MINIATURIST, French
(active late 15th century)

Les Échecs amoureux

c. 1500
Manuscript (MS Fr 143)
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris

Les Échecs amoureux is an allegorical poem written between 1370 and 1380 in which the game of chess serves as the controlling metaphor of a moral description of the world. It also allots a prominent role to the judgment of Paris. The manuscript painted around 1500 for Louise of Savoy contains a prose version of the poem with several images.

The miniature on folio 198v shows the Garden kept by Nature, inhabited by the three goddesses Venus, Juno, and Pallas Athene.




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