This study advocates research bridging the gap between manuscripts and prints while studying a popular topic: the complex and diverse relationships between texts and images (including illuminations as well as woodcuts) in Late Medieval and Early Modern books. In order to shed light on the shift between Middle Ages and Renaissance, specialists pertaining to different research fields, especially historians, have promoted investigations taking in consideration a “long fifteenth century” (namely the period covering the years 1370-1520); at the same time, the overlaps between the topics and objects explored by codicologists and bibliographers have grown larger. Hence a more nuanced vision of the features linking Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Times, especially at cultural and artistic levels. By contrast, it remains too exceptional to investigate the text/image paradigm through corpuses of illustrated books comprehending both manuscripts and early prints. Nevertheless, such innovative case studies have been published recently. In this article, we underline the coherence of the following studies, all of which have been conceived with the collective aim of extending and enriching the corpus and methodology of such pioneering publications.
The necessity remains to reach a better understanding of the purposes and methods thanks to which book makers designed hand-illuminations and printed images (some of them hand-coloured) associated with hand-copied or printed texts. In order to fulfil this goal, we promote the idea of bringing to the fore large textual traditions, and to elaborate new tools, for instance a “philology of images” allowing wide-ranging comparisons.

This contribution aims to complement the studies on the reception of Pierre d’Ailly’s Jardin amoureux de l’âme by comparing the iconographic programmes conceived to decorate some copies of the treatise. First, it examines the degree of fidelity of the illustrations to the text. Then, it focuses on the variations introduced when the work was translated and published in Middle Dutch. Finally, it reaffirms that the region between Paris and Antwerpen has been an area of intense cultural exchange.

La Bouquechardière, composed in Normandy by Jean de Courcy, Lord of Bourg-Achard, from 1416 to 1422, is a vast historical work in prose. Its six books are devoted to Ancient Greece and the peoples associated with its history, right up to the successors and indirect heirs of Alexander the Great in the Near East. This article studies the importance that the illuminations of the manuscripts by the Master of the “Echevinage” of Rouen give to the representation of ancient cities in the first three books. They bring out several original elements of Jean de Courcy’s text: the exaltation of the Greek cities and their founding role, the celebration of the union of the Greeks and the Trojans which, through the paradoxical medium of war, then bears fruit with the new urban foundations in Europe. On the other hand, manuscripts produced in other regions often favour a traditional biblical iconography for the opening of a universal history, followed by a tragic vision of the sack of Troy.

The textual tradition of the Roman de la Rose evolved importantly during the first two decades of the 15^th century. In order to make the reading of the poem easier, its first printers cleverly organized it into divisions which underline the work’s structure: just as each section is preceded by a woodcut that illustrates its contents, an octosyllabic quatrain, sextain or octave sums up each chapter. This paper aims to explore the relations between this first edited version and the manuscript tradition, whether it be the text’s divisions or its iconography. We will focus on the anonymous prose of the Roman de la Rose conserved in manuscript 1462 of the BnF and in manuscript 484 of the Musée Condé, at Chantilly: despite being unfinished, these two texts, which have remained unknown until now, present many similarities with the poem’s first printed editions.

Pierre Bersuire’s De formis figurisque deorum was translated into French around 1480 in order to appear in the introduction of two illustrated Ovidian books published in Bruges: the later manuscript of the Ovide moralisé (Copenhagen, BR, ms. Thott 399) and the edition of Ovid’s Metamorphosis in French published by Colard Mansion in 1484. The article focuses on structure and function of this text, which became a reference in the iconography of the ancient gods between Middle Ages and Renaissance.

The success that the Dictz moraulx pour faire tapisserie enjoyed in their time is testified by the 10 manuscripts, all copied at the hinge between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which transmitted them to us. Five of them (Paris, BnF, 24461, Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, 5066, Chantilly, Musée Condé, 509, Paris, BnF, fr. 2366, Londres, BL, Stowe 955) are enriched with images illustrating the various poems.
The Dictz moraulx was published in 1959 by Annette Scoumanne, who however did not take into account the three illustrated manuscripts. Much remains to be said about the close relationship between text and image in the transmission of these poems.
By confronting the tradition of the illustrated Dictz with that of the manuscripts that transmit the Baude pieces without images, I brought to my attention the correspondences and differences that exist between the drawings of decorated copies and the rubrics which describe the content of the poems in the non illuminated manuscripts.
The recent identification of a tapestry inspired by five verses from the work of our author – La Pirouette (Paris, Museum of Cluny, early sixteenth century) – proves that Henri Baude’s Dictz moraulx were actuallly intended to accompany, or at least inspire, iconographic representations on cloth.

