Beschreibung:

Three miniatures from an illuminated manuscript of Martin le Franc, L’Estrif de Fortune et de Vertu, in French, on vellum [Central France (probably Tours, possibly Lyon), c.1470-80] three cuttings: each approximately 220mm. by 190mm.: (a) Reason debating with Virtue as Fortune spins her wheel, large square miniature, 147mm. by 152mm., with Reason as a woman in blue robes, seated and pointing to Virtue who enters from right with a female companion, to the left Fortune with one half of her face black, the other white, in a gold and coloured striped dress, lifting up a cane to spin her wheel of fortune, bringing the king, the bishop and the abbot seated at its top crashing to the ground, all before a hilly landscape with a castle and a medieval town, border on three sides of coloured acanthus leaves and golden flowers and fruit enclosing a griffon and a guinea-fowl, laid down on board and in elaborately carved nineteenth-century gilt frame; (b) Reason and Fortune debate, while Fortune looks on, 150mm. by 160mm., the three figures as before seated before a castle on top of a hill between a lush forest and a dead one, ships massing in the background as the winds blow (here as 7 cherubs pursing their lips), borders as before with a spotted cat and an ape on crutches, leaf loose from board, with remains of two columns with 29 lines of lettre bâtarde on verso, modern pencil “480”, gilt-frame as before; (c) Virtue gesturing at Fortune, before Reason, 152mm. by 155mm., before a very detailed castle with a tumbled-down turret and a golden wheel of fortune on its battlements, laid down on board and some spots and small chips to paint, else good condition, in gilt frame as before