Rose and Chess

Just in time for Valentine's Day...two 13th century manuscripts are being reunited after a century apart! Makes my calligrapher's heart just flutter!

The University of Chicago has recently acquired Le Roman de la Rose (The Romance of the Rose), a courtly romance. This enables them to reunite it with a manuscript from their collection, Le Jeu des échecs moralisé (The Moralized Game of Chess). This one is a treatise on medieval society that uses the game of chess as its framework. They originate from France circa 1365, and were bound together for over 500 years, and parted around 1907.

If you can't get to Chicago for the exhibition, the Rose and Chess site offers fully zoom-able, high resolution digital copies of each. And when I say 'zoom' I'm not kidding. Scary good detail.

More information in the form of a press release by Ascribe may be found here.

I think I'm in love....


Image credit: From left to right: “The Queen conversing with a Doctor.”
Reproduced from: Jacobus de Cessolis. Le Jeu des échecs moralisé. Anonymous compilation of translations by Jean Ferron and Jean de Vigny. France, ca. 1365. 13 illuminations by the Master of Saint Voult. University of Chicago MS 392;
“How Openness and Pity face Resistance to reprimand him for his cruelty” and “How Openness rebukes Fair Welcoming for having left the Lover alone for too long.”
Reproduced from: Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun. Le Roman de la Rose. France, ca. 1365. 40 illuminations by the Master of Saint Voult. University of Chicago Library MS 1380.