In Les regnars traversans les perilleuses voyes des folles fiances du monde (1501), Bouchet offers a meditative journey, punctuated with ten engravings from the edition of the Parisian bookseller Antoine Vérard, which recalls the monastic and rhetorical tradition of meditatio, based both on text and on the image. On each engraving, inscriptions made up of quotes taken from the prophetic books of the Bible accompany figurative scenes representing foxes. The narrator, subjected to a vision, tells how he meets them, while they engage in different activities, as he himself climbs a mountain. Some of the figures of foxes retained in the series of engravings of the edition of Vérard find their origin in the frontispiece engraving of the poem by Sebastian Brant, Von dem Fuchshatz, but they were then surmonted by popular proverbs there. In Vérard’s edition, the image comes under a double regime, since it shows both the dynamic scene with which the narrator is confronted during his vision and that it becomes, enhanced with biblical inscriptions, a «figure», a recurring term which becomes the beginning and the support of a meditation in action on the part of the narrator. The apparent darkness of the pictorial scene, the source of meditation, is resolved by the reflexive process generated by the biblical quotation. As in the monastic culture, the reading (of the text as of the image) of a typological nature first leads ultimately to an ethical reading.

In order to illustrate Le Bestiaire d’amours moralisé sur les bêtes et oiseaux in verse, a series of 77 woodcuts (sketches featuring animals) were engraved in the Parisian Trepperel workshop of the Ecu de France, between 1511 and 1521. However, the only known manuscript witness of this Bestiary, the ms. Français 1951 (BnF), dated at the end of the 13th century, is decorated with illuminations, which are indeed the iconographic premises of the Trepperel series.
Le Bestiaire d’amours moralisé was reissued at the Ecu de France, but with a series of woodcuts copied on the first series. It was then that the Trepperels published a very different text: Les Dits des bêtes et des oiseaux, using part of the series of engraved copied woodcuts, thus transforming them into just decorative pictures.

The first redaction of the Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César was printed for Antoine Vérard in Paris in 1491 under the title Le premier/second volume de Orose. While the textual tradition of the Histoire ancienne is still little known in its later variations, this paper aims to study the layout and “mise en texte” of the printed version and some of the later manuscripts in order to open up some avenues for studying the transition of the text from manuscript to print.

This paper analyses the iconographic programme of the first Decameron translations into French, written, copied or published between 1411 and ca. 1500 (12 illuminated manuscripts of Laurent de Premierfait’s Cent nouvelles and two illustrated editions printed for Antoine Vérard between 1485 and 1500). It focuses on the structural transformations put forward by the illustrators from one version to another and it also shows how the balance between the frame narrative and the novellas themselves is reinvented in each specific version. The comparison between the manuscript tradition and the two incunabula aims at shedding fresh light, in particular, on Vérard’s Decameron adaptation and shows how the cornice becomes a striking feature in the visual identity of the French Cent nouvelles.

Manuscript Hunter 252 of the Glasgow University Library is the only surviving medieval manuscript of the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles. The fact that it contains one hundred miniatures, placed at the beginning of each tale, also increases its special status. Indeed, these images do not just fulfil a decorative purpose, they also influence the way one reads the novellas, and provide an efficient summary of the main episodes of each narrative. When comparing the miniatures with the woodcuts illustrating Antoine Vérard’s editio princeps (1486), we can remark many similarities but also differences in the way each iconographic program visually renders the tales. The two cycles of images show different readings of the compendium. Placed at the head of the tales both in the manuscript and in the printed edition, the images play with the reader’s expectations, thus deceiving and surprising him or her. This paper aims to compare text/image relations in both Hunter 252 and Vérard’s first edition and the way they enable different readings of the novellas.

