Imaginaires du paysage méditerranéen dans un traité historique des croisades : Les Passages d’Outremer de Sébastien Mamerot (XVe s.)

Abstract

After a long evolution, ‘landscape’ flourished in 15th c. European painting, particularly in gorgeously illuminated manuscripts. The inscription of landscape in the pictorial programme of fr. 5594 not only promotes a propagandist discourse of Christian exhortation to the crusades, but also gives rise to a visionary, hybrid Mediterranean landscape, half-way between the West and the East. The decorated folios show an either natural or urban imaginary space, which mingles realistic, exotic elements, Gothic architecture as well as symbols. Fortresses, rocks, the sea or the“desert-fores” of romances create a poetic and political vision of space, in a programme where images remain subservient to an ideological, dynastic, military discourse.

Keywords

• illumination
• manuscript BnF fr. 5594
• crusades
• landscape
• desert-forest
• Gothic architecture