A Bit of History about a Medieval Manuscript in Private Hands
A King Arthur manuscript hidden away in private collections for 700 years will go up for auction.
The medieval manuscript, which dates from 1290-1310, chronicles the myths of King Arthur, Merlin and the Holy Grail from the Lancelot-Grail Cycle – stories of unknown authorship written in Old French in the 13th century.
Painted on vellum and adorned with gold leaf, the manuscript is decorated with 126 miniature illustrations including the Knights of the Round Table returning from battle and Merlin shape-shifting into a talking stag.
The manuscript is thought to be the earliest Lancelot-Grail ever to come up for auction and is expected to fetch £1.5m-£2m when it is offered by Christie’s on July 8.
Known as the Lebaudy manuscript owing to its previous owner being Jean Lebaudy, a French industrialist, the tome has never been publicly exhibited or fully studied by academics.
Dr Eugenio Donadoni, director of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts at Christie’s, said the manuscript was desirable for both public institutions and private collectors.
He told The Telegraph: “There are so many appealing angles to this manuscript: historical, art-historical, textual and cultural.
“There’s the Christian element – the quest for the Holy Grail; the chivalric element: the adventures, the quests, the jousts, the battles.
“It should interest institutions because it’s a virtually unknown manuscript of one of the greatest medieval romances, but it could interest private buyers for the same reasons that it appealed to the long line of owners who have treasured it over the course of the past 700 years.”
Dr Donadoni said the manuscript had previously been owned by Michel de Gronnais, a 16th-century knight; Michel de Chaverson, a jouster; the comte de Clermont-Tonnerre, a French aristocrat; Sir Thomas Phillipps, an obsessive medievalist and baron; and Jean Lebaudy, an industrialist, whose heroic deeds in both World Wars brought him two Croix de guerre, the military decoration.
Only three such manuscripts are known to be held in private collections, with this version being the earliest and most illustrative.
The illustrations are painted in a style associated with a group of Metz artists responsible for the Ste-Glossinde Charter of 1293, a Psalter-Hours datable before 1297 now at the Médiathèque Verlaine in Metz, and a vernacular Apocalypse manuscript now in Liège.
Dr Donadoni said: “The Master himself is anonymous and nothing beyond the manuscripts he produced is known about him: he takes his name from the Apocalypse manuscript in Liège.
“The illuminations in the Clermont-Tonnerre Grail, which are full of narrative detail, are among the richest examples of his work: characteristic of his style are the deftly drawn figures animated by the sharply contrasted black pupils of the eyes; neat orange dots carefully placed on cheeks; square-jawed male faces; and profiles exaggerated nutcracker chins and foreheads continuing in an almost straight line into a Grecian nose with an overlong tip.”
The artist incorporated burnished gold leaf, which was polished aggressively to make it shine.
Dr Irene Fabry-Tehranchi, who specialises in French texts at Cambridge University Library, said she hoped the manuscript would pass into public ownership.
She told The Guardian: “It’s really exciting. This private ownership of a key medieval manuscript is a real challenge for scholars. It prevents further research, unfortunately.
“I hope that … it will finally become available in a public collection. The problem is, of course, that nowadays libraries and heritage institutions don’t have very much money. [But] these institutions are there to preserve these texts and to make them publicly available.”
Dr Fabry-Tehranchi said initial scans of the document suggested an abridged and rewritten ending to a story known as the Suite Vulgate du Merlin.
She added: “In some cases, scribes thought they could rewrite the story and make it more appealing to what either their patrons wanted or in a way that felt better [to them] – that was a standard medieval writing practice.
“It was probably someone’s initiative to do this rewriting, because they thought it was best. It shows the scribe’s own take on the story.”