Round Table

Round Table

The manuscript ms. Palatino 556 of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze is also known as Lancillotto or Tristano Palatino. It probably originated in the circle of the Visconti, the princes of Milan, perhaps at the behest of Pier Maria Rossi (1413–1482), the Duke of Berceto and Corniglio and Marchese of San Secondo, and is dated the 20th of July 1446. The Italian text on 242 pages was presumably written by the copyist Zuliano degli Anzoli.

The Knights Lancelot and Tristan

The content of the text – as the Italian title of the manuscript already indicates – orbits the knights of Arthur’s Roundtable. In doing so, tales from the famous Arthurian sagas are taken up, the adventures of Lancelot and Tristan among them. Countless adventures are interwoven with the stories about the lovers Tristan and Isolde and Lancelot and Guinevere in the heroic medieval epics around the search for the Holy Grail and the Knights of the Roundtable. These tales were widespread during the entire Middle Ages and were continuously appended and modified. Thus, the manuscript offers a vivid witness to North Italian court culture.

The Grandiose Illustration Cycle

Alongside this exceedingly interesting literary content, the other content of the codex is still enchanting: the manuscript is lavishly adorned with 289 pen and ink drawings, which wonderfully illustrate the stories. These make the manuscript a unique attestation to the Italian Tristan tradition and are based on the example of North French miniature painting. The drawings probably originate from Bonifacio Bembo (1420–1480), an Italian painter and miniaturist, who was a court painter for the Sforza in Milan, inter alia.