MINIATURIST, Flemish
(active 1340s in Tournai)

Roman d'Alexandre

1344
Manuscript (MS Bodley 264)
Bodleian Library, Oxford

This codex is one of the most famous and most sumptuous illuminated manuscripts of the entire Middle Ages. Completed in 1344 in Tournai, the manuscript preserves the fullest version of the interpolated Old French Roman d'Alexandre (Romance of Alexander the Great), and some of the most vivid illustrations of any medieval romance. Its borders in particular offering a panorama of medieval society and imagination. A celebration of courtliness, a commemoration of urban chivalry, a mirror for the prince instructing in the arts of rule, and a meditation on crusade, it manifests the extraordinary richness and creativity of late medieval manuscript culture.

The border decoration on folio 170v depicts scenes showing the preparation of food.