Detailed record for Additional 10292
Title L'estoire del Saint Graal (ff. 1-76); L'estoire de Merlin (ff. 76-216)
Origin France, N. (Saint-Omer or Tournai)
Date c. 1316
Script Gothic
Decoration 233 miniatures in colours on gold grounds, within pink, blue and red borders, with penwork decoration in white, each above an initial in gold on a blue and rose ground with penwork decoration in white. 2 full bar borders with hybrid creatures, animals and human figures at the beginning of each text (ff. 1, 76). Numerous initials in red or blue with pen-flourishing in the other colour and pen-flourished partial borders in blue and red extending the length of the page along the edge of each column. Rubrics in red added above each miniature (except ff. 209v-216). Instructions to rubricators at the bottom of pages, partially erased (e.g., f. 41v).
Dimensions in mm 400 x 295 (290/5 x 240/5)
Official foliation ff. 216 (+ 2 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning and 2 at the end)
Form Parchment codex
Binding Post-1600. Red leather with gilt fore-edges and Roxburgh family crest.
Provenance Dated 1316 from an inscription on f. 55v.
Charles VI (b. 1368, d. 1422), king of France: listed in the 1411 inventory of his library (see Delisle 1907).
? Louis de Chalon Arlay, Prince of Orange (b. 1390, d. 1463).
The princes of Orange at Nozeroy: in the inventory of 1533 (no 5) and in the 1686 catalogue of their collection, (Additional 10292, 10293 and 10294 still bound together as no 5), (see Middleton 2006, p. 45).
Louis César de Baume le Blanc, Duc de La Vallière (b. 1708, d. 1780): his sale, Paris, 1783, lot 3989.
John Duke of Roxburghe (b. 1740, d. 1804), his sale, 1812, lot 6093. His family crest on the cover with motto 'Pro Christo et Patria'.
Richard Heber, book collector (b. 1773, d. 1833): the three volumes, now Additional 10292, 10293 and 10294 bought by the British Museum at his sale, 19 February 1836, lot 1488, for £131 5s.
Notes Full digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Digitised Manuscripts at http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts.
Now bound in four volumes: Additional 10292, 10293, 10294 and 10294/1).
The texts are related to Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale de France, MS fr. 110, MS fr. 749 and MS fr. 96.
The text of ' L'Estoire del Saint Graal' contained in this manuscript is the shorter prose version of de Boron's verse romance, 'L'estoire de Joseph d'Arimathie', sometimes wrongly attributed to de Boron (see Ponceau, 1997 and Bogdanow, 2000).
The decoration is connected in style to Royal 14 E III and to the Rochefoucauld Grail or former Amsterdam, Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, MS 1 (sold at Sotheby's, December 2010, lot 33), both containing Arthurian cycles.
Select bibliography List of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum, in the years 1836-1840 (London: British Museum, 1843), p. 28.
Léopold Delisle, Recherches sur la librairie de Charles V, 2 vols (Paris: H. Champion, 1907), II Inventaire des livres ayant appartenu aux rois Charles V et Charles VI et à Jean, duc de Berry, p. 182, no. 1116.
H. L. D. Ward and J. A. Herbert, Catalogue of Romances in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, 3 vols (London: British Museum, 1883-1910), I, H. L. D. Ward, pp. 340-41.
H. Oskar Sommer, The Vulgate Version of the Arthurian Romances, 7 vols (Washington, 1909-1916), I and II [for an edition of the text of this manuscript].
R.S. Loomis and L.H. Loomis, Arthurian Legends in Medieval Art (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1938), pp.97-98.
A. Micha, 'Les Manuscrits du Lancelot en Prose', Romania, 84 (1963), 28-60 (pp. 47-48).
Virginia Wylie Egbert, The Mediaeval Artist at Work (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), p. 56, pl. 18.
Andrew G. Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c. 700-1600 in The Department of Manuscripts: The British Library, 2 vols (London: British Library, 1979), I, no. 23.
L'estoire del Saint Graal, ed. by Jean-Paul Ponceau, 2 vols (Paris: Honoré Chapman, 1997), I, pp. xxvi, xxxi-xxxii.
