{
"data": {
"id": 105933,
"accession_number": "1924.1015",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "Single Miniature Excised from Boccaccio's Des Cleres et nobles femmes: Queen Medusa and Her Court, c. 1470. Circle of Ma\u00eetre Fran\u00e7ois (French). Tempera and gold on vellum; sheet: 13 x 9.1 cm (5 1/8 x 3 9/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift from J. H. Wade, 1924.1015",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Single Miniature Excised from Boccaccio's Des Cleres et nobles femmes: Queen Medusa and Her Court",
"creation_date": "c. 1470",
"creation_date_earliest": 1465,
"creation_date_latest": 1475,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"France, 15th century"
],
"technique": "tempera and gold on vellum",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Medieval Art",
"collection": "MED - Manuscript Illuminations",
"type": "Manuscript",
"measurements": "Sheet: 13 x 9.1 cm (5 1/8 x 3 9/16 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"sheet": {
"height": 0.13,
"height_inch": 5,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.125,
"width": 0.091,
"width_inch": 3,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.5625
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 312341,
"title": "The Silver Jubilee Exhibition",
"description": "The Silver Jubilee Exhibition. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 23-September 28, 1941).",
"opening_date": "1941-06-23T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 355730,
"title": "The World of Miniature Painting",
"description": "The World of Miniature Painting. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 20-November 10, 1953).",
"opening_date": "1953-09-20T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 300779,
"title": "Juxtapositions",
"description": "Juxtapositions. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (September 11-October 10, 1965).",
"opening_date": "1965-09-11T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 300926,
"title": "Treasures of Medieval France",
"description": "Treasures of Medieval France. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 16, 1966-January 29, 1967).",
"opening_date": "1966-11-16T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 309851,
"title": "Textiles in Daily Life in the Middle Ages",
"description": "Textiles in Daily Life in the Middle Ages. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 22-March 17, 1985).",
"opening_date": "1985-01-22T05:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "Detroit Institue of Art, \"French Gothic Decorative Arts, 13th-15th Centuries\" 11/9/1928-12/10/1928, no. 19.",
"opening_date": "1928-11-09T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "Brooklyn Museum, \"European Art, 1450-1500\" 4/21/1936-6/3/1936, no. 94.",
"opening_date": "1936-04-21T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "Baltimore Museum, \"Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages and Renaissance\" 12/29/1948-3/22/1949, no. 110.",
"opening_date": "1948-12-29T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "Royal Ontario Museum of Archeology, Toronto, \"Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts\" 3/10/1950-6/13/1950.",
"opening_date": "1950-03-10T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "Carnegie Institute, \"French Painting, 1100-1900\" 9/27/1951-12/10/1951, no. 18.",
"opening_date": "1951-09-27T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "Los Angeles County Museum, \"Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts\" 11/12/1953-2/3/1954.",
"opening_date": "1953-11-12T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "University of Kansas, 10/23/1975-01/22/1976",
"opening_date": "1975-10-23T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "University of Michigan Museum of Art, \"Images of Love and Death in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art\" 10/23/1975-01/22/1976.",
"opening_date": "1975-10-23T00:00:00"
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "Jacques d'Armagnac, Duc de Nemours; Lord Mostyn, London (sale July 13, 1920, no. 9; entire MS); Mme. Th. Belin, Paris (remainder of MS., sale Paris, 1936); Durlacher Brothers, New York.",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "Medusa is shown here with her attendants before she was turned into the gorgon, a fierce frightening monster.",
"description": "This miniature comes from the French translation of a book by the Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio (1313\u20131375). A compilation of biographies of famous women, Boccaccio\u2019s work remained popular in France throughout the 1400s, especially with aristocratic bibliophiles, and was usually beautifully illustrated in the form of a deluxe manuscript. Shown here is the miniature introducing the chapter dealing with the legend of Queen Medusa. Surrounded by her courtiers, Medusa instructs the reader on the disadvantages of possessing wealth, which brings fear and superstition as well as loss of sleep, security, and peace of mind.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q79892061"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1924.1015-single-miniature-exc"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "W. M. M. \u201cIlluminated Miniatures in the Cleveland Museum of Art.\u201d The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 12, no. 4 (April 1925): 61\u201371.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: P. 70; Reproduced: P. 67, fig. g",
"url": "http://www.jstor.org/stable/25136832"
},
{
"citation": "The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1925.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and Reproduced: p. 21",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook_80839/page/n23"
},
{
"citation": "The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1928.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 22",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1928/page/n26"
},
{
"citation": "Walters Art Gallery (Baltimore, Md.), and Dorothy Eugenia Miner. Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages and Renaissance: An Exhibition Held at the Baltimore Museum of Art, January 27-March 13. Baltimore: Trustees of the Walters Art Gallery, 1949.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 74",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1966/page/n98"
},
{
"citation": "Wixom, William D. Treasures from Medieval France. [Cleveland]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1967.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: p. 302-303; cat.no. VII-5",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/TreasuresMedievalFrance/page/n329"
},
{
"citation": "The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 74",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1969/page/n98"
},
{
"citation": "The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 85",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1978/page/n105"
},
{
"citation": "Martin Nagy, Rebecca. Textiles in Daily Life in the Middle Ages. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1985.",
"page_number": "p. 43, 59",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Huizinga, Johan, Graeme Small, Anton van der Lem, and Diane Webb. Autumntide of the Middle Ages: a study of forms of life and thought of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in France and the Low Countries. [Leiden]: Leiden University Press, 2020.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: P. 481, fig. 22.2",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Delapierre, Emmanuelle, and Alexis Merle du Bourg. Sous le regard de Me\u0301duse: de la Gre\u0300ce antique aux arts nume\u0301riques. Paris : In Fine e\u0301ditions d'art ; Caen : Muse\u0301e beaux-arts, 2023.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 63; Reproduced: p. 58 and 64, fig. 18",
"url": ""
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1924.1015",
"images": {
"annotation": null,
"web": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1924.1015/1924.1015_web.jpg",
"width": "618",
"height": "893",
"filesize": "495717",
"filename": "1924.1015_web.jpg"
},
"print": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1924.1015/1924.1015_print.jpg",
"width": "2352",
"height": "3400",
"filesize": "2797943",
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"full": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1924.1015/1924.1015_full.tif",
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},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "Gift from J. H. Wade",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 105933,
"creators": [
{
"id": 7745,
"description": "Ma\u00eetre Fran\u00e7ois (French)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": "circle of",
"role": "artist",
"biography": null,
"name_in_original_language": null,
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1924-11-26T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1465,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "c. 1470",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [
"Miniature Showing Queen Medusa Enthroned"
],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-04-30 05:38:07.043000"
}
}