Abstract

In the last decade of the 13th century Guyart Desmoulins composed a French-language version of the Bible, the ‘Bible historiale’, based on the ‘Historia Scholastica’. In the course of the 14th century this was completed to become a full bible, and a pictorial repertoire emerged that corresponded to the work’s novel requirements. Soaring demand and the efficient production on the part of the Paris workshops resulted in a standardization of some of the pictorial elements in the times of John the Good and Charles V; the usual choice of motif for the frontispiece, for example, came to be some variant of the Maiestas Domini. In complete contrast to this, miniatures were created around the year 1400 that stood out due to their iconographic originality, testifying to a more nuanced perception of the ‘Bible historiale’ and its tradition. Five examples will be presented in an examination of the interrelationship of text and image.