SOURCE: Gathercole, Patricia M. “Illuminations on the Manuscripts of Brunetto Latini.” Italica 43, no. 4 (December 1966): 345-52.

In the following essay, Gathercole details the artistry of the illustrations and miniatures found in fourteen manuscript copies dating from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, preserved at the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, of Brunetto's The Book of the Treasure.

“Sieti raccomandato il mio Tesoro, Nel qual io vivo ancora.” 

(Dante, Divina Commedia, Inferno, XV, 119-120)

Brunetto Latini's Livre du Trésor,¹ a vast compendium of knowledge written between 1262 and 1266, was extremely popular during the Middle Ages.² The variety of subjects treated appealed to the readers of the author's time. For its mass of learning, legends, and wisdom in politics, moreover, the book has remained an interesting treatise for many generations.³ In Book I, Brunetto discusses philosophy and the history of the world: cosmography, geography, physics, and natural science; Book II contains...