Roman de Tristan

Accession number: 
MS M.41
Title: 
Roman de Tristan
Created: 
France, probably Bourges, April 15, 1468.
Binding: 
20th century purple morocco by Marguerite Duprez Lahey; previous binding was late 16th or early 17th century French calf with wreath enclosing the interlaced initials of Catherine de Jouoye, or Jouy; this cut out and pasted inside front cover.
Credit: 
Purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913) in 1903.
Description: 
282 leaves (2 columns, 53 lines), bound : vellum, ill. ; 438 x 328 mm
Provenance: 
Jean de la Moussaye, seigneur de Lorgeril (faint inscription, fol. 264r). Catherine de Jouoye or Jouy (faint inscription with interlaced C's on fol. 150). Peter Le Neve Collection (not traced in his sales, London, Feb. 22 and Mar. 19, 1731); given by G. Vertue to Bishop Warburton; sold (1780) by Payne to G.L. Way; his sale, (London 1881, no. 142) to Quaritch; no. 1468 in an English catalogue (Ellis?), ca. 1890; John E. Kerr Collection (Catalogue, 1903, p. 9, no. 8*); purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913) from Kerr in 1903; J.P. Morgan (1867-1943).
Notes: 

Ms. written and illuminated in France, probably Bourges, April 15, 1468.
Dated in a flourish of a catchword on fol. 182v.
Decoration: 80 miniatures (a miniature was removed from the manuscript on folio 278r). The cycle of illustrations is incomplete by around 25 miniatures and the manuscript lacks approximately 100 leaves judging from the original roman numeral foliation. Missing are the first 25 leaves (roman numerals start with no. 26); 2 leaves after folio 100 (roman numerals 136 &137); 8 leaves after folio 230 (roman numerals 269-276); 2 leaves after folio 278 (roman numerals 325 & 326); an indeterminent number of leaves after folio 282.
Artist: Master of the Vienna Mamerot (also known as the Master of the Yale Missal or the Master of Christophe de Champagne). The artist has been identified as Guillaume Piqueau (see Samuel Gras, "The Master of Jeanne de France, Duchesse de Bourbon: A Bridge between Jean Fouquet and the Artists in the Jouvenel Group," Re-Inventing Traditions: On the Transmission of Artistic Patterns in Late Medieval Manuscript Illumination, Joris Corin Heyder and Christine Seidel, eds., Frankfurt, 2015, 154, 157 (twice), 145-48 [article = pp. 145-69].)
John Plummer, The Last Flowering, named this artist the Master of the Vienna Mamerot after his illustrations in a Histoire et faits des neuf Preux by Sébastien Mamerot (Vienna, Öst. Nationalbibl., Cod. 2577-2578). Franc̜ois Avril and Nicole Reynaud, Les manuscrits à peintures en France, 1440-1520, renamed the artist Maître du Missel de Yale after his most important work in the Yale University missal (New Haven, Beinecke Library, Ms. 425).
Revised: 2015

Script: 
bastarda
Language: 
French
Classification: