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The Decameron was not the only work that made Boccaccio (1313-1375) famous throughout Europe during his lifetime. He offered his worldview in the moral glorification of outstanding personalities in his De casibus virorum et feminarum illustrium (On the Fates of Famous Men and Women) written in Latin. The book kept in Munich is probably the best known of all the Boccaccio manuscripts. It contains the unhappy destinies of famous men and women, then the favourite reading matter of the nobility. The illuminations were by Fouquet, although only a small number of the miniatures, such as the title illustration, were by his own hand, the others were executed by talented members of his workshop.
Fouquet's frontispiece (folio 2v) is the largest and most magnificent miniature in the Munich Boccaccio codex. It depicts a grand scene, which has nothing to do with the actual content of the book. It represents the small figure of King Charles VII of France on a raised, canopied seat from which he presides over a trial held in the Vendôme in 1458.
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