Lancelot - Grail Intranet Web Site
Why These Project Manuscripts?
by Alison Stones
- they were made by the same team of craftsmen (all anonymous)
- the choice of pictures, placing, and treatment in these copies is sometimes the same, but more often is radically different, suggesting that the text was read and interpreted in different ways
- one copy has the date of 23 February 1316 carved on a tomb in a miniature (Add. 10292, f. 55v). This copy has more pictures than any other surviving copy.
- they use similar script, penflourished decoration, champie initials
- the major illuminator worked in all three copies (he is anonymous)
- there are two other contemporary illuminators, also anonymous, whose work may be compared
- other works by these artists allow their region to be established: between Saint-Omer (county of Artois, diocese of Thérouanne) and Tournai and Ghent (both in the County of Flanders and diocese of Tournai)
- rubrics (captions written in red ink) accompany most of the pictures; they are never the same across copies; sometimes what they say is misleading or wrong
- marginal notes are often preserved, some for the rubricator, others for the illuminator (most were erased); they show what kinds of information the rubricators and illuminators were given to work with
- there are additions by a later illuminator (also anonymous) in one copy, showing what episodes a later owner thought were important to have added
- comparisons among these copies suggest reasons why they are different:
they suggest what kind of people the patrons were and what their input was