Fabulous History: Painting History in Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 5069
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Christopher T. Richards
Abstract
This chapter examines a deluxe fourteenth-century manuscript of the Ovide moralisé (Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 5069), a significant Middle French adaptation and expansion of Ovid’s Metamorphoses that engages allegorical methods of historical interpretation. Investigating the manuscript from the perspectives of art history, manuscript studies, and French literary studies, the chapter explores the methods of the commercial manuscript makers of late-medieval Paris who created the book, especially its artists or “historiators,” a successful group of illuminators known as the Fauvel Masters, who specialized in the historiation of vernacular (or French-language) manuscripts. By comparing first their illuminations to iconographic traditions in historiographic manuscripts (especially the Bible historiale) and second their practices of making to the poetic and historiographic techniques of the anonymous Ovide moralisé Poet, the chapter argues that late-medieval manuscript makers, including both poets and painters, shared a concept of history or histoire, a materially situated pictorial practice that involved imagination, iconographic interpretation, and ultimately painting over gaps and discontinuities. Formal analyses of specific miniatures, such as the image of Narcissus, highlight the manuscript’s reflexive qualities and reveal it to be a historically rich mirror on the real makers who produced the book, even as those very makers confabulated fictional and imaginative stories. This study contributes to art historical understanding of and appreciation for the sophisticated artistic and interpretative practices of vernacular illuminators, while also expanding the contemporary historian’s own notion of history as itself transcending dichotomies of truth and fiction.
Abstract
This chapter examines a deluxe fourteenth-century manuscript of the Ovide moralisé (Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 5069), a significant Middle French adaptation and expansion of Ovid’s Metamorphoses that engages allegorical methods of historical interpretation. Investigating the manuscript from the perspectives of art history, manuscript studies, and French literary studies, the chapter explores the methods of the commercial manuscript makers of late-medieval Paris who created the book, especially its artists or “historiators,” a successful group of illuminators known as the Fauvel Masters, who specialized in the historiation of vernacular (or French-language) manuscripts. By comparing first their illuminations to iconographic traditions in historiographic manuscripts (especially the Bible historiale) and second their practices of making to the poetic and historiographic techniques of the anonymous Ovide moralisé Poet, the chapter argues that late-medieval manuscript makers, including both poets and painters, shared a concept of history or histoire, a materially situated pictorial practice that involved imagination, iconographic interpretation, and ultimately painting over gaps and discontinuities. Formal analyses of specific miniatures, such as the image of Narcissus, highlight the manuscript’s reflexive qualities and reveal it to be a historically rich mirror on the real makers who produced the book, even as those very makers confabulated fictional and imaginative stories. This study contributes to art historical understanding of and appreciation for the sophisticated artistic and interpretative practices of vernacular illuminators, while also expanding the contemporary historian’s own notion of history as itself transcending dichotomies of truth and fiction.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Acknowledgements V
- Contents VII
- Abbreviations IX
- List of Figures XI
- Notes on Contributors XVII
- Introduction: History, Manuscripts, Making 1
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I Strategies of Production
- Assemblages and History in a Medieval French Manuscript from Corbie, ca. 1295: Copenhagen, Kongelige Biblioteket, GKS 487 f° 23
- Writing with the Book: History through the Codex and the Materiality of Autography 47
- Miscellanies of Histories: Perception of the Past and Historiographical Agency of Late Medieval Compilers 71
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II The Stakes of Adaptation
- Writing History with Bede’s Martyrology, 800–1200 95
- Adaptation and Affect in Orderic Vitalis’s Historia ecclesiastica 117
- From Little Egypt to Zurich: Chronicling Romani Immigrants with Late Medieval Manuscripts 141
- Making History in the Renaissance with Medieval Manuscripts: Jean Le Féron and the Grandes chroniques de France 171
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III Configuring History
- Medieval Monastic Manuscripts after the Middle Ages: The Case of St. Nikolaus in undis at Strasbourg 199
- History Branches Out: Narrative and Chronology in Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cod. Bodmer 147 225
- Fabulous History: Painting History in Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 5069 253
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IV Response
- Making History with Manuscripts: Response 287
- General Index 303
- Manuscripts Cited 315
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Acknowledgements V
- Contents VII
- Abbreviations IX
- List of Figures XI
- Notes on Contributors XVII
- Introduction: History, Manuscripts, Making 1
-
I Strategies of Production
- Assemblages and History in a Medieval French Manuscript from Corbie, ca. 1295: Copenhagen, Kongelige Biblioteket, GKS 487 f° 23
- Writing with the Book: History through the Codex and the Materiality of Autography 47
- Miscellanies of Histories: Perception of the Past and Historiographical Agency of Late Medieval Compilers 71
-
II The Stakes of Adaptation
- Writing History with Bede’s Martyrology, 800–1200 95
- Adaptation and Affect in Orderic Vitalis’s Historia ecclesiastica 117
- From Little Egypt to Zurich: Chronicling Romani Immigrants with Late Medieval Manuscripts 141
- Making History in the Renaissance with Medieval Manuscripts: Jean Le Féron and the Grandes chroniques de France 171
-
III Configuring History
- Medieval Monastic Manuscripts after the Middle Ages: The Case of St. Nikolaus in undis at Strasbourg 199
- History Branches Out: Narrative and Chronology in Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cod. Bodmer 147 225
- Fabulous History: Painting History in Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 5069 253
-
IV Response
- Making History with Manuscripts: Response 287
- General Index 303
- Manuscripts Cited 315
