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Jean Haincelin (Dunois Master), France, Paris, 1444?
Lancelot Dines with a Knight and his Sweetheart, cutting from the Livre du Lancelot del Lac
102 × 90 mm
Jean Haincelin (Dunois Master)
Lancelot Dines with a Knight and his Sweetheart, cutting from the Livre du Lancelot del Lac
France, Paris, 1444?
102 × 90 mm
$45000.00
This cutting illustrates an episode in Book IV of Livre du Lancelot del Lac, “The Valley of Unfaithful Lovers,” of the Vulgate Cycle, which delves into the internal demands of the love relationship.
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Description
The cutting comes from the multi-volume set of Arthurian Romances cited above and commissioned by Admiral Prigent de Coëtivy from Jean Haincelin in c. 1444. The first of the Admiral’s three volumes consisted of an extensively illuminated Livre du Lancelot del Lac thought to have contained 152 miniatures extracted from the manuscript already by the sixteenth century. Thirty-four of these miniatures were bound in an album offered by the Alpine Club in London in 1962. Many of the existing miniatures have numbers from ‘1’ to ‘152’ on their reverse written in a sixteenth-century hand. According to Alison Stones (2025), the original manuscript included Books I through V of the Old French prose Lancelot, known as the Vulgate Cycle or the Suite-Vulgate, as well as the Queste and the Mort d’Artur. Composed by an unknown author between c. 1220 and 1230, the Vulgate Cycle greatly expands on the Arthurian legend surrounding Lancelot, who figured prominently first in one of Chrétien de Troyes’s verse romance, Lancelot or Le Chevalier de la charette (The Knight of the Cart), written between 1176 and 1181 at the request of Marie de Champagne. For Chrétien, Lancelot and his love for Guenevere present an example of courtly love, whereas the Vulgate Cycle mixes courtly love with spiritual quests.
This cutting illustrates an episode in Book IV, “The Valley of Unfaithful Lovers,” of the Vulgate Cycle, which delves into the internal demands of the love relationship. King Arthur’s sister, the fairy Morgana, created a “valley of no return,” where unfaithful lovers are held prisoner. Lancelot, who sets out to rescue Gawain, is the only knight able to triumph over the ordeal of temptation, as he stays true to his love for Guenevere. The cutting offers an example of Lancelot’s temptation by another knight’s unfaithful damsel. T he miniature illustrates the following section of Book IV (Sommer 1911, 282:15–40): Lancelot sets out for Baudemagus’s court, and around Vespers he reaches three pavilions of which one is white. An unnamed knight welcomes him as an errant chevalier, and Lancelot disarms and accepts the invitation to stay, explaining to his host-knight the purpose of his journey. Afterward, Lancelot dines in the company of the knight and his sweetheart “who could not look enough at Lancelot”…so absorbed was she that she touched neither food nor drink and was seized by an irresistible love for Lancelot (Sommer 1911, 281:33), the moment depicted in the cutting. A knight in red armor arrives on the left and carries off the host’s younger brother.
The style of our miniature is wholly consistent not only with others from the Lancelot manuscript, but also with miniatures in the companion volumes (BnF, MSS fr. 356–357). Soft modeling of the flesh tones and drapery, touches of liquid gold in the horse’s harness, pale yellow for the grasses, apple green for the leafy trees, and touches of white for the armor, the pavilion, and table settings characterize the present cutting. Comparison with miniatures in the Jouvenel Hours, which belongs to the artist’s “noir et blanc” group (Adam 2023), are compelling, for example Saint Julian, although the artist employs more color in the Lancelot miniatures. The elegant setting, with finely dressed actors at table and decked-out prancing horses, represents the epitome of romantic courtly culture and chivalric ideals in late medieval France. The trio of Arthurian manuscripts shows Jean Haincelin equally adept at secular illumination; complete and in its original state, the Lancelot must have been a chef d’œuvre in the artist’s corpus.
provenance
Admiral Prigent de Coëtivy;
Dismembered by the sixteenth century;
By the nineteenth century, the present miniature and thirty-three others were mounted in a red morocco album “with an unidentified, probably French, coat of arms” (London 1962, p. 2);
Joachim Napoléon, Prince Murat (1835–1932), a member of the Bonaparte Murat family: with his bookplate; sold from the estate of his widow, Marie (d. 1960), daughter of the Duc d’Elschingen, to: Wynne R. H. Jeudwine (1920–1984), collector-dealer in drawings, prints, and books: exhibited and offered for sale at the Alpine Club Gallery in London in 1962, the present miniature published in London 1962, no. 17;
Acquired by art historians Alfred Scharf (1900-1965) and Felicie Scharf, née Radziejewski (1901-1991), London, by descent to the current owner.
literature
Literature:
London 1962, no. 17;
Related literature:
Delisle 1900 (for record of payment to Jean Haincelin in 1444);
Sommer 1911;
Loomis and Loomis 1938, pp. 107–108, fig. 288;
Avril and Reynaud 1993;
Rouse and Rouse 2000, vol. 2, pp. 73–74;
Reynolds in Croenen and Ainsworth 2005, pp. 437–72;
Gregory T. Clark in Boston 2016, no. 186, p. 222;
Adam 2023; Gallica 2025; Stones 2025.
learn
Jean Haincelin (Dunois Master)
France, Paris, active 1435–1460
Long known by his name of convention, the Dunois Master, after a Book of Hours painted for Jean, Comte de Dunois in London (British Library, Yates Thompson MS 3) and as the chief associate of the Bedford Master based on his familiarity with designs used by the latter artist, Jean Haincelin was most likely the son of Haincelin de Haguenau, whom most scholars now recognize as the Bedford Master. Haincelin de Haguenau was the court illuminator of Louis duc de Guyenne and is documented in Paris from 1403 to 1424. His son, Jean, must have trained under his tutelage and is known as a painter and illuminator in Paris between 1438 and 1449. In 1438, Jean Haincelin was the only painter listed among the wealthiest taxpayers of the capital, asked to help fund the war of Charles VII, suggesting he was already well established by this date. In 1445 and 1449, he was paid by the poet and bibliophile Charles, Duke of Orleans, for several undescribed works. He was paid around 1444 for the bookcase of the Hours of Admiral Prigent de Coëtivy, illuminated by the Dunois Master c. 1442–1444 (Dublin, Chester Beatty Library W. MS 89), which is stylistically consistent with the eponymous manuscript. Another crucial piece of evidence is a document recording payment to Jean Haincelin in 1444 for three manuscripts for Prigent de Coëtivy; these are thought to be the Livre du Lancelot del Lac, Tristan, and the Roman de Guiron le Courtois (BnF MSS fr. 356–357). Notable among his other works are: The Hours of Guillaume Jouvenel des Ursins (Paris, BnF, MS nal. 3226, the Hours of Simon de Varie (Getty Museum, MS 7; The Hague, KB, MS 74 G 37), and a panel painting the Trinité aux chanoines (Musée de Cluny). Among his favored patrons were members of the Jouvenel des Ursins family. His style owes much to the art of his father, whose stock of compositional models he probably inherited. Soft modeling and a pale palette with a preference for semi-grisaille or white tones are hallmarks of his illuminations.