Livre de la chasse

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Accession number: 
MS M.1044
Title: 
Livre de la chasse
Created: 
Paris, France, ca. 1406-1407.
Binding: 
Green velvet, before 1825. Currently (5/12/2011) disbound.
Credit: 
Bequest of Clara S. Peck, 1983.
Description: 
126 leaves (2 columns, 40 lines), bound : vellum, ill. ; 381 x 290 mm
Provenance: 
Made for Louis d'Orléans (his inventory of 1408), brother of King Charles VI of France; Louis d'Orléans' grandson, Franc̦ois II (1458-1488), duke of Burgundy and Brittany; Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain; King Philip I of Spain?; King Philip II of Spain?; Biblioteca de San Lorenzo el Real, Escorial?; George Spencer Churchill, Fifth Duke of Marlborough; London, Southgate's, Feb. 3, 1825, lot 297; Sir Thomas Phillipps (Ms. 10298); Katherine Fenwick; Thomas FitzRoy Fenwick; Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach; Clara S. Peck.
Notes: 

Text written in 1387-1389 by Gaston III Phœbus (Phé́bus or Febus), Count of Foix (1331-1391) and dedicated to Philip the Bold (1342-1404). Folios 111-126 contain prayers in French and Latin.
Ms. written and illuminated in Paris, France, ca. 1406-1407.
Decoration: 87 large miniatures, 1 added armorial frontispiece, 1 full border, numerous illuminated initials with border extensions.
Artist: Although usually designated Bedford Trend, Eberhard König believes that the Bedford Master himself worked on the manuscript after another illuminator, perhaps the Josephus Master, had devised the subjects. (The Josephus Master, a follower of Jacquemart de Hesdin, was a French illuminator (and painter?) who was named after the two miniatures he contributed around 1415 to a manuscript of Josephus' History of the Jews (Antiquités judaïques) commissioned by Jean, duc de Berry (today in Paris, BnF, MS fr. 247). He was baptized by Millard Meiss in his monograph on the Limbourg brothers in 1974.)
Revised: 2015

Script: 
textura
Language: 
Middle French and Latin
Century: