Late Middle Ages · Europe · Culture

1371

Great Bible commissioned for Charles V's Louvre library

1371

Charles V of France commissioned a richly illuminated French translation of the Bible in two massive volumes, with marginal commentaries and historiated initials painted by the finest Parisian miniaturists. The 'Bible of Charles V' was one of a series of French vernacular commissions that made the Louvre the most bibliographically sophisticated lay library of fourteenth-century Europe.