The Tacuinum Sanitatis, a guide to health and wellbeing, was a popular text copied and widely read throughout medieval Europe. Originally written in Arabic in the 11th century by Ibn Butlān. In the 13th century the text was translated to Latin and made available to European audiences in several different versions. In the case of this manuscript, the majority of the text is missing; only the caption above the image remains.
This manuscript would originally have consisted of 121 leaves, with over 200 illustrations, making it by far the most luxurious copy of this text. However, the book was skilfully and cleverly divided into two manuscripts; the Rouen volume (now Rouen BM ms. 3054) and the manuscript at hand. To obfuscate the relationship between these two books, the original book breaker trimmed the pages of our manuscript, removing the distinct humanist script still intact in the Rouen copy. Judging from the presentation in the Rouen manuscript, the text below each illustration would have consisted of 4 lines in red and black ink with occasional blue initials, describing the medicinal properties of the food stuff or activity illustrated above.
This manuscript is a unique mirror to life in 15th century Lombardy. A man camouflaged in twigs and branches catches turtledoves in a forest clearing (f. 34r). In one kitchen two women make spaghetti (f. 13v), in another kitchen, a cook has prepared gelatine that a servant is getting ready to bring to the table (f. 42r). In one merchant’s shop a customer is sampling a dried fig (f. 26v) and in another a child is distracted and has wandered off from his mother (f. 31v).
This manuscript gives us unparalleled access to the summer rooms of the wealthy (f. 57r), the kitchens and gardens where their servants work (f. 46v), the fields where peasants toil and harvest (f.14r), as well as the kitchens of the middling orders where a woman prepares her chickpea stock (f. 17v). Alongside metaphorical depictions of the seasons (ff. 24r-25v), the cardinal winds (ff. 27r-28v), human emotions like anger (f.58v), and virtues such as modesty (f. 58r), this book provides depictions of human experiences that are rarely seen in medieval art: the troubles with insomnia (f. 62r), the benefits of sleep (f. 60v), the pleasures of music (ff. 62v, 63r) and the necessity of sex (f. 61v).
Secular manuscripts of this date with depictions of everyday life depicting men, women, and children of all different social strata, pets and animals breed for food, domestic scenes and public spheres, are exceedingly rare. This manuscript belongs to a small group of books using the text of the Tacuinum sanitatis as an excuse to depict scenes from everyday life.xiv All books in this group were richly illuminated and produced for courtly patrons in Northern Italy. The present manuscript, with over 200 miniatures when it was first created, was the most elaborate book in this group.