Musée Condé, Chantilly, Ms. fr. 139

This splendid manuscript, entitled Le Miroir de l'humaine Salvation , came to the Musée Condé through the Bruyère-Chalabre sale of 1841. It has forty-three vellum leaves, 39.5 × 30 cm., written in two columns of twenty-eight lines with 168 miniatures and initials in gold and colors. Arms are painted on two detached leaves at the beginning and end of the text. It contains forty-two chapters.^[37]

The Chantilly manuscript is based partially on the one now in the Newberry Library, Ms. 40, in its text and most of its illustrations, and for others, on the blockbooks. For many years this codex was considered to be the copy in the library of Philip the Good which is described in the inventory of 1467. That description fitted the book exactly. However, the inventory made of the Ducal library in Ghent in 1485, including the Miroir , listed the exact wording of the beginning of 2 recto, "Lieu n'estoit pas garni d'un arbre ne de deux," which appears on 2 recto of the Newberry and the Glasgow manuscripts. This text appears on folio 4 of the Chantilly Miroir which, therefore, cannot be the volume described in the inventory.

Further evidence is provided by the two inserted leaves of the Chantilly manuscript which bear the coats of arms of its early owners. The first is the arms of the Flemish family Le Fèvre. The second leaf shows an angel carrying, in one hand, the Le Fèvre arms and in the other those of the Dutch family Van Heemstede. Archives show that Roelant Le Fèvre married Hadewij van Heemstede in the second half of the fifteenth century.^[38] Whether Le Fèvre commissioned the Chantilly manuscript is not known.

Even more significant is the style of the Chantilly miniatures, which are characteristic of Ghent-Bruges art about the year 1500 and are much more sophisticated than those of Newberry 40, although they often follow its subjects and compositions. The miniatures of the latter were used as models for 123 of the 168 pictures by the Chantilly illuminator, who refined the figures and clothed them in the costumes of the later period. There are significant compositional modifications in more than forty of these miniatures. The artist also copied twenty-five complete compositions and incorporated details from twenty-four others from the woodcuts of the blockbook Speculum .^[39]

[37] J. Merguey, Les Principaux manuscrits à peinture du Musée Condé à Chantilly (Paris, 1930), Notice 67.

[38] S. van Leeuwen, Batavia Illustrata (The Hague, 1685), I, p. 980.

[39] Kessler, op.cit. , pp. 277 ff.

III-25.
c. Lamech Harassed by His Two Wives.
d. Job Whipped by the Devil while His Wife Watches.
Le Miroir de l'humaine Salvation , Chapter XX.
Musée Condé, Chantilly, Ms. fr. 139.

III-26.
Opening page. Detail.
Le miroir de lumaine sauluation .
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Ms. fr. 188.