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Walters Ms. W.199, Gossouin of Metz, Image du MondeBrowse images (Browse images in a new window) | TEI in XML format
Manuscript
Gossouin of Metz, Image du Monde
Text title
Image du Monde
Abstract
This manuscript, which is dated in a colophon to 1489, is one of the three known fifteenth-century copies of a rare vernacular cosmography originally composed in verse under the title "Image du Monde" (The Mirror of the World) in Lorraine dialect ca. 1245-46. The manuscript provides descriptions of the seven liberal arts along with astronomical theories, especially about the earth, the creatures that inhabit it, and its movements within the universe. Each one of the liberal arts is illustrated with a small miniature in grisaille, and extraordinary geometric astronomical diagrams recur throughout the book. The importance of W.199 is both textual and pictorial. Illuminated by followers of Willem Vrelant, active in Bruges 1454-1481, the manuscript reveals affinity of format and content with a 1464 copy of the Mirror of the World made in Bruges (London, British Library, Royal 19 A.IX).
Date
Dated February 20, 1489 CE
Language:
The primary language in this manuscript is French. The secondary language of this manuscript is Latin.
Colophon
fols. 134r to 134r:Support material
Parchment
Well-selected and prepared heavy parchment, with stained and grimed margins
Extent
Foliation: iii+136+iii
Paper flyleaves; crimson silk used as pastedown and glued to the first and last flyleaves of the manuscript
Collation
Formula: Quires 1-16: 8 (fols. 3-130); Quire 17: 4 (fols. 131-134)
Catchwords: Catchwords frequently extant beginning on fol. 26v; appearing on page high at center or just right of center; in paler brown ink than that of text
Signatures: Signatures in arabic numerals appear occasionally on lower right of page; in paler brown ink than that of text; see fols. 35r-38r for a complete, although rare, set
Comments: Original foliation at head-edge of page; in roman numerals beginning after calendar on fol. 6r of modern penciled foliation
Dimensions
21.3 cm wide by 27.9 cm high
Written surface
12.3 cm wide by 18.3 cm high
Layout
Contents:
fols. 3r - 134r:Decoration:
fol. 6r:
fol. 7v:
fol. 9v:
fol. 10r:
fol. 28r:
fol. 28v:
fol. 29r:
fol. 29v:
fol. 30r:
fol. 30v:
fol. 31v:
fol. 40v:
fol. 42r:
fol. 42v:
fol. 43r:
fol. 43v:
fol. 45r:
fol. 47v:
Corners of top panel inscribed: "la pomme fendue en quatre quartie[r]s"; at the center of the folio, the diagram at the right reads: "la droite ligne de midi"
fol. 48v:
Top left diagram inscribed top center clockwise: "paradis / terrestre / terre / Midis / Occident / Mars / Septentrion"; the diagram below has the corners above inscribed: "Ori / ant," and the corners below: "Occi / dant"
fol. 49r:
The diagram at the top left has inscriptions from center top clockwise: "Orians / Mars / Occidant"; the diagram below has a blue top half of the earth labeled: "Ayse le grant" at the center and "Oriant" below at the left; the lower half of the earth is divided into red and pink quadrants, respectively labeled: "Septentr[i]on" and "Midi"
fol. 49v:
The top half of the diagram is inscribed: "Oriant / Ayse la grant / Midi"; pink and red quadrants below are respectively inscribed: "Europe / Anfrique"
fol. 90r:
From the innermost band out, the concentric circles are inscribed: "terre / yane / airs / feus / pur air / planetes"
fol. 91v:
Circles inscribed from the innermost out: "Terra / Mercurius / Venus / Sol / Mars / Jupiter / Saturnus"
fol. 93r:
Inscribed from the innermost circle out: "Terra / Mars / Luna / Mercurius / Jupiter / Venus / Sol / Saturnus"
fol. 94v:
Basic components are a gold sun at top left labeled "Sol", a white area, a small earth labeled "Terra", and a black band of cast shadow. The three shadows are inscribed (from top down): "umbre engreant / umbre omn? / umbre angrossissant"
fol. 96v:
fol. 97v:
fol. 98v:
fol. 100r:
fol. 131r:
Binding
The binding is not original.
Bound in Paris by León Gruel in the late nineteenth-early twentieth century with red morocco. Foliate motifs in blind on sides and spine. On the spine in blind: "Le miroire / Du Monde" "M.S. 1489" at tail-edge above binder's name "GRUEL"; crimson silk ribbon marker.
Provenance
Made in Bruges, dated "14.89. 20. februarii" in colophon on fol. 134r
Unknown private collection, Paris, 1894
Léon Gruel and Edmond Engelmann collection, Paris, late nineteenth to early twentieth century; their bookplate on inside upper board, inscribed "No. 76"
Henry Walters, Baltimore, acquired from Gruel between 1900 and 1931
Acquisition
Walters Art Museum, 1931, by Henry Walters' bequest
Bibliography
Delisle, Léopold. Recherches sur la librairie de Charles V. Vol. 2. Paris: H. Champion, 1907; p. 302, cat. no. 141.
De Ricci, S. and W. J. Wilson. Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada. Vol. 1. New York: H. W. Wilson Company, 1935; p. 845, cat. no. 504.
Francis, Winthrop Nelson. The Books of Vices and Virtues. EETS. London: Early English Text Society, 1942; p. xx (ref. to 504, de Ricci number).
Miner, Dorothy. Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages and Renaissance: An Exhibition Held at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Exhibition Catalogue. Baltimore: Trustees of the Walters Art Gallery, 1949; cat. no. 134.
Meyers, Bernard Samuel. Encyclopedia of the Art World, vol. 10. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959; p. cxi.
Destombes, Marcel. Mappemondes A.D. 1200-1500. Monumenta cartographica vetustoris aevi A.D. 1. Amsterdam: N. Israel, 1964; p. 143: 46.1.
McCulloch, F. "L'éale et la centicore: Deux bêtes fabuleuses." In Mélanges offerts à René Crozet. Edited by P. Gallais and Y.-J Riou. Vol. 2. Poitiers: Société d'études médiévales, 1965; p. 1168 (n. 4).
Diringer, David. The Illuminated Book: Its History and Production. London: Faber and Faber, 1967; p. 454 (pl. vii-35b).
Bowles, Edmund A. "A Checklist of Musical Instruments in Fifteenth-Century Illuminated Manuscripts at the Walters Art Gallery." Quarterly Journal of the Muisc Library Association 32, no. 4 (1976): 719-726; pp. 720-722, 724.
Evans, Michael. "Allegorical Women and Practical Men: The Iconography of the Artes Reconsidered." In Medieval Women. Edited by Derek Baker. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978; pp. 315, 318 (n. 76).
Howard, Donald R. Writers and Pilgrims: Medieval Pilgrimage Narratives and Their Posterity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980; frontispiece illustration (f. 42).
National Endowment for the Humanities. Annual Report. Washington D.C., 1984; p. 6 (illus. of f. 94v).
Randall, Lilian M. C. Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Walters Art Gallery. Vol. 3, pt. 2. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997; pp. 438-447, cat. no. 283.
Nevins, Teresa. "Image du Monde." In Medieval Mastery: Book Illumination from Charlemagne to Charles the Bold (800-1475). Edited by William Noel and Lee Preedy. Turnhout: Brepols, 2002; pp. 324-325, cat. no. 91.
Newman, Paul B. Growing Up in the Middle Ages. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2007; pp. 116 (fig. 27), 131 (as fig. 27).
Roux, Brigitte. Mondes en miniatures: L'iconographie du Livre du trésor de Brunetto Latini. Paris: Libraire Droz, 2009; p. 266.
Contributors
Principal cataloger: Randall, Lilian M.C.
Cataloger: Valle, Chiara
Editor: Herbert, Lynley
Copy editor: Dibble, Charles
Conservator: Owen, Linda
Contributors: Emery, Doug; Herbold, Rebekah; Noel, William; Schuele, Allyson; Tabritha, Ariel; Toth, Michael B.; Valle, Chiara; Wiegand, Kimber
Publisher
The Walters Art Museum
License
Licensed for use under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported Access Rights, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode. It is requested that copies of any published articles based on the information in this data set be sent to the curator of manuscripts, The Walters Art Museum, 600 North Charles Street, Baltimore MD 21201.
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