bavarikon4UDescription
L'Épître d'Othéa, a mirror for princes created in ca. 1400, belongs to the best-known works of the French poet and philosopher Christine de Pizan (1365-1430). The Erlangen manuscript constitutes an artistically singular exemplar, commissioned in ca. 1460 at the Burgundian court. As patrons acted probably Duke Charles the Bold (1433-1477) or his mother, Isabella of Portugal (1397-1471). The manuscript on 126 parchment sheets comprises 103 miniatures executed in grisaille in horizontal format, framed by a ledge in gold leaf. The miniatures were created by the famous Netherlandish book illuminator Willem Vrelant (d. 1481/82) and by his workshop. During the nineteenth century, the manuscript that had remained property of the margraves in Bayreuth entered a private collection until it was acquired in 1932 by the University Library Erlangen. // Datum: 2017