ofPrint (as in n. 8), 17. 21' I borrow the ingenious conceptual opposition between visual and visible, paired with figurable and legible, from G. Didi-Huberman, "La Couleur de la chair ou le paradoxe de Tertullien," Nouvelle Revue de

psychanalyse, xxxv, 1987, 9-49, methodologically developed in Devant

l'Image. Question posse aux fins d'une hzstoire de l'art, Paris, 1990. 22 Meiss, 1974, 76. 23 W. Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Repro- duction," in Illuminations, trans. H. Zohn, New York, 1969, 217-251.

24 For the most extensive treatment of medieval aesthetics, see the two classic studies by E. de Bruyne, Etudes d'esthitique mdzievale, Bruges, 1946, and R. Javelet, Image et ressemblance au douzzeme siecle, de saznt Anselme a' Alain de Lzlle, Paris, 1967. For the artistic realm, M. Schapiro, "On the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Art" (1947), Romanesque Art, New York, 1977, 1-54.

25 Paris, Bibl. Nat. Ms lat. 18014, fol. 198. Complete catalogue ofJean de

Berry's portraits in Meiss, 1967, 68-94.

26 For a masterly treatment of this topic, see Carruthers. In regard to the Middle Ages, it supersedes the classic work by F. Yates, The Art ofMemory, Chicago, 1966.

27 D. Arasse, "Entre Devotion et culture: Fonctions de l'image religieuse au XVeme siecle," Faire Croire (Collectzon de l'Ecole Frangazse de Rome, LI), 1981, 131-146; also, J.P. Antoine, "Ad Perpetuam Memoriam. Les

Nouvelles Fonctions de l'image peinte en Italie (1250-1400)," Melanges de l'Ecole Frangazse de Rome (Moyen Age/Temps Modernes), c, 2, 1988, 541-615.




iMir

!Jr Il w

2 Jean de Berry Praying to the Virgin and Child, Petites Heures de Jean de Berry, ca. 1388. Paris, Bibl. Nat. Ms lat. 18014, fol. 198r (photo: Bibl. Nat.)

More than a mere rhetorical instrument, visual memory was conceived as an essential tool for the acquisition of knowl-

edge, for, according to scholastic theologians like Thomas

Aquinas, man became literate with the help of mental images (phantasmata) stored while reading. And it was precisely during the thirteenth century that the volume of visual narratives increased dramatically: the proliferation of illuminated manuscripts, panel paintings, and wall paintings, as well as the development of exempla inserted into sermons and of vernacular allegorical prose, were roughly coeval and

possibly related phenomena. Miniatures were rarely mentioned in scholastic discus-

sions. Yet there is evidence that the training of visual

memory could rely not only on purely mental constructs or abstract diagrams, but also on miniatures, a connection that

posed, interestingly, a direct confrontation with scriptural authority. Jacques Legrand, an Augustinian friar and prominent humanist, is best known for his moral treatise Le livre des bonnes moeurs, presented to Jean de Berry in 1410, which was a translation of the second and third parts of his summa, the

Sophilogium, completed in 1400. Legrand also made an

adaptation of the first part, the Archiloge Sophie, one of the first treatises on rhetoric written in French, one chapter of which dealt with memory and mnemonic tools. His advice derived directly from the ars memorativa, the "opinion of the ancients," but he concluded with an original personal obser- vation, drawn, as he stated, from his own experience:

The first rule for remembering something, and especially for incorporating it by heart, consists of putting into the

heart and the imagination the figure and the form of the thing to be remembered. Wherefore one best learns from illuminated books, for the difference between the colors bestows remembrance of the different lines, and therefore of the thing itself. Thus, when the ancients wanted to remember and to get something by heart, they enhanced their books with different colors and figures so as to strengthen the memory through diversity and difference.28

Although it is difficult to decide exactly what Legrand meant

by "figures" and "colors," it is safe to assume (even if only from personal experience) that, by generating a kaleido- scopic varietas within manuscripts, miniatures played a prominent part in the recollection of the stories absorbed by the leader.

The capacity of images to function as mnemonic triggers had been noted since Early Christian times in the canonical pleas for the usefulness of religious imagery. The claim was

usually framed by two other rationales: images as surrogates of the written Word for those who could not read (Gregory the Great's famous "Bible for the illiterate") and as motors of one's devotion (Gregory's compunctio).29 Such was the case for John of Genoa, whose influential Catholicon (one of the few theological works commonly found in aristocratic libraries) stated that images could, first, instruct the "simple people," secondly, reactivate by their everyday presence the mystery of the Incarnation and the examples of the saints, and, finally, stimulate devotional feelings more effectively than texts.30

The quite elaborate theories justifying religious images were not lost in secular contexts. Moreover, in the renowned

prologue to the Bestiaire d'amour written around the middle of the thirteenth century by Richard de Fournival, the mnemonic capacity was also linked to other than didactic concerns. Actually, Richard was perhaps the first author to underscore the need for a concurrent action between miniatures and text. He conceived image and text as parallel "ways which lead to the two doors of memory, sight and hearing," and illustrated this point with a vivid example derived from

28 "La premiere regle si est que pour avoir aucune souvenance d'aucune chose, et singulierement pour impectorer par cuer, prouffitable est de mectre en son cuer et en son ymaginacion la figure et la fourme d'ycelle chose que l'en veut impectorer, et pour tant est ce que l'en estudie mieulx es livres enluminez pour ce que la difference des couleurs donne la souvenance de la difference des lignes, et consequamment de ycelle chose que l'on veult impectorer. Et de ce fait les anciens quant ilz vouloient aucune chose recorder et impectorer, ilz mectoient en leurs livres diverses couleurs et diverses figures a celle fin que la diversite et la difference leur donnast meilleur souvenance"; Archiloge Sophie. Livre des bonnes moeurs, ed. E. Beltran, Paris, 1986, chap. 24. Partially translated by Carruthers, 9, who quotes from an "anonymous manuscript" (Paris, Bibl. Ste. Genevieve MS 2521). Translations are mine, unless otherwise noted. 29 Against the unilateral insistence on Gregory's conception of images as aedificatio, see J.C. Schmitt, "L'Occident, Nic&e II et les images du VIIIeme au XIIIeme siecle," Nicde II (787-1987). Douze siecles d'images religieuses, ed. F. Boespflug and N. Lossky, Paris, 1987, 271-301. An exhaustive account of the fortune of Gregory's dictum is by L.G. Duggan, "Was Art Really the 'Book of the Illiterate'?" Word & Image, v, 3, 1989, 227-251.

30 Quoted and discussed by M. Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style, Oxford, 1972, 41.




classical history: "For when one sees an illustrated story, whether about Troy or something else, one sees the action of brave men which were in the past as if they were present. Word does the same thing. For when we hear a romance read we grasp the adventures as clearly as if they were unfolding before our eyes."3" Richard presented sight and hearing as

interchangeable procedures for the acquisition of memory; curiously, this equivalence betweenpeinture andparole seemed not to be assumed as readily a century later. The anonymous author of the Livre des secrez d'Aristote, a fictional correspon- dence between Aristotle and his pupil Alexander in the "mirror of princes" tradition, stated: "Noble emperor, you need to have the knowledge of everything. ... In particular, you need to remember the good things done to you and to

your ancestors. Therefore you need to look and have the chronicles and ancient histories read to you. And you need to

gather many good examples, for past events will advise you on how to govern in the future."32 Here, seeing is cast in an active tense, while reading remains in a passive one. In a culture where silent deciphering was still the exception and collective reading the rule, encountering the visual might have been a more active undertaking than confronting a text, usually read to the nobles by a secretary." And it is quite conceivable that late medieval rulers, surrounded as they were by images and visual spectacles, whose very life was a sort of unremitting ritual procession, were better trained in visual than in written literacy.

In any event, the link made by Richard between memory and ancient history with the specific example of Troy was a

particularly relevant one, for the mythical Trojan ascendancy played an important role in France in establishing feelings of national identity. Hector's son Francion became the French

monarchy's founding hero, set at the legendary origins of an

uninterrupted chain of Frankish kings. These origins were

perceived to be so intimate as to be linguistic: Jean Corbe- chon, in his translation ofBartholomaeus Anglicus's Proprieta- tis rerum, derived the French monarchy etymologically from Francion.34 The link could be visualized as well, as in the

frontispiece miniature of the Grandes Chroniques de France, where Francion's foundation of Sicambria is eloquently superposed on Charles VI receiving the very text establishing the legitimacy of his rulership (Fig. 3).35 By pairing events scattered throughout the text, such a miniature rendered equally present the recent and the immemorial past, and impressed a trope of concatenated historical events on the beholder's mind.

A substantial number of manuscripts produced for the Valois libraries were, like the Chroniques, historical in nature, either local chronicles or the official annals of the French monarchy, works translated from Latin (especially Livy and Orosius) and by contemporary authors (Boccaccio's Des nobles hommes et femmes and Des cldres femmes), compilations (the lengthy Histoire ancienne),36 or historical novels such as the Roman de Troie.37 Taken as a general category, whatever their specific political, ceremonial, or dynastic intent, historical manuscripts were instrumental in creating entirely new

iconographic types to be "incorporated" by the nobles

perusing them. The capacity of pictures to convey information was intensified by the fact that many texts were illustrated for the first time in this era.38 Unlike the ubiquitous presence of religious images in the medieval West, secular

representations of historical narratives gave a concrete material existence to figures previously experienced within the evanescent context of oral transmission. The representation of historic personages, then, created objects of cognition rather than mere recognition, and forced beholders to

recompose their intermittent view of the past, to construct their memoria rerum gestarum according to compelling new visual evidence.

Indeed, if images infused referents with a sense of reality, if they functioned as "visual confirmation" of texts,39 it could be argued that the understanding of historical facts was

largely molded by the way miniatures portrayed past events. This phenomenon was especially significant at that time, because rulers were constantly made aware of their ties with Greek and Roman heroes, whose direct heirs they were

3 Quoted from T.E. Kelly and T.H. Ohlgren, "Paths to Memory: Iconographic Indices to Roman de la Rose and Prose Lancelot Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library," Vzsual Resources, III, 1, 1983, 1-15. For two commentaries, see H. Solterer, "Letter Writing and Picture Reading: Medieval Textuality and the Bestiazre d'Amour," Word & Image, v, 1, 1989, 131; and Carruthers, 223-229. Original text edited by C. Segre, Li Bestzazre de mazstre Richart de Fornzval e li reponse du Bestiaire, Milan, 1957.

32 "Noble empereur, tu dois avoir la congnoissance de toutes choses [...]. Si saches que tu dois avoir ramembrance des biens a toy fais et advenus de tes anchiens et de tes ancestres. Aussi tu dois regarder et faire lire devant toy les croniques et histoires anciennes. Et la tu pourras moult de beaulx exemples prendre car les fais passez aprendront a adviser pour quelle maniere l'en doit gouverner ou temps advenir"; Paris, Bibl. Nat. Ms fr. 562, fol. 23r. Recollecting past events for directing future behavior under the aegis of Prudence was a central aim of mnemonic training. See Carruthers, 64-68.

33 Charles V's librarian Gilles Mallet was praised by Christine de Pizan for his impeccable delivery in Le Lzvre des fazs et bonnes meurs (as in n. 9), III, 21.

34 D. Byrne, "Rex imago Dei: Charles V of France and the Lzvre des

proprietis des choses," Journal of Medieval Hzstory, viii, 1981, 97-113. For more comprehensive inquiries, see C. Beaune, Nazssance de la natzon France, Paris, 1985; and the stimulating study by R.H. Bloch, Etymologies

and Genealogzes. A Lzterary Anthropology of the French Mzddle Ages, Chicago, 1983.

M5 A.D. Hedeman, The Royal Image. Illustratzons of the Grandes Chro-

niques de France (1274-1422), Berkeley, 1991, 153-177.

36 F. Avril, "Trois Manuscrits napolitains des collections de Charles V et

Jean de Berry," Bzbliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes, cxxvilI, 2, 1969, 291-328.

37 H. Buchthal, Hzstorza Trozana. Studzes mn the Hzstory of Medzeval Secular Illustratzon (Studzes of the Warburg Instztute), xxxII, London, 1971. 38 A related problem, that of the visualization of neologisms, is discussed by C. Richter Sherman, "Some Medieval Definitions in the Illustration of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Polztzcs in the French Translation of Nicolas Oresme," Art Bulletin, LIX, 3, 1977, 320-330; zdem, "A Second Instruction to the Reader from Nicolas Oresme, Translator of Aristotle's Politics and Economics," Art Bulletzn, LXI, 1979, 468-469.

39 "The intention of the pictures is the same as that of the texts; they also served for instruction. In addition, they proved the reality of the text by giving it as a visual confirmation"; H. Belting, "The New Role of Narrative in Public Painting of the Trecento: Hzstorza and Allegoria," Pictorial Narrative in Antzquzty and the Mzddle Ages, Studies zn the Hzstory of Art, xvI, 1985, 151. Of course the hermeneutical capacity of images is equally apt to subvert texts.




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3 Frontispiece, Grandes Chroniques de France, ca. 1410. New York, Pierpont Morgan Library Ms M. 536, fol. 2r (photo: Morgan Library)

supposed to be. The Valois considered themselves to be

offspring not only of David, Solomon, or Constantine, but also of Ulysses, Jason, or, indeed, Francion. And while texts varied minimally or not at all in their different editions, new

pictorial worlds were created every time a manuscript was

produced. Because they were specific to each manuscript, miniatures became the exclusive preserve of their owners,

functioning as a sort of personalized mediator between them and the ancestral figures to which the texts referred. In addition to displaying one's features and actions, images thus granted their owners the fundamental privilege of

possessing an individual historical memory through icons inserted in a genealogically linked chain.

Yet anyone who has merely glanced at medieval historical miniatures realizes that archaeological verisimilitude is not their prime concern. The historicist re-creation of Greek, Roman, or more exotic cultures belongs to another phase of the reception of antiquity. As a rule, ancient places and

figures were intentionally displaced by medieval representations, or, as this process is frequently termed, they were

"actualized," as in the Grandes Chroniques frontispiece (Fig. 3), or in a lavish depiction of a Roman banquet from another




of Jean de Berry's manuscripts, Pierre Bersuire's translation of Livy's History of Rome (Fig. 4).40 Such images cannot be dismissed as anachronistic or picturesque: they attest to a

specific historiographic conception whereby the scenery of

past events was equated with contemporary ones and, by extension, with the world of the onlooker.4' This isomorphic relationship between different orders of reality allowed the authentication of the past by means of the present and,

simultaneously, the monumentalization of the latter through the former. Deeds performed by Charles V and his brothers,

by Francion, Charlemagne, Aeneas, or Lucretia could thus

legitimately be included in the same visual thesaurus filling the libraries and the minds of the Valois.

