Beschreibung:

The Coronation Master Death of a wife and remarriage, miniature from Jean de Meun, Testament, cut from an illuminated Roman de la Rose [Paris, c.1400] A delicate and engaging miniature from an apparently unique cycle illustrating the Testament of Jean de Meun from one of the stand-out surviving copies of the Roman de la Rose, Valencia MS 387, likely commissioned by Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy and later owned by Jean, duc de Berry and Jacques d'Armagnac, duc de Nemours. 173 x 200mm. The miniature depicting a man rushing to remarry after the funeral of his wife, the text from the Testament of Jean de Meun, originally following the rubric 'Comment les maris aprez la mort de leurs femmes se remarient tantost [...]', on f.154v of Valencia, Biblioteca Historica Ms. 387, reverse with 17 lines of text, beginning: 'Que maintes bonnes femmes font saillir en lempire' and ending 'Comment ameront ilz les ames qu'ilz ne voient', corresponding to verses 458-474 of D.M. Méon's edition of Le Roman de la Rose, Paris, 1814, vol IV, four initials alternately in gold and blue on blue or red grounds (lower margin a paper reinforcement, the leaf a little cockled, the miniature a little faded). Window mount. Provenance: (1) The parent manuscript is Valencia, BH Ms. 387, one of a group of lavishly illuminated secular manuscripts produced at the turn of the 15th century for the great bibliophiles of the French court. The manuscript was likely commissioned by Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy (1342-1404) and passed on to: (2) Jean, duc de Berry (1340-1416), the great patron of illumination and employer of the Limbourg brothers. Jean is recorded to have owned four manuscripts of the Rose, but only Paris, BnF, MS fr.380 can be identified with certainty (a second Rose, BnF, MS fr.12595 has recently been proposed as the volume the duc de Berry gave as a present to his valet Guillaume de Lode, see M-H.Tesnière and F. Avril, Paris 1400, 2004, p.238, no 141). (3) Jacques d'Armagnac, duc de Nemours (1433-1477): his ex-libris on f.188v (now erased but still legible under ultraviolet), probably destined for his library in La Marche. (4) Frederick of Aragon (1452-1504), the last King of Naples: an acrostic poem on f.190v of the Valencia manuscript reveals his identity. The manuscript was part of the great Aragonese Library and is listed in an inventory of 1527 drafted on behalf of Frederick's widow Isabella del Balzo while in exile in Ferrara (see G. Mazzatinti, La biblioteca dei re d'Aragona in Napoli, 1897, p.155 no 502). 4) Ferdinand of Aragon (1488-1550), duke of Calabria and viceroy of Valencia from 1526. (5) The Valencia manuscript is said to have been left by Ferdinand as part of legacy to the Monastery of San Miguel de los Reyes in Valencia. By 1913 it was in the University Library and already lacking some of its miniatures (see M. Gutiérrez del Caño, Catálogo de los manuscritos existentes en la Biblioteca Universitaria de Valencia, 1913, II, pp.215-6, no 1327 and P. Cerchi and T. de Robertis, 'Un inventario della biblioteca Aragonese', Italia medioevale e umanistica 33, 1990, p.132, note 27 and p.273, no 219). (6) The present miniature was offered by Pierre Berès, Manuscrits et enluminures du onzième au dix-huitième siècle, Paris, 1975, cat.66, no 4. The text of the Roman de la rose was begun around 1220, possibly by Guillaume de Lorris and continued by Jean de Meun between 1269-1278. Around 200 illuminated manuscripts of the text survive and in many of them, the Rose was copied with other texts attributed to Jean de Meun, which are often described as 'satellite' or spin-off texts. Our miniature is from the Testament, a text that acts as a morally edifying conclusion to the famous allegorical poem in which the author explains to the reader that he wants to apologise for the works he wrote during his youth in his quest for fame. The poem, inspired by disputation, focuses on themes of death, vanity, prayer and the finite nature of human life. The Vale