Boccaccio's Des Cleres Et Nobles Femmes

Book excerpt: The first surviving illuminated manuscript of the French translation of Boccaccio's De mulieribus claris, known as the Cleres femmes (now in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris), is the subject of this book. The manuscript was commissioned by a Parisian merchant, Jacques Raponde, as a New Year's gift for the duke of Burgundy, Philip the Bold. This innovative aspect of the commission, where a merchant rather than a prince acted as the patron of the manuscript, provides the subject for the first part of Buettner's study. In addition to sketching the Valois rulers' practice of collecting illuminated manuscripts and to tracing the reasons for the successful reception of Boccaccio's work in this courtly milieu, the author delineates the role of merchants in Parisian artistic production around 1400.