You are in Introduction. Click here to skip the navigation.
British Library
Digital Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts
 Detail from the Roman de la Rose
About Simple search Manuscript search Advanced search  Virtual exhibitions Glossaries Contact us  Main
print Print this page
home Home
site search Search British Library website
back Back

search tips  Search tips
 
 

 

 
 

Detailed record for Egerton 2709

Author Pierre Boutier and Jehan le Verrier
Title Conquête et les conquérants des Iles Canaries
Origin France
Date c. 1405 (after 1404 and before 1420)
Language French
Script Gothic cursive
Artists Attributed to the workshop of the Master of the Cité des Dames (see Meiss 1974).
Decoration 1 large miniature, accompanied by a large decorated initial and a partial foliate border with dragon, in colours and gold (f. 2). Large and small decorated initials with foliate extensions into the margins, in colours and gold.
Dimensions in mm 265 x 180 (180 x 110)
Official foliation ff. 36 (+ 2 paper flyleaves at the beginning, and 2 at the end)
Form Parchment codex
Binding BM/BL in-house.
Provenance After 1404: the expedition to the Canary Islands, described in this account by two of its chaplains, was undertaken in 1402-1404 by two French knights named Gadifer de la Sale and Jehan de Béthencourt.
Philip the Good (b. 1396, d. 1467), Duke of Burgundy, by 1420: mentioned in his inventory of 1420 as 'Item ung autre livre nomme le Livre de Canare escript en parchemin de lettre de forme a une histoire enlumine dor commencant ou IIe fueillet Et pour ce et ou derrenier Les gens couvert de cuir rouge a II fermouers de laton' (see Georges Doutrepont, Inventaire de la librairie de Philippe le Bon, 1420 (Bruxelles: Kiessling, 1906), no. 146).
Bought by the British Museum from E. Maus d'Heusch, 30 October 1888 (note on 2nd flyleaf), using the Bridgewater fund (£12,000 bequeathed in 1829 by Francis Henry Egerton, 8th Earl of Bridgewater (b. 1756, d. 1829).
Notes Full digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Digitised Manuscripts at http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts.
Select bibliography Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years 1888-1893 (London: British Museum, 1894), no. Eg. 2709.

A Guide to the Exhibition of Some Part of the Egerton Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1929), no. 115.

Millard Meiss, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry: The Late XIV Century and the Patronage of the Duke, 2 vols, National Gallery of Art Kress Foundation Studies in the History of European Art, 2 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1967), p. 356.

Millard Meiss, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry: The Limbourgs and their Contemporaries, 2 vols (London: Thames and Hudson, 1974), I, pp. 379, 419.

Allen S. Farber, 'Considering a Marginal Master: The Work of an Early Fifteenth-Century, Parisian Manuscript Decorator', Gesta 32.1 (1993), 21-39 (pp. 34-35).

Janet Backhouse, The Illuminated Page: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Painting in the British Library (London: British Library, 1997), no. 119.

Joe Flatman, Ships and Shipping in Medieval Manuscripts (London: British Library, 2009), pl. 71.


Images
* * *
 
Ship with armed men

f. 2
Ship with armed men
Ship with armed men

f. 2
Ship with armed men

print Print this page
home Home
site search Search British Library website
back Back
top Back

About Simple search Manuscript search Advanced search
Virtual exhibitions Glossaries Accessibility Contact us Main

All text is © British Library Board and is available under a CC-BY Licence except where otherwise stated