L’arbre des batailles

Accession number: 
MS M.907
Title: 
L’arbre des batailles
Created: 
France, probably Paris, ca. 1390-ca. 1394.
Binding: 
19th-century tan morocco, gilt stamped, inscribed on spine: Arbre des bataille par Bonnor Manuscr.
Credit: 
Purchased from H.P. Kraus on the Belle da Costa Greene Fund, 1962.
Description: 
152 leaves (2 columns, 31 lines), bound : vellum, ill. ; 245 x 170 mm
Provenance: 
Auguste-Nicolas Nepveu (d. 1837), Paris bookseller; purchased (probably by Robert Lang) from Nepveu in 1816 (inscription on flyleaf ii: Purchased of M. Nepveu for Three Hundred Livres June 1816); Robert Lang of Portland Place, London; his sale (London, R.H. Evans, 17 November and 10 following days, 1828, lot. 418) to Sir Thomas Phillipps; Phillipps Collection no. 3653; H.P. Kraus; purchased from H.P. Kraus with income from the Belle da Costa Greene Fund in 1962.
Notes: 

Ms. military treatise by Honoré Bonet (ca. 1340-ca. 1410) ; written and illuminated in France, probably Paris, ca. 1390 - 1394.
Decoration: 1 full-page tinted drawing (Tree of Mourning, with a personification of Fortuna behind the Wheel on fol. 2v); 1 illuminated initial with marginal vine stem extenders.
Artist: Master of Death (Pierre Remiet?) or associate; see Camille, Master of Death; but see also Rouse and Rouse, Manuscripts and Their Makers, I, pp. 293-96, II, App. 11B; and Paris 1400, p. 46. MSS previously attributed by Camille to Pierre Remiet are now given to an anonymous illuminator baptized the "Master of Death" by Paris 1400 using Camille's book title. This anonymous illuminator might be one of possibly two different Pierre Remiets mentioned in documents.
Revised: 2016

Script: 
textura
Language: 
French
Century: 
Classification: