Froissart of Louis of Gruuthuse

Execution of Christian prisoners by Bayezid I after the Battle of Nicopolis in 1396. MS Fr 2646, attributed to the Master of the Dresden Prayer Book[1]
A detail from the margin of a page

The Froissart of Louis of Gruuthuse (BnF Fr 2643–6) is a heavily illustrated deluxe illuminated manuscript in four volumes, containing a French text of Froissart's Chronicles, written and illuminated in the first half of the 1470s in Bruges, Flanders, in modern Belgium. The text of Froissart's Chronicles is preserved in more than 150 manuscript copies. This is one of the most lavishly illuminated examples, commissioned by Louis of Gruuthuse, a Flemish nobleman and bibliophile. Several leading Flemish illuminators worked on the miniatures.

The four volumes are now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris as BnF, MSS Français 2643–6, and contain 110 miniatures of various sizes painted by some of the best artists of the day. The page size is approximately 44 × 33 cm, with miniatures of various sizes, from three-quarter–page and half-page, to historiated initials. The French text is in two columns and there is extensive marginal decoration of scrolling stems and other plant motifs, with some human and animal figures among them.

  1. ^ "BnF – Miniatures flamandes". expositions.bnf.fr.