MINIATURIST, French
(active 1480s in Paris)

Grandes Chroniques de France

1487
Manuscript (Royal 20 E VI)
British Library, London

A monumental set of six volumes in the British Library is one of the very few deluxe copies of the Grandes Chroniques de France produced at the end of the fifteenth century. The manuscripts were copied in 1487 by the Parisian scribe Hugh de Lembourg, who was in service of Sir Thomas Thwaytes, Treasurer of the Pale of Calais. Thwaytes commissioned the set as a gift for the newly crowned Henry VII.

The sixth (the last) volume of the Grandes Chroniques opens (folio 9) with the image of the marriage of Henry V (1413-1422) and Catharine of Valois, with the initials of the royal couple, 'K de France' and 'H. le Einglieshe', inscribed at their feet. The marriage was arranged by the Treaty of Troyes (1420), which guaranteed the English succession in France. The wedding scene included in a book for Henry VII must have had a special meaning to the King's own royal identity. Queen Catharine, who secretly married Owen Tudor after Henry V's death, was Henry VII's grandmother.

The Tudor roses depicted in the margins refer to Henry's own matrimonial alliance with Elizabeth of York and symbolize the union between the houses of York and Lancaster.