The French translations of Petrarch’s Triumphi attracted the attention of many scholars at various times. They repeatedly studied the considerable success that some of these adaptations in both verse and prose enjoyed in the kingdom of France between the 1470s and 1550s. The study of this corpus is not new, and all specialists agree that the turn of the 16^th century corresponds to a unique moment. This article aims to contribute to further reflection on the influence of Italian models in the illustration of the Triumphi in France and, more particularly, of the Triumphus Cupidinis. Through a few examples drawn from manuscripts and prints, this study provides some original suggestions to better identify the possible origin of a small detail appearing in a woodcut included in the Vérard edition of the ‘‘long’’ prose translation (1514). This article will show the common thread that seems to unite the print in question, not only to two manuscripts containing the anonymous translation of Ilicino’s commentary as has already been noted by critics, but also to a manuscript of the ‘‘short’’ prose version as well as to two Italian incunabula of the end of the 15^th century.

An investigation into the illustrations of novels printed from the last quarter of the 15th century brings new materials to the study of the practice of the circulation of woodcuts and of the relationships between text and images. An examination of the editorial production of Oliver Arnoullet puts us in the presence of a fairly rare case of the transfert of woodcuts from one production center (Geneva) to another (Lyon). The study of a woodcut from an edition by Michel Le Noir offers examples of editorial practices relating to the circulation of wood based both on reuse and on the copy of original engravings. The survey highlights the usefulness of an inventory of woodcuts and their occurrences in the first prints and of a philological approach for the treatment of printed iconographic material.

This paper intends to analyse the way the woodcuts from Sebastian Brant’s Narrenschiff play a role in the transfer of the work into French. La grant nef des folz du monde (February 1499/1500) develops its own specific text/image relationship. It shows how the transfer from one language into another is accompanied by a new organisation of the meaning, part of the visual dimension being conveyed by the text. It is the case for the layout of the German incunable that gives the image a central part in the construction of the double page of each chapter and is partly transferred into textual devices as the French version leans towards traditional manuscript layouts in two columns. It is also the case in the translation process when the French text offers new developments inspired by the image to improve the impact of the satire. This reveals how a deeper connection is built between text and image in the translation process and how decisive the visual dimension of the book was for the adaptor who intends to unite into his text both a translation of the woodcuts and the text itself.

From the 1480s onwards, printers began publishing occasional news. These are non-periodic printed that provided news about political et military events. They gave to see and read the facts et gestures of the kings who fought in the Italian wars and who were staged in the royal ceremonies of power. To compose these booklets, printers are accustomed to reusing engravings from previous publications, such as news pamphlets or historical chronicles and chivalry novels. The circulation of images induces a certain connection between history and fiction and establishes analogies between the actions of the living king (which the brochures give to read) and the previous kings and legendary knights (which they give to see). Based on selected examples from the reigns of Charles VIII to Francis I, this article aims to understand the effects that the reuse of images has on the meaning of the news broadcast and on the political imaginary that is instilled in the minds of readers.

This article discusses the rubrics introducing the characters in the incunables of the middle French Danse Macabré. These rubrics are not a part of the original text, but of a paratext added later during the transmission of the originally hybrid work of art, which was based on the fusion of text and image. This study shows that the distribution of the variants in the rubrics is strictly related to the particularities of the dissemination of the Danse Macabré. The rubrics in the printed tradition are compared to those in the extant manuscripts transmitting the same text; text-image relations are also taken into account. In particular, the study of the rubrics allows to see that the influence of the iconographic elements on the text changes significantly with the passage of the Danse Macabré from manuscript to print.

The 20 new woodcuts of the 1513 and 1516 editions sold by Michel Le Noir give to the protagonist a preferential figure, which shows him wearing his armor and represents him from a rather caricatured point of view. But as this series of new material covers only one third of the whole, the image collections from the woodcuts in Paris et Vienne, Artus de Bretagne, Olivier de Castille, Les Sept Sages de Rome, Hercules, Euvres et Brefves Exposicions were also used. Olivier de Castille was printed by Le Noir in 1505 (such a book had been put on sale in 1888, then disappeared), so the three illustrations brought by Hp reveal the value of their testimony. Reused woodcuts are useful, even when the meaning of their drawings has still a part that resists, because these images resonate with intertextual concerns. Several substitutes came in help to expand the great circle of literary references, with a concern for effective modernization, even if the advertising carried out relies more on the datation of printed publication of the texts concerned than on the original dates for the writing of such stories. Finally, new or to be classified in the category of reused woodcuts, the figures attributed to Huon as well as to his relatives have a lot of interesting information to reveal on their circulation, their dating and the justification of the associations which pushed them to take up and then resume service in Hp. Even silences can be talkative.