2024 Essays

The Drawings in BnF Ms. Fr. 640

Fransen, Sietske

Ms. Fr. 640 is part of an early modern European note-taking tradition which included sketches and drawings as part of a larger written text. Ms. Fr. 640’s author-practitioner not only wrote his text, he also drew images in his manuscript. This essay considers several questions about these images: How can we characterize the images? What was the aim of the illustrations, how do they relate to the texts and practices captured by the author-practitioner, and how do they compare to other late sixteenth-century illustrated manuscripts and printed texts? And, can the images provide insights into the manuscript and its maker that the text on its own cannot?