This visual apperception of the past belonged to a very small fraction of the population. It was a specific prerogative of courtly audiences, since ecclesiastic circles certainly pos- sessed similar texts but no such elaborate visual records. Not

surprisingly, clerics and moralists were prone to denounce the success of vernacular prose among the nobility. For Charles VI's tutor, Philippe de Mezieres, romances were full of fibs, a deceptive fiction compared to the truth revealed by the Text.42 In spite (or because?) of this opposition, illuminated manuscripts, tapestries, wall paintings, coins, theatrical representations, and social ceremonies such as royal entries and banquets contributed to the development of a secular typology that familiarized the aristocracy with its

putative past, a secular as opposed to a biblical ancestry. By establishing a mnemonic experience distinct from the lessons instilled by religious narratives, secular images helped to create what would become, during the Renaissance, a "cult of the past," that is, a cult of the pagan past. Then, classical heroes and heroines, stripped of their veils, would invade territories from which they had been excluded for centuries, most notably the residences of the churchmen. Not surprisingly, this moment coincided with the rise, along with humanist mythography, of a more systematic discourse on art emanating from ecclesiastical circles compelled to deal with such provocative images, with visions of a different

memory, of another identity that had surreptitiously slipped out of the hands of the clerical power.

Yet for the period and the social group here under

examination, no figurative rituals alluded explicitly to a cult of the past. Most frequently it was the concept of louenge, of

praise, that epitomized the relationship between present and

past as mediated by art.43 Louenge could function as a catalyst

4 Frontispiece to Book I, 5, Tite-Live, ca. 1400. Geneva, Bibl. Publique et Universitaire MS fr. 77, fol. 86r (photo: BPU)

for historical writing; or, coupled with the mnemonic func-

tion, it could justify the institution of secular imagery, as in this passage drawn from Alain Chartier's Quadrilogue invectif" "It is not without reason that, for praise and memory, the Romans used to create images from different metals, arches and triumphal chariots to honor those who set forth virtu-

ously to expand the Roman domains and improve the public affairs of their city."44 The poet Antoine de la Sale used

analogous arguments to support historical imagery decorat-

ing noble castles: "In the good old days, the halls and chambers of noblemen were painted or decked with tapestries depicting the battles and conquests of past heroes, and with the blazons of the kingdom's nobles, as a reminder to all of the lessons of good conduct."45

Visual panegyric was indeed the realm where civic and ceremonial considerations overlapped with ethical and com- memorative concerns. And even if these excerpts focus on

40 Meiss, 1974, 399; L'Enluminure de Charlemagne a Francois

ler, exh. cat., Mus&e Rath, Geneva, 1976, 80-83.

41 This complex topic has not been addressed yet in a convincing fashion. Some interesting suggestions are in C. Lord, "Three Manu- scripts of the Ovide Moralist," Art Bulletin, LvII, 2, 1975, 161-175. See also E. Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art, Uppsala, 1965, critically commented upon by Camille, 101-102. For a comprehensive account of medieval historiography, see B. Guen&e, Histoire et culture historique dans l'Occident midieval, Paris, 1980; also relevant are G. Spiegel, "Social Change and Literary Language: The Textualisation of the Past in Thirteenth-Century Old French Historiography," Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, xvII, 2, 1987, 129-148; and M. Keen, "Chivalry, Heralds, and History," The Writing of History in the Middle Ages. Essays Presented to Richard William Southern, ed. R.H.C. Davis and J.M. Wallace-Hadrill, Oxford, 1981, 393-414.

42 Quoted in J. Krynen, Ideal du prince et pouvoir royal en France a la fin du Moyen Age (1380-1440), Paris, 1981, 100.

43 This classical topos, specifically elaborated by Pliny in his Natural History (Bk. xxxv, chap. 2-4), is taken up by Italian as well as French humanists. See, for instance, Petrarch's De remediis utriusque fortunae as quoted in M. Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators. Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition (1350-1450), Oxford, 1971, 57. 44 "Si n'estoit pas sans cause que, pour louenge et memoire, les Rommains faisoient ymages de divers metaulx, ars et curres triumphans a ceulx qui vertueusement se partoient pour accroistre la seigneurie rommaine et augmenter le bien publique de leur cit'"; Le Quadrilogue

invectif, ed. E. Droz, Paris, 1950, 17.

45 Quoted from M. Keen, Chivalry, London, 1984, 133.




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5 Humility and Pride, Frbre Laurent, La Somme le roi, 1294. Paris, Bibl. Nat. MS fr. 938, fol. 74r (photo: Bibl. Nat.)

monumental art, exemplary aims pervaded all forms of historical representations.46 Whatever their format, visual and written portrayals could single out contemporary citi- zens or past rulers, and raise them from contextualized mortal beings to eternal paragons. In fact, according to the

commonly accepted medieval etymology of monumentum as monere and mentem, the very act of carving and painting past heroes, of turning men into monuments was tantamount to

remembering them.47 What is at issue, then, is the efficacy of images to affect the

viewer, to influence social behavior by proposing, if not

imposing, correct visual antecedents. According to the art of

memory tradition, if imagines were to remain effectively impressed on memory, they had to be agentes, or, in the

bl

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6 Luxure and Cruaute, Faits et dits meimorables, ca. 1402. Paris, Bibl. Nat. Ms fr. 282, fol. 345r (photo: Bibl. Nat.)

Hook

7 Venus, Boccaccio, Des cleresfemmes, ca. 1402. Paris, Bibl. Nat. Ms fr. 12420, fol. 15r (photo: Bibl. Nat.)

words of the fourteenth-century theologian and mathemati- cian Thomas Bradwardine:

Their quality truly should be wondrous and intense, because such things are impressed in memory more

deeply and are better retained. However, such things are for the most part not average but extremes, as the most beautiful or ugly, joyous or sad, worthy of respect or

46 On links between exemplum and history writing, see K.H. Stierle's brilliant analysis, "L'Histoire comme Exemple, I'Exemple comme Histoire," Poetique, x, 1972, 176-198. Example as a rhetorical category in Renaissance texts is studied by J.D. Lyons, Exemplum. The Rhetoric of Example in Early Modern France and Italy, Princeton, 1989.

47 Saint Thomas, Summa, Quest. 69-74, art. 11. Discussed by R. Recht, "Le Portrait et le principe de realite dans la sculpture: Philippe le Bel et l'image royale," Europaische Kunst um 1300, 25th International Congress of the History ofArt, Vienna, 1986, 189-201.




something ridiculous for mocking, a thing of great dignity or vileness, or wounded with greatly opened wounds with a remarkably lively flowing of blood, or in another way made extremely ugly, strange of clothing and all bizarre of equipment, the color also very brilliant and intense, such as intense, fiery red, and the whole color strongly altering the appearance.48

Thus, figures had to be as vivid as possible, either of

exceptional beauty (Fig. 7), particular repulsiveness (Fig. 6), or captivating eccentricity (Fig. 9). Furthermore, strong oppositional compositions helped to turn many manuscripts into powerful epideictic means to inform the viewer, both

confirming the reality of the narrative and structuring the

imagination. The firm conventions regulating the rendering of figures in courtly manuscripts constantly reinforced what was morally and socially appropriate or inappropriate. Anal-

ogous in this respect to exempla, images could act upon the

viewer, inducing the acceptance or repudiation of a positive or a negative model."4

Thirteenth-century manuscripts favored clear oppositional layouts by enclosing the dialogic elements into medal-

lions, roundels, compartments, or friezes, as, for instance, in the monumental Bibles moralisees or in manuscripts illustrat-

ing Frere Laurent's Somme le roi (Fig. 5).5 By the fourteenth

century, along with the evolution of vernacular prose, images underwent a narrative transformation that endowed them with a more transitive quality."5 Even then, however, edifying intentions did not disappear, since painted characters usu-

ally remained encapsulated in magnifying isolation, despite the development of a continuous space. As prescribed by the ars memorativa, each personage was assimilated to a proper locus defined completely or partially by discrete pictorial elements (frames, architectural components, positions in

space, gestures, costumes, etc.). Overlaps between figures were kept to a minimum, except when artists wanted to

signify multitudes or states of chaos, such as battles, or murders or sexual intimacy, as is explicitly evinced in the scenes of Lechery and Cruelty in Valerius Maximus's very successful Faits et dits memorables (Fig. 6).52

It is particularly fascinating that color schemes also could contribute to such a semantic opposition. Jacques Legrand, who considered colors one of the visual components cuing memory, further stated: "And as we see the painter applying to an image several beautiful and ugly colors so that each shows up better by contrast with the other, we can recite the

good and evil with our doctrines."53 The "colors of rhetoric" was a familiar tradition, but it is interesting that Legrand reverted the chromatic metaphor to its original and literal locus. Given the persistence of the "two-tiered" model even in today's historical writing postulating a high (written) and low (visual) culture, the prestige ascribed to concrete, material images by a fourteenth-century intellectual seems particularly meaningful.

In the late Middle Ages, the didactic function nurtured by a memory trained in things past and sustained by pictures based on formal contrasts was, of course, not limited to secular images. What distinguished them from religious imagery was the reduced relevance of the eschatological perspective so central to religious imagines agentes. Profane

images were concerned with the here and now, with the establishment and the perpetuation of mundane power structures. The embodiment of courtly virtues, such as

equitable rulers, elegant social rituals (Fig. 4), efficient

production (Fig. 12), and sanctioned relationships between men and women, contrasted with the portrayal of wicked

monarchs, usurpers and treacherous subjects, sanguinary battles, fraudulent artisans, and lascivious behavior (Fig. 6). Late medieval miniatures were, in sum, saturated with

persuasively didactic intents. As such, they shared with coeval historical writing an ambivalent (but not ambiguous) status in which the succession of events was suspended for the

purposes of presentation. Consequently, miniatures articulated a powerful iconic discourse54 intended for the beholder's identification, edification, and delight.

If images were capable of proposing and imposing political and moral agendas, medieval audiences held them

equally apt to arouse emotions. Thomas Aquinas drew intimate connections between memory, images, and affects,55 and John of Genoa was not alone in believing that images stimulated devotional feelings more effectively than texts. But what kinds of feelings did secular images elicit? What did the Valois experience when viewing their features, their

ancestors, their occupations, and their objects of desire

graphically inscribed on a parchment leaf? Like recollection and ethical propositions, pleasure was an

essential component in the nexus of experiences offered by secular imagery. In contemporary texts, plaisir is associated with images as often as memory and praise; even more so than these, pleasure is a gendered visual function. This is

evident in such contemporary sources as a representation of Venus (Fig. 7) taken from a manuscript of the Cldres femmes,

4" Quoted from Carruthers, 284.

49 "The exemplum was an instrument of conversion, and conversion had to occur immediately.... Thus the function of the exemplum was to

bridge the gap between historical reality and the eschatological unknown"; Jacques Le Goff, "The Time of the Exemplum," The Medzeval Imagznation, Chicago, 1988, 80.

50 E.V. Kosmer, "A Study of the Style and Iconography of a Thirteenth- Century 'Somme le roi' (British Museum Ms. Add. 54180) with a Consideration of Other Illustrated 'Somme' Manuscripts of the Thir- teenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries," Ph.D. diss., Yale Univer- sity, 1973, II, 53-56. See also her "The noyous humoure of lecherze," Art Bulletzn, LVII, 1, 1975, 1-8.

5' For this change, see J.C. Bonne, L'Art roman de face et de profil. Le

Tympan de Conques, Paris, 1984, 212-215.

52 Text translated at the end of the 14th century by Simon de Hesdin and Nicholas Gonesse. For this manuscript, which belonged to Jean de Berry, see Meiss, 1974, 410.

53 "Et comme nous voions que le paintre met a une ymage pluseurs couleurs belles et laides a celle fin qu'elles se puissent mieulx monstrer l'une encontre l'autre, ainsi a noz doctrines nous pouvons le bien et le mal reciter," quoted from Lusignan (as in n. 10), 176.

54 For the important distinction between "discourse" and "historical narration," see E. Benveniste, "The Correlation of Tense in the French Verb," Problems zn General Lznguzstzcs, Miami, 1971, 205-215.

55 Carruthers, 64-70.




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8 Eve, Boccaccio, Des cldresfemmes, ca. 1403. Paris, Bibl. Nat. MS fr. 598, fol. 6v (photo: Bibl. Nat.)

the French translation of Boccaccio's De mulieribus claris.56 For Boccaccio, as for the entire medieval tradition, carnal sins and feminine nature were indissolubly linked together; women were deemed unable to confine their sexual desires to the reproductive act and the few exceptions conformed to an allegedly canonical male restraint.57 Venus in particular, the paragon of illicit love, was credited with the invention of brothels and the perpetuation of the most lecherous acts.

Very interestingly, however, the miniature forgoes allusions to such aspects of Venus's persona, instead endowing her with all the codified attributes of courtly temptation. She is dressed in an aristocratic blue costume, as are many female characters in the same manuscript. She occupies both a central and a higher position on the picture plane, surrounded by four men who pay homage to her; one holds a censer and literally incenses her, but all remain at a respect- able distance, so that the scene seems a forceful contrast to that of the lasciviously clasped couple of the Faits et dits memorables manuscript (Fig. 6).

