Benvenuto Da Imola (1330-1388) [Author]; Pierre Garnier (Active 1470-1490) [Artist]

Benvenuto da Imola (1330-1388) [author]; Pierre Garnier (active 1470-1490) [artist]
HANNIBAL DEFEATING THE ROMANS, miniature from the Romuléon [eastern France, c. 1480]
An engaging miniature once illustrating what would have been an imposing copy of the Romuléon, a work drawn from several classical and Christian authors that tells the story of Rome and the Romans from the time of Romulus and Remus to Constantine the Great.

The original compilation, in Latin, was made by Benvenuto da Imola between 1361 and 1364, but in the 1460s, in response to the courtly taste for histories and chronicles in the vernacular, two writers independently undertook to translate the work into French. The present miniature illustrated chapter 21 of Book IV of the translation of Jean Miélot, resident of Lille between 1453 and 1472, who was in the service of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, from around 1448 until the duke's death in 1467. Only six complete manuscripts of Miélot's translation survive, all of them luxury volumes made in the southern Netherlands for members or friends of the Burgundian court.

The present miniature was one of a group of fourteen from the same manuscript, sold at Christie's, 21 June 1989, lots 6-11. They were attributed to an illuminator active in Langres between 1480 and 1493 serving clients in Champagne and Lorraine (N. Reynaud in Les Manuscrits à peintures en France 1440-1520, eds F. Avril and N. Reynaud, 1993, p. 376). The artist was subsequently named as one Langres illuminator Pierre Garnier, who worked at the court of René d'Anjou between 1476-1480 (J. Lauga 'Les Manuscrits liturgiques dans le diocèse de Langres à la fin du Moyen âge : les commanditaires et leurs artistes', thesis, Paris 4, Sorbonne, 2007).

Provenance:
•The fragmentary parent manuscript to which these and other dispersed miniatures once belonged has been identified in Niort (Médiathèque Pierre-Moinot, Cote RESG2F), gifted in 1884 by Edmond-Emmanuel Arnauldet. It is the only known copy of the Romuléon that is French in origin (see S. McKendrick, 'The Romuléon and the Manuscripts of Edward IV', England in the Fifteenth Century, 1994, pp. 149-169).
•Christie's, 15 November 2006, lot 5.

133 x 93mm. Text on the verso from Bk IV, Ch. 21 of the Romuléon. Framed.

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