Description
Extraordinary and spectacular facsimile edition of the Histoire of the destruction of Troye the Grant (History of the War of Troy), whose original dated c. 1500 is preserved in the National Library of France, sig. NAF 24920. A 5 star in every large Library!
The Sicilian poet Guido delle Colonne (1210-1287), among other works wrote in Latin “The History of the Destruction of Troy the Great” taking as a source Dares Phrygia and the last chapter of Dictis Cretan. It begins with the legend of Jason and the Argonauts and ends with the return of the Greek heroes after the destruction of Troy and the death of Ulysses. In the fifteenth century, the work of Colonne was translated into French by an anonymous writer, and the result was this spectacular manuscript. Thus at the beginning we see Jason and Medea (1v), Priam, King of Troy (7r), Shipwreck of Anténor (8v), Paris and Helen (11r) Castor and Pollux (f. 13r), Achilles and Patroclus at Delphi (14r), Hercules, Áyax, Ulysses, Hector, Menelaus, Agamemnon, etc. The death of Achilles, which does not appear in the Iliad (33b), is seen here in every page, as an example that this manuscript follows other traditions than the Homeric.
This manuscript was composed for Aymar of Poitiers, and after his death in 1510 it conserved his heirs. It came to power from Pierre Séguier, but his heirs donated it to the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, from where it was stolen with other codices during the French Revolution.
The wake of Jean Colombe had not disappeared, for after his death in 1493 the workshop continued to compose extensive historical manuscripts under his son Filiberto and his grandson François, who inherited from the master the compositional style, technique, color and decoration. On this occasion the Colombe put faces, landscapes, buildings, battles, shipwrecks and endless elements before our eyes, and they do it in a spectacular way; With full-page paintings, without borders or borders, measuring more than half a meter, with bright colors, illuminated with gold, and decorated with Renaissance motifs, typical of Flamboyant Gothic. Nothing similar had ever been represented in the Middle Ages (François Avril).
Features of this extraordinary facsimile edition:
Complete edition incorporating the “Fragment of Berlin”, two folios that were cut from the original manuscript in the eighteenth century and, therefore, this facsimile is the only complete copy of the work of the fifteenth century.
Edition limited to 500 copies, numbered and notarized.
Facsimile format 35 x 52 cm. 60 folios (120 pages) containing 15 spectacular full-page illustrations, without borders or borders (a true pictorial museum), 57 miniatures and 11 more unfinished. Bound in red-bent leather with 6 ribs.
Artist: Taller de Jean Colombe.
Writing: French Gothic two columns.
Presented in a box-case format 37.2 x 55 x 5.2 cm.
Book of studies bound in hardcover with illustrated cover, format 24 x 33 cm. Includes transcription, translation, commentary and study of the miniatures.
Exemplary in perfect condition.
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