In order to satisfy the tastes of a French courtly audience, an image like this could undermine Boccaccio's intention,

glossing and reinterpreting the text it illustrated. Discrepan- cies between image and text are always culturally relevant, and it is tempting to read the one at hand as an indication of the author's and the patron's divergent inclinations toward women and sexual subjects.58 Boccaccio's austere moral view in his late career, attuned to an ecclesiastical perspective rather than to the Decameron's effervescence, certainly did not correspond to the concept of love developed in French

courtly society during the "waning of the Middle Ages," which Johan Huizinga saw as characterized by a bewildering array of erotic manners."59 Sublime here, trivial there, the

casuistry of love was endless and it permeated a considerable number of social rituals, such as the revival of ephemeral chivalric orders created for "the protection of women" and the fashionable, all-male gathering known as the Cour d'amour dite de Charles VI. 60

The very success of a text like the Cleresfemmes among the French aristocracy is illuminating.61 Before being recast in more positive terms in Christine de Pizan's sparely illustrated Cit" des dames,62 this unprecedented collection of historical and legendary women offered a secular counterpart to

hagiographic compendia. The miniatures make this proximity especially plain, since it is often impossible to distinguish pagan from Christian figures without the help of the text."6 The status of pagan deities (Ceres, Minerva, etc.) is signified by the Christian attribute par excellence, the halo, and the

cycle significantly opens with a depiction of Eve (Fig. 8) assimilated to a contemporary woman as any other heroine of the cycle. In addition to the process of actualization, the

pictorial telescoping of the classical and the Christian past is a meaningful trait of the aristocratic visual culture of the late Middle Ages: pagan women usurped the forms of saintly figures and endlessly translated the ultimate Christian model, the Virgin.64 The Valois could legitimately delight in pagan

56 French translation completed in 1402 according to the colophon of the richly illustrated manuscript acquired by Philippe le Hardi from Jacques Raponde (Paris, Bibl. Nat. Ms fr. 12420). A second copy was given shortly afterwards to Jean de Berry (Paris, Bibl. Nat. Ms fr. 598). See Meiss, 1974, 287-290; C. Bozzolo, 23-25; de Winter, 96-99 and 206-207; C. Sterling, La Peinture mdie'vale d Paris (1300-1500), Paris, 1987, 273-279. English trans. G.A. Guarino, Concerning Famous Women, New Brunswick, 1963; original text ed. by V. Zaccaria, De mulieribus claris o delle donnefamose, Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, x, Milan, 1967.

57 On the prescriptive urge exerted by Early Christian authors on women to suppress sexuality and to "become male," see M.R. Miles, Carnal Knowing. Female Nakedness and Religious Meaning in the Christian West, Boston, 1989, 53-77.

58I am thinking in particular of Joan Kelly's analysis in "Did Women Have a Renaissance?" (1977), repr. in Women, History & Theory. The Essays ofJoan Kelly, Chicago and London, 1982, 19-50.

59 Huizinga, 107-119. 60 Ibid., 67-93. C. Bozzolo and H. Loyau, La Cour Amoureuse dite de Charles VI, I, Paris, 1982 (Vols. II and III in press). 61 Bozzolo, 39, has calculated that eighty-three percent of French Boccaccio manuscripts were made for the aristocracy. 62 Meiss, 1974, 290. The relationship between Christine de Pizan and the Cldres femmes is analyzed by A. Jeanroy, "Boccace et Christine de Pizan. Le 'De claris mulieribus,' principale source du 'Livre de la Cite des Dames,' " Romania, XLVIII, 1922, 93-105; L. Dulac, "Un Mythe didac- tique chez Christine de Pizan: S6miramis ou la veuve h6roique," Mdlanges Charles Camproux, Montpellier, 1978, 315-343. G.H. Bumgard- ner, "Christine de Pizan and the Atelier of the Master of the Coronation," Seconda Miscellanea di studi e ricerche sul Quattrocento francese, Chamb6ry and Turin, 1981, 37-52. 63 Workshop practices suggest that the same carton could be used for very different types of figures. See R.W. Scheller, A Survey of Medieval Model Books, Haarlem, 1963; and J. von Schlosser, "Zur Kenntnis der kiinst- lerischen Uberlieferung im spiten Mittelalter," Jahrbuch der kunsthisto- rischen Sammlungen des allerhdchsten Kaiserhauses, xxiII, 1903, 279-338. 64 The same issue is addressed by Camille, 220-241, where the "Youth Betrothed to a Statue" theme in Vincent of Beauvais's Miroir historial provides a significant example of a secular appropriation of a previously Christian motive: the 14th-century statue of Virgin and Child (fig. 131) is replaced by a naked Venus in the mid-15th-century example (fig. 132). On this topic, see also Freedberg, 333-338. Equally revealing is the analysis of figured objects in medieval literature by D. Regnier-Bohler, "Le Simulacre ambigu: Miroirs, portraits et statues," Nouvelle Revue de psychanalyse, xxxv, 1987, 91-106.




exemplary figures and cultivate their taste for the past, while

absorbing marital and extramarital love stories in place of the amor Dei. Moreover, like the courtiers in the Venus

image, manuscript patrons could through a glance caress and possess exemplary but human feminine stereotypes.

Because of their proximity to religious models, secular

images, especially of women, inevitably displaced the question of the interplay between spectators, representations, and referents as it had been posited from at least the twelfth

century on in terms of an anagogic ascent of the worshipping viewer to the sacred archetype. Potentially, secular images could turn into overt vehicles of sensual and sexual entice- ment: "No beryls, topazes, sapphires or diamonds, carbun-

cles or loadstones, which are supposed to stop iron, can heat me more than my image does," exclaimed the poet Jean Froissart when recovering a portrait of a past beloved, which

propelled him into an anamnestic dream without fulfilling its

promise of her possession.65 The best known myth of the conflation of image and

referent operated by the desiring gaze, that of Pygmalion, was admirably staged by Jean de Meung at the climatic end of the Roman de la Rose.66 Now, at the end of the fourteenth

century, Jean de Meung's piece gave rise to a very interesting debate on literary ethics and poetic license, known as the

Querelle du Roman de la Rose. Gerson, the eminent rector of the University of Paris in the early fifteenth century and

religious counsellor to the Valois family, intervened, on Christine de Pizan's side, to condemn the allegory which he

obviously knew through illuminated copies:

But what can inflame souls more than dissolute words and lecherous texts and paintings? We can observe that good, saintly, and devout words, paintings, and texts inspire devotion, as Pythagoras said. This is why sermons are

composed and images painted in churches. On the

contrary and even more easily, bad ones lead to dissolute- ness.67

Even if not as fanatically minded as Savonarola, who encour-

aged people to burn "profane paintings,'"68 Gerson was

clearly alarmed by the proliferation of deceitful imagery produced outside the guarded boundaries of the temple. He

. . . . . . . . ........

9 Blemmyae, Livre des merveilles, ca. 1412. Paris, Bibl. Nat. Ms fr. 2810, fol. 194v (photo: Bibl. Nat.)

did not specify exactly what he meant by "lecherous texts and

paintings," but his formulation belongs to the same semantic

field-heat, flames, burning-as the (albeit more celebra-

tory) passage of Froissart. The representation of nakedness, though it might partially

coincide with "lechery," was not singled out by Gerson. It is worthwhile to remember that explicit erotic imagery only reemerged at the end of the Middle Ages, a major shift in Western visual culture stimulated by new socio-economic conditions and the proliferation of secular products commissioned by laymen.69 Yet nakedness appeared only in precise thematic contexts, biblical or otherwise. Nude figures sur- faced in the margins of manuscripts where they were often cast in a literally perverted form; nakedness was a charged index of lower-class status (Fig. 13) as well as of exotic or fantastic people, as in an endearing image of the uncanny Blemmyae drawn from the Livre des merveilles (Fig. 9).70 As a

rule, courtly images did not show naked figures on their own.

