Chronicles (Book Three)

Master of the Getty Froissart, illuminator; Master of the Soane Josephus, illuminator; Master of Edward IV, illuminator
Flemish, Bruges, about 1480
Tempera colors, gold leaf, gold paint, and ink on parchment bound between pasteboard covered with green morocco
18 7/8 x 13 3/4 in.

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The most famous historical record of Europe in the 1300s, the monumental Chronicle was written in French (Chroniques) by Jean Froissart and recounts the major political and military events from around 1322 to 1410. Focusing on the rivalry between England and France, the Chronicle is a basic resource for the study of the Hundred Years' War. Froissart also described the affairs of other realms, though largely as they related to the complex network of overlapping and shifting alliances around England and France.

The Getty Museum's manuscript contains the third of four books; its 730 pages cover only the period from 1358 to 1389, an indication of the level of detail Froissart sought to impart. The Museum's volume, from about 1480, shows the lasting esteem that the Chronicle enjoyed: new copies of the text were still being made about seventy years after the author's death. The book was made in Flanders, perhaps in Bruges. The choice of subjects for the sixty-four miniatures strongly emphasizes events involving the English, evidence perhaps that the book was produced for the English market. Indeed, King Edward IV, who built the first royal library in England, may have commissioned it.

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