Alison Stones, 'Indications écrites et modèles pictureaux, guides aux peintres de manuscrites enluminés aux environs de 1300', in Artistes, artisans et production artistique au Moyen Age: Colloque international, ed. by Xavier Barrai I Altet, 3 vols (Paris: Picard, 1986-90), III: Fabrication et Consommation de l'oeuvre, pp. 321-49 (pp. 322-25).
Michael Camille, 'Manuscript Illumination and the Art of Copulation' Constructing Medieval Sexuality, ed. by Karma Lochrie, Peggy McCracken and James A. Schultz (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), p. 74, fig. 4.7.
M. Smeyers, Vlaamse miniaturen van de 8ste tot het midden van de 16de eeuw. De middeleeuwse wereld op perkament (Leuven: Tirion. 1998), pp. 131, 172.
Martine Meuwese, 'Three Illustrated Prose Lancelots from the same Atelier', Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 81 (1999), 97-125.
Fanny Bogdanow, ' La Vision d'Histoire Arthurienne selon Robert de Boron', in Fils sans père: Etudes sur le 'Merlin' de Robert de Boron, ed. by Denis Hue, Medievalia, 35 (Orleans: Paradigme, 2000), pp. 51-76 [on the text].
Alison Stones, 'A Note on the Maître au menton fuyant', in 'Als Ich Can': Liber Amicorum in Memory of Professor Dr. Maurits Smeyers, ed. by Bert Cardon and others, 2 vols (Paris: Uitgeverij Peeters, 2002), pp. 1247-271 (p. 1251).
Alison Stones, 'Mise en Page in the French Lancelot-Grail: the First 150 years of the Illustrative Tradition', in A Companion to the Lancelot-Grail Cycle, ed. by Carol Dover (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003), 125-44 (pp. 129, 133, 135, 137).
Elspeth Kennedy, 'The Relationship between Text and Image in three Manuscripts of the Estoire del Saint Graal' in Arthurian Studies in Honour of P.J.C. Field, ed. by Bonnie Wheeler (Woodbridge: Brewer, 2004), pp. 93-100, online at http://universitypublishingonline.org/boydell/chapter.jsf?bid=CBO9781846152627&cid=CBO9781846152627A016; [accessed 17.09.13].
Roger Middleton, 'The Manuscripts' in The Arthur of the French, ed. by Glyn S. Burgess and Karen Pratt , Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, 4 vols (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2006), IV, pp. 8-92 (p. 45).
Irene Fabry, 'Continuity and Discontinuity: Illuminating and Interlacing the Adventures of Viviane and Merlin in the Prose Merlin', Marginalia, the Journal of the Medieval Reading Group at the University of Cambridge, 3 (2006), online at http://www.marginalia.co.uk/journal/06illumination/fabry.php [accessed 17.09.13].
f. 1
Christ appears to the author
f. 3v
Joseph of Arimathea at the Crucifixion
f. 29
Nascien dreaming of birds
Solomon building a ship
Celidoine watching two ships in danger at sea
Celidoine in a boat with a lion
Tombs inscribed 1316 and Joseph
King Nascien being given bread at sea
Two ships at sea
Joseph of Arimathea and the Holy Grail
The white stag and lions
Conception of Merlin
Merlin's mother imprisoned
Merlin shows Vortigern two dragons
Merlin gives letter to Pendragon and Uther
Uther and Merlin at table at Pentecost
King Utherpendragon dying
Arthur draws the sword from the stone
f. 100
The sword is given to Arthur
Coronation of Arthur
Arthur victorious
f. 105v
Merlin and Arthur
Merlin disguised as a young boy kneels before Gawain
Gawain and his brothers with Yvonet
Blaise writing down Gawain's adventures
Arthur, Guinevere, Kings Leodegan and Loth
Knights kneel before Arthur
Kings and princes meet at Salisbury
f. 194r
Saxons carry off Elaine
Merlin stands before King Arthur
Britons battle the Romans
Arthur and the black beast
Agradavain's daughter
Merlin and Arthur; a dwarf kills a knight;
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