Entirely or partially undressed women were depicted surrounded by men (or vice versa) in such contexts as baptisms or other ceremonial functions requiring partial disrobing. Other conditions for exposed bodies included companions sharing the same bed or bath, and, perhaps most often, the

Virgin suckling the Christ Child.71 It was as if the late medieval representational regime

required a pictorial surrogate for the viewer's gaze upon the unveiled object of desire-perhaps because it was not founded

65 "I1 n'est bericles ne topasse/Rubis, saphirs ne dyamans,/escarboucles ne aymans,/qu'on dist qui areste le fer,/Qui me peuis faire escaufer/Ensi que mon ymage a fet"; LeJoli Buisson, ed. A. Fourrier, Geneva, 1975, vv. 607-612. 66 Camille, 298-337, has best analyzed Pygmalion's story within the context of late medieval visual culture. Accounts of sexually arousing images (including Pygmalion's statue) as well as the elision between image and prototype are central to Freedberg, esp. 317-377. For a fine perspective from a philosopher, see G. Agamben, Stanze. La parola e il fantasma nella cultura occidentale, Turin, 1977. 67 "Contre le Roman de la Rose," Oeuvres completes, ed. P. Glorieux, Paris, 1966, vii, 306. For additional information on this quarrel, launched by a letter of protestation by Christine de Pizan, see E. Hicks, Le Dibat sur le Roman de la Rose, Paris, 1977. On the issue of visual decorum, one might recall that the 13th-century liturgist William Durandus praised the Greek Church for admitting only paintings "from the navel upwards, so that all occasion of vain thoughts may be removed"; trans. J.N. Neale and B. Webb, The Symbolism of Churches and Church Ornaments, London, 1843, 54. 68 Freedberg, 348.

69 Erotic scenes invade manuscripts toward the middle of the 15th century, as in copies of the Decameron or the frontispieces of Valerius Maximus's Faits et dits mimorables made for the French aristocracy. They also migrate into religious manuscripts, for, according to Paul Saenger, "artists took advantage of the privacy offered by each person's own book of hours to portray erotic scenes unimaginable in public art or publically displayed liturgical texts"; Saenger (as in n. 8), 268.

70 Another ofJean de Berry's manuscripts, offered to him by his nephew, the duke of Burgundy, Jean sans Peur. Meiss, 1967, 116-122; J.B. Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought, Cambridge, Mass., 1981, 154-158; Camille, 158-160.

71 M.R. Miles, "The Virgin's One Bare Breast: Female Nudity and Religious Meaning in Tuscan Early Renaissance Culture," The Female Body in Western Culture: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. S.R. Suleiman, Cambridge, Mass., 1986, 193-208.




rr I-

s -~ 3,

10 Adam and Eve, Boccaccio, Des nobles hommes etfemmes, ca. 1410. Geneva, Bibl. Publique et Universitaire MS fr. 190, fol. 7v (photo: BPU)

on the "peeping gaze" postulated by Brunelleschi's costruzi- one legittima.72 Following Norman Bryson's suggestion of a historical dualism between representations calling for a "Gaze" as opposed to a "Glance," such images would belong to the latter category, for they did not "bracket out the

process of viewing," but rather inscribed it, as it were, onto the pictorial surface itself.7' For example, in a miniature from a copy offered to the duc de Berry of Boccaccio's Des nobles hommes etfemmes (Fig. 10), another biographical collection mostly dedicated to the changing fortunes of famous historical figures, Eve is as exposed as the prelapsarian Adam listening to her.74 Her body is erotically detailed,

despite the obliteration of her genitals. This was customary

in medieval images for both sexes, not only as a premonitory signal of the shame befalling humankind after the Fall, but also to avoid their exposure to the beholder of the image. It

requires no particular effort, however, to perceive in the vertical towers and trees, the enclosed garden, and the shut door clear traces of this obliteration. But when Adam

disappears, Eve's clothes materialize, as in the quite extraor-

dinary image that opens the Cleres femmes cycle (Fig. 8). By dressing Eve before the Fall has actually happened, the miniature contradicts the Bible and Boccaccio and the

iconographic tradition alike. This cannot be explained in terms of narrative necessity, for the portrayal of both the cause (apple offered by serpent) and the consequence (awareness of nakedness) of the Fall does not dictate this choice of a contemporary, courtly costume to shape Eve into an acceptable didactic model instead of the embodiment of

Original Sin. Dressing Eve in a finely crafted, seductive

garment might have more ambivalent meanings than evident at first glance. Given that the Middle Ages interpreted the clothing of Adam and Eve as a punishment, as a loss, Eve's textured appeal may have been almost subversive.

Endowing costumes with a positively alluring signification was certainly a provocation for moralists, and they relent-

lessly criticized aristocrats displaying exuberant fashions. Elaborate costumes sculptured the body into an artifice that

emphasized erotic zones rather than concealing them, as was the case with the shapeless garments of previous periods.75 The spectator of Eve's image was perfectly able to relish her

bodily forms, deciphered through the bright and clinging textures in the typical close-up imposed by the medium.

It is not possible thus to have nudity coincide with

eroticism,'" let alone to interpret the surge of it, without

paying attention to different representational practices in this period. Compare, for instance, the Cleresfemmes image of Venus to an almost contemporary literary description of Venus given by Chaucer: "And nakyd from the brest unto the

hede/Men myghte hyre sen; and, sothly for to say/ The remenaunt was wel keuerede to myn pay/ Ryght with a subtyl couercheif of Valence;/ Ther was no thikkere cloth of no defense."" What was to become the ultimate commonplace of Western art, the erotic play between naked and veiled

72 The relationship between the "little hole" of Brunelleschi's experi- ment as described by Manetti and Lacan's "mirror stage" is theorized by H. Damisch, L'Origine de la perspective, Paris, 1987, esp. 113-127. Dtirer's famous engraving Draftsman Drawing a Recumbent Women remains the most tantalizing collusion between the (re)invention of nudity and the origin of perspective. For a brief comment sensitive to gender issues, see S. Alpers, "Art History and Its Exclusions: The Example of Dutch Art," Feminism and Art History, ed. N. Broude and M.D. Garrard, New York, 1982, 183-199.

7" N. Bryson, Vision and Painting. The Logic of the Gaze, 1983, 94. Bryson further suggests that the multiplication of naked pictorial bodies in Western art should be linked to the suppression of the painter's and viewer's body within the logic of the Gaze as structured by monocular

perspective.

74 B. Gagnebin, "Le Boccace du duc de Berry," Genava, v, 1957, 129-148; idem, L'Enluminure (as in n. 40), 83-87; Meiss, 1974, 283, attributes it to the Lugon Master. The text, translated by the humanist Laurent de Premierfait, is analyzed by P.M. Gathercole, Laurent de Premierfait's "Des cas des nobles hommes etfemmes," Chapel Hill, 1968. This must have been Boccaccio's most successful work in 15th-century France, since, accord-

ing to Bozzolo, sixty-nine copies have come down to us, as opposed to

sixteen for the Cleres femmes and fifteen for the Decameron, translated in 1414 by Laurent de Premierfait and Antonio of Arezzo. For a complete list of illustrated manuscripts of Boccaccio's works, see V. Branca, P.F. Watson, and V. Kirkham, "Boccaccio visualizzato," Studi sul Boccaccio, xv, 1985-86, 85-188.

75 The shape of dresses underwent a dramatic change toward the mid- 14th century with the spread of the short male costume. See P. Post, "La Naissance du vetement masculin moderne," Actes du Ier Congres International de l'Histoire du Costume, Venice, 1955. For a more specific account of the perception of new courtly fashions, see 0. Blanc, "Vetement f6minin, vetement masculin 'i la fin du Moyen Age. Le Point de vue des moralistes," Les Cahiers du ldopard d'or, I, 1990, 243-251. The historical relationship between nudity, draperies, and costumes is

explored by A.L. Hollander, Seeing through Clothes, New York, 1975, who

unfortunately skips the Middle Ages almost entirely. 76 As implied by the very biased terminological distinction between nude and nakedness introduced by K. Clark, The Nude. A Study in Ideal Form, Washington, D.C., 1956, 3-29.

77 The Parlement of Foulys, ed. D.S. Brewer, Manchester, 1972, vv. 269-273.




limbs, could be expressed in words but not in secular images. The pictorial and historical differences between the draped Venus of the Cleres femmes and later representations, such as Botticelli's floating goddess,7' are even more self-evident, and analogous to the shift from Gerson's generic aversion to licentious images to Saint Antoninus of Florence's pithy stigmatization of artists who created images that stirred the libido. Both theologians associated "lecherous" pictures with innovative religious iconography, as if they represented similar deviations from the official canon. Saint Antoninus's condemnation of heterodox representations of the Trinity are well known, but the censure directed toward the first type of images deserves to be quoted: "They [the painters] are at fault when they make images that provoke to desire, not because of their beauty but because of their arrangement, such as naked women and the like."79

Even if the precise history of the advent of naked (female) bodies as the foremost locus of sexual desire still remains to be written,"8 it is certain that the ever-increasing presence of pictorial nakedness intimately participated in the transformation of the ways of seeing at the end of the Middle Ages. Along with other social forms of representation,"' secular miniatures initiated an irreversible reorganization of desiring perception by dissociating (sometimes against the texts) the customary links between profane vision, vices, and women. Erotic desire, which the Church had repressed for centuries, by either closely linking it to sin or by spiritualizing it, slowly escaped from its control and migrated into the secular domain, and thus into another kind of regulation.82

But the sensual pleasures induced by the turning of pages, the exfoliation of a lavishly illuminated manuscript, cannot be identified merely with the presence or absence of erotic contents. On a purely perceptual level, miniatures captivated the eyes, for the scintillating layout of colors enhanced manuscripts that otherwise would have remained monoto- nously covered with dark patterns of written signs. Minia- tures lured because they produced a rhythmical sequence, a musica that punctuated the text and introduced visual pauses where the gaze could rest, remember, learn, relish, and

,iou ;I

11 Cats, Gaston Phebus, Livre de la chasse, ca. 1410. Paris, Bibl. Nat. MS fr. 616, fol. 36r (photo: Bibl. Nat.)

:: 41

--Tw

. . . . . . .. .

...... . . . . .

12 Minerva, Boccaccio, Des clhresfemmes, ca. 1403. Paris, Bibl. Nat. MS fr. 598, fol. 13r (photo: Bibl. Nat.)

dream. But what fictions did miniatures reveal to the noble eye?

Late medieval miniatures evinced a world governed by order. Based on an aesthetic of contained profusion, visual systems of this period were regulated by the carefully orchestrated disclosure of terrestrial things. They exhibited a larger spectrum of realia than thirteenth-century Gothic manuscripts, yet were less prolific than Renaissance manu-

78 More unusual examples of Eve, Venus, and other heroines are to be found in H.D. Russell, Eva/Ave. Women in Renaissance and Baroque Prints, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1990.

79 Translated and discussed by C. Gilbert, "The Archbishop on the Painters of Florence, 1450," Art Bulletin, XLI, 1, 1959, 75-87. The most systematic attack on sexually arousing images was formulated by Johannes Molanus in the De picturis et imaginibus sacris published in 1570, but it came too late and was doomed to remain ineffective. See D. Freedberg, "Johannes Molanus on Provocative Paintings,"Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, xxxiv, 1971, 229-245; C. Ginzburg, "Titian, Ovid and Sixteenth-Century Codes for Erotic Illustration," Myths, Emblems, Clues, London, 1990, 77-95.

80 The proliferation of nude women in Renaissance paintings as legiti- mized cultural objects responding to male scopic drives is taken up by M.D. Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi, Princeton, 1989.

8" Huizinga, 315-316, notes the "restraint displayed in fifteenth-century art, in respect of erotic expression." On the contrary, naked women were common in theatrical representations and tableaux vivants, although his examples date from after the middle of the century. 82 On medieval attitudes toward sexuality, see J.A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe, Chicago, 1987. The most far-reaching conclusions on the history of sexuality in Western society are still to be drawn from M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, New York, 1978.




scripts and paintings in which narrative and mimetic primacy produced a decisive increase of elements governed by perspec- tiva's rule. Taxonomy was, of course, operating in texts and social practices as well. For the Valois, the accumulation of books and miniatures both necessitated the creation of archives and gained meaning from entering such sanctuar-

ies; meticulous inventories described not only the physical aspect of manuscripts, but also their circulation from one hand to another, from the workshop into the collection. By classifying and tracking the objects they deemed worthy of

enriching their environment and their memory, late medieval rulers also ensured their proper survival in the libraries and memories of future generations.

Late medieval visual systems devised their own organiza- tional codes to posit reality, to categorize beings and events, to impose an order where there appeared to be none. "Menu

pictures," as John B. Friedman has aptly called them, were a common idiom in manuscripts produced for the Valois.83 Such images literally transformed textual enumerations into

visual collections of real and imaginary beings. Manuscripts of Gaston Ph6bus's Livre de la chasse (Fig. 11),84 for instance, tamed wild animals by subduing them within the order of a

directory and by displaying them in space for an all-embrac-

ing perception. Like a sort of pre-colonial sales catalogue, the fascinating Livre des merveilles (Fig. 9) domesticated the

exotic Other by making it conform to a long-established tradition of mirabilia, a strategy consistent with the only way the medieval West could represent the pagans, as denizens of visual myth. Other manuscripts, such as the Chlres femmes, encouraged an imaginary capture of the social order and the feminine alike, emblematically represented in one instance

by Minerva (Fig. 12), the goddess credited with the invention

of music, mathematics, weaving, and the production of oil.

Miniatures, ordered hierarchically according to specific spa- tial and chromatic devices, made objects of natural, geo-

graphic, and social knowledge visible-and thus consum- able.

Secular images were not portrayals of actual social, ethnic, or gender relations, but functioned as models both of and for

reality,85 as evident in a scrupulously organized calendar miniature from Jean de Berry's Tr6s Riches Heures (Fig. 13).86 The self-absorbed peasants, laboring under the panoptic gaze of a castle, are displayed in a number of stereotypical attitudes. Emblems of faceless productivity, they represent a

fantasy of absolute social domination. Ironically, the late medieval world was in a state of permanent social unrest, and

specifically so in Jean de Berry's domains.87 Images did not

IA

...... ....

13 July, Tres Riches Heures dejean de Berry, ca. 1411-16. Chan-

tilly, Musde Cond6 Ms 65, fol. 7v (photo: Giraudon/Art Re- source, N.Y.)

reflect this reality, but codified and perpetuated an ideal world of order, of belle ordonnance. Because of this capacity to

categorize reality, and thus to suture lacunary experiences, the compensatory profits offered by such miniatures should be remembered when considering representational strate-

gies of the Late Middle Ages. In a society in which images were a relatively rare cultural

good, the apprehension of the world-as-representation was

certainly a major power, as the astounding increase of illuminated manuscripts among the Valois attests. During the entire Middle Ages, the Church regulated or attempted to control the visual domain defined as sacred, legislating the

objects that mediated between the human and the divine, the Christian past and present, the saintly dead and living. These objects were not only material, since the multifaceted

concept of imago or simulacrum, inherited from the classical

"8 Friedman (as in n. 70), 154.

84 Meiss, 1974, 367.

85 According to the distinction formulated by C. Geertz, "Religion as Cultural System," Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion, ed. M. Banton, London, 1966, 1-46.

86 In spite of its brevity, Aby Warburg's analysis of the cultural sadism involved in the figuration of peasants for the nobles remains exemplary: "Arbeitende Bauern auf Burgundischen Teppichen" (1907), Gesammelte

Schriften, Leipzig, 1932, 221-230. See also R.G. Calkins, "Fields and Fortresses in the Tres Riches Heures," Programs of Medieval Illumination, Lawrence, Kans., 1984, 112-153; and esp. the incisive account by J. Alexander, "Labeur and Paresse: Ideological Representations of Medi- eval Peasant Labor," Art Bulletin, LXXII, 3, 1990, 436-452.

87 The basic study on Jean de Berry remains F. Lehoux, Jean de France, duc de Berri. Sa Vie. Son Action politique (1340-1416), Paris, 4 vols., 1966-68. More pertinent on this topic is R. Lacour, Le Gouvernement de

I'apanage dejean, duc de Berry (1360-1416), Paris, 1934.




eikon and eidolon88 and repositioned by early medieval patris- tics, also embraced immaterial images (Christ as an image of the Father, mankind's likeness to God, dreams, visions,

apparitions, phantasms, human passions, etc). Sacred imagines belonged to a system of devices capable of setting in motion the redeeming translatio from worldly to divine matters through the sacraments and the sacramentalia (Eucha- rist, Crucifix, relics, sacred vases, etc.).89 Laymen, except for some holy emperors and kings, were allowed to manipulate such objects only by delegation (though they could be

appropriated or, even better, expropriated, as shown by the

solitary but intense dialogue between Jean de Berry and the

Virgin in the Petites Heures, Fig. 2). If the very distinction between secular and religious is

problematic, if not anachronistic, until the thirteenth cen-

tury,90 it is certainly true that in late medieval art many pictorial subjects were increasingly disconnected from a

religious framework and recast, at least partially, into auton- omous visual territories. Until then, the religious realm absorbed all secular motifs and themes, as in the representations of the labors of the months affixed to Gothic cathedral

fagades, or in marginalia, bas-de-pages, and other frames for sacred subjects in manuscripts. By the late Middle Ages, the considerable increase of available images responded to, and fostered in return, a more socially diverse range of consum-

ers, who allied themselves or competed according to the fluctuations of the art market. Furthermore, the variety of

newly illustrated texts was instrumental in dividing the visual realm into thematic sectors, each of which addressed different communities and corresponded to specific modes of visual manipulation. In the competition for the power of

images and power over them, courtly audiences of the late Middle Ages ruled over the fate of vernacular texts and

profane visual spectacles; they secured objects that devised a historical memory, incarnated the exotic unknown, embod-

ied the desires and fears inspired by the female, and structured social relations shaken in actuality by anonymous producers of goods. Secular images thus became a strategic site of economic, cultural and affective investment for the

aristocracy; as objects of knowledge, power, and pleasure, they played a prominent part in the identity formation of the

upper ranks of late medieval society. As such, miniatures

were not passive illustrations of texts or mirrors of existing cultural patterns; rather, they incorporated thoughts, fears and desires, and solidified them into discursive lines different from those articulated by religious imagery.

The economic, aesthetic, mnemonic, exemplary, erotic, taxonomic, and ideological functions delineated in this essay do not cover the entire field of semantic action for secular

images, even within the chronological and geographic limits of this article. The different functions of such images have been separated for the clarity of the argument, but evidently they operated simultaneously. Collecting was a taxonomic act that permitted the elaboration of a class-specific memory. The very proliferation of secular images was itself a source of

pleasurable power, securing for viewers a certain control over the imaginary organization of the visible. The mutually reinforcing effects and affects mobilized by this imagery generated an aristocratic visual tradition engaged in ever-

changing confrontations with the pictorial propositions ema-

nating from other social groups. What is certain, then, is that there is no such thing as a finite list of the workings of the visual.

Brigitte Buettner received her Ph.D. from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. She has published in

European journals, including M6di6vales and Studi sul Boccac-

cio, and is presently at work on a book on the first manuscript of the

Clkres femmes [Smith College, Northampton, Mass. 01063].

"" As discussed by J.P. Vernant, Myth and Thought among the Greeks, London, 1983.

89 For the status of art objects within the sacramental system, see J. Wirth, "Th6orie et pratique de l'image sainte a la veille de la R6forme," Biblzotheque d'Humanzsme et Renazssance, XLVIII, 2, 1986, 319-358.

90 Meyer Schapiro, however, has repeatedly drawn attention to the

pressure exerted by secular tendencies within ecclesiastical art. See, for instance, "On the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Art" (as in n. 24), and "The Sculptures of Souillac" (1939), both in Romanesque Art, New York, 1977, 1-55 and 102-130 respectively. See also Huizinga, 156- 165, for a host of fascinating examples of the mutual contamination of

things spiritual and things temporal.

Frequently Cited Sources

Bozzolo, C., Manuscrzts des traductzons franpazses d'oeuvres de Boccace (XVime szecle), Padua, 1974.

Camille, M., The Gothzc Idol. Ideology and Image-makzng zn Medzeval Art, Cambridge, 1989.

Carruthers, M.J., The Book of Memory. A Study of Memory zn Medzeval Culture (Cambridge Studzes zn Medieval Lzterature, x), Cambridge, 1990.

Freedberg, D., The Power of Images. Studzes zn the Hzstory and Theory of Response, Chicago, 1989.

Huizinga, J., The Wanzng of the Mzddle Ages. A Study ofLzfe, Thought and Art zn France and the Netherlands zn the XIVth and XVth Centurzes (1924), trans. F. Hopman, New York, 1954.

Meiss, M., 1967, French Pazntzng zn the Tzme of Jean de Berry. The Late Fourteenth Century and the Patronage of the Duke, 2 vols., London and New York.

1968, French Pazntzng zn the Tzme ofJean de Berry. The Bouczcaut Master, London and New York.

, 1974, French Pazntzng zn the Tzme ofJean de Berry. The Lzmbourgs and Thezr Contemporarzes, 2 vols., London and New York.

Winter, P.M. de, La Bzblzotheque de Phzlzppe le Hardz, duc de Bourgogne (1364-1404). Etude sur les manuscrzts a pezntures d'une collectzon prznczdre a

l'Vpoque du style "Gothzque Internatzonal," Paris, 1985.



Buettner Profane Illuminations, Secular Illusions Manuscripts in Late Medieval Courtly Society

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