Pizan's pool party

[R. Sale]

In the investigations of the bathers in Quire 13, a number of illustrations have been considered. Among these is the image from Christine de Pizan's Book of the Queen - aka Harley 4431 f. 183. This shows Christine and the Sibyl dropping by to see the nine Muses bathing, with Pegasus flying by. 

The Book of the Queen  is a compilation of several works and the illustration is from Le Livre du chemin de long estude. A second version of this text with a very similar illustration, tending more to pastels, can be found in BNF fr. 836 f5v.

A third version of the text, BNF Fr. 1643, has no illustrations, only blank spaces apparently intended for illustrations.

The recently availability from the Royal Library of Belgium of texts from the Library of the Dukes of Burgundy has a number of manuscripts by Christine de Pizan. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Among them are two versions of Le Livre du chemin de long estude.. MS 10982 and MS 10983. Both of these mss. have versions of the 'Muses & Pegasus'  illustration that differ from the above examples and from each other.

See. KBR MS 10982 I 32  and KBR MS 10983 I 29 (link below - if it works)

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

This last example has the strongest similarities with the VMs pool drawings. 

This shows the presence of Parisian texts in the Burgundian library and the potential influence of the works of Christine de Pizan on the VMs illustrations. It is a second indicator that the VMs artist *may have had* access to the Burgundian library. (#1 is BNF Fr. 13096 f. 18; Apocalypse of S Jean  1313.)