History and Illumination in the Radziwill Chronicle

• In Event: On the Cusp: Permeable Boundaries between Word and Image in Early Modern Poland-Lithuania and Muscovy

Abstract

The Radziwill Chronicle is the first illuminated history of Rus’. Although the illustrated manuscript of the translation of the Chronicle of Hamartolos (Tver, 14th century) predates that of Radziwill, the former was a Byzantine universal history translated from the Greek. By contrast, the matter of Radziwill is local and drinks from earlier Rus’ian historical compilations. This paper explores how the representation of Rus’ian events in the illustrations compares to the text they accompany. Do the images add to or subtract from the text? Is there a tension between image and word? Does the local quality of the history narrated in text seep into the illuminations created for it?

Author

• Ines Garcia de la Puente, Boston U