Froissart of Louis of Gruuthuse (Bn F Fr 2643-6) - Patron

Patron

Louis of Gruuthuse (1427–1492) was born and lived in Bruges and was an important member of the court of Philip the Good. He appears to have been the second largest purchaser in the period, after Philip himself, of illuminated manuscripts from the best Flemish workshops, then at their peak of success. He had a book collection totalling about 190 volumes, mostly secular in content, of which over half were contemporary illuminated copies. This made his collection over twice the size of the contemporary English Royal collection. Louis was in fact one of the last people to commission new manuscripts on such a scale; he probably began collecting books in the late 1460s, with many of his major commissions dating from the 1470s. In some cases even from that decade the titles already existed in printed form, and by the end of his life most titles could be bought printed, and Flemish illumination, especially of secular works, was in deep decline. Froissart's Chronicles were not printed until about 1498, in Paris.

He incorporated portraits of himself in miniatures in several books (but not these volumes); an extra figure, wearing the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece, appears in his copies but not in similar compositions in other copies of the same works. Many of his volumes, like this set, passed to King Louis XII of France, and are now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. King Louis painted his arms over those of Louis de Gruuthuse on some pages in this set (and in other books had the Burgundian collar of the Fleece over-painted on the de Gruuthuse figures). The current bindings are later (17th or 18th century), but traces of what were probably the original blue velvet bindings remain.

Like the "Harley Froissart" (British Library Harley Ms 4379), which is the most fully illustrated of all illuminated Froissarts, this is an example of a notable resurgence of interest in Froissart's work from the late 1460s onwards; the earliest parts of the Chronicles were by then over a century old, and covered a period beginning 140 years before.