Boccaccio's Historical Biographies in French

Giovanni Boccaccio

Circle of Maître François (François le Barbier), France, Paris, c. 1470

Boccaccio's De casibus virorum illustrium in the French translation by Laurent de Premierfait is one of his most widely read texts. The famous author retells the fortunes and downfalls of renowned figures from the Bible, antiquity, and medieval history, ending with Boccaccio’s own contemporaries of 14th-century Florence. For a long time, this book was more famous and successful than Boccaccio's Decameron. The text was translated into French in 1409 for Jean, Duc de Berry by his secretary, Laurent Premierfait. The illuminations are associated with one of the most important Parisian workshops of that time: that of the esteemed Maître François le Barbier.

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Illuminated manuscript on vellum and paper

372 x 260 mm. – 509 leaves. With 5 (of 9) large miniatures with full borders.

125

of 260

A notable exemplar of the humanist literary tradition

Overview

This work is now sold.

Boccaccio, the great Italian poet and prominent humanist, originally composed this collection of stories between 1355-1360. Conceived as a true encyclopaedia of historical biography, it deals with the fortunes and calamities of famous people starting with the biblical Adam, continuing with mythological and historical figures from Antiquity, and concluding with several of Boccaccio's own 14th-century Florentine contemporaries. Laurent de Premierfait (c. 1380-1418) was a skilled poet who was renowned as the translator of texts by Livy, Boccaccio and Cicero.

This manuscript is a notable addition to the Parisian luxury books associated with artist commonly published under the name of Maître François. There were several artists in the circle of Maître François and their oeuvres are as of yet not fully documented. Recent research has identified the Maître François and the chief associate of his workshop as a father and son team named François le Barbier père and fils. The artist of the present manuscript uses many of the gestures and expressive faces characteristic of the Master of Jean Rolin II, another collaborator of this group. However, the manuscript is not in his hand and is in some ways more like the work of Maître François himself: the use of bright orange colour, for instance, and the competent painting not only of three-quarter faces but also profiles and full-faces suggest a second hand.

The original commissioner remains unknown but in 1518 the manuscript was in the hands of the poetess and translator Anne de Graville, daughter of Louis Malet, Lord of Graville and Admiral of France († 1516) and Marie de Balsac († 1503). At the request of Queen Claude she translated the Romance of Arcite and Palemon from Boccaccio’s Theseida. Anne's celebrated library passed into the d’Urfé collection through her daughter, Jeanne de Balsac d’Entragues who married Claude d’Urfe (b. 1501).

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