This exquisite volume beautifully reproduces and insightfully examines the most important illuminations found in French history manuscripts.

One of the finest works from the golden era of Flemish manuscript illumination, the Getty’s copy of the Romance of Gillion de Trazegnies tells of the adventures of a medieval nobleman. Part travelogue, part romance, and part epic, the text traces the exciting exploits of Gillion as he journeys to Jerusalem on pilgrimage, is imprisoned in Egypt and rises to the command of the Sultan’s armies, mistakenly becomes a bigamist first with a Christian and then a Muslim wife, and dies in battle as a glorious hero. The tale encompasses the most thrilling elements of the Western romance genre — love, villainy, loyalty, and war — set against the backdrop of the East. This lavishly illustrated volume reveals for the first time the complexity of this illuminated romance. A complete reproduction of the book’s illustrations and a partial translation of the text appear along with essays that explore the manuscript’s vibrant cultural, historical, and artistic contexts. The innovative illuminations, by the renowned artist Lieven van Lathem, juxtapose the reality of medieval Europe with an idealized vision of the East. This unusual pairing, found in the text and illustrations, is the source of a rich discussion of the fifteenth-century political situation in the West and the Crusades in the East.

Manuscripts, Market and the Transition to Print in Late Medieval Brittany surveys the production and marketing of non-monastic manuscripts and printed books over 150 years in late medieval Brittany, from the accession of the Montfort family to the ducal crown in 1364 to the duchy's formal assimilation by France in 1532. Brittany, as elsewhere, experienced the shift of manuscript production from monasteries to lay scriptoria and from rural settings to urban centers, as the motivation for copying the word in ink on parchment evolved from divine meditation to personal profit. Through her analysis of the physical aspects of Breton manuscripts and books, parchment and paper, textual layouts, scripts and typography, illumination and illustration, Diane Booton exposes previously unexplored connections between the tangible cultural artifacts and the society that produced, acquired and valued them. Innovatively, Booton's discussion incorporates archival research into the prices, wages and commissions associated with the manufacture of the works under discussion to shed new light on their economic and personal value.

Verzeichnis der exzerpierton zeitschriften: 1926, p. [XXXI]-LXVII.

The renowned art historian Andre Chastel intended his history of art in France from prehistoric times to the nineteenth century to be the crowning achievement of his long and distinguished career. The fruit of ten years of research and writing, this fully documented and erudite study goes beyond conventional art historical analysis to get at the heart of over two millenia of artistic creation.

The first volume opens with the artifacts left behind by the earliest inhabitants of the area that forms modern France - prehistoric cave dwellers, Celts, Gallo-Romans, and Merovingians - which are examined in Part I, along with the stunning artistic achievements of Charlemagne and his Carolingian successors. Part II explores the development of monumental Romanesque and Gothic sculpture and architecture, as well as the growing importance of manuscript illumination, ivory carving, and precious metalwork. The late Gothic period is the subject of the last section, which concludes with the highly refined and stylized courtly art of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries - the final and perfect flowering of the medieval world.