Livre de la conqueste de la Toison d'Or thumbnail 1
Image of Gallery in South Kensington
On display at V&A South Kensington
Medieval & Renaissance, Room 62, The Foyle Foundation Gallery

Livre de la conqueste de la Toison d'Or

Print
1563 (engraved)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

The artist who designed this print worked as assistant to the Italian artist, Rosso Fiorentino, at the French royal palace of Fontainebleau. The most clebrated interior at Fontainebleau was the Galerie Francois I, named after the then king, which featured fresco paintings set into elaborate plaster frames. This black and white print translates this idea into a form which was both much more affordable and portable, and thus enabled the influence of Fontainebleau to travel right across Europe.


Object details

Categories
Object type
Titles
  • Livre de la conqueste de la Toison d'Or (series title)
  • Jason and the Golden Fleece (generic title)
  • Medea killing her brother, Apsyrtus, and throwing pieces of his dismembered body overboard to prevent her father chasing the Argo (plate 15). (popular title)
Materials and techniques
Engraving on paper
Brief description
René Boyvin after Léonard Thiry. Medea killing her brother, Apsyrtus, and throwing pieces of his dismembered body overboard to prevent her father chasing the Argo. Plate 15 from Livre de la conqueste de la Toison d'Or. France, 1563.
Physical description
Medea killing her brother, Apsyrtus, and throwing pieces of his dismembered body overboard to prevent her father chasing the Argo (plate 15). Medea, on the deck, is cutting her brother to pieces. In the background, King Aeetes' fleet is chasing the Argo. The main picture is depicted within an ornate strapwork border incorporating a rich array of grotesque ornament. Signed on plate (monogram within image, bottom left).
Dimensions
  • Cut to height: 15.5cm
  • Cut to width: 23.1cm
Measured for the Medieval and Renaissance Galleries
Styles
Marks and inscriptions
B (Signed in the plate in monogram.)
Gallery label
PRINTS Prints were one of the main ways by which styles spread across Europe. The masks, grotesques and strapwork seen in these examples were common features of Mannerism. Antwerp, where three of these prints come from, was a major centre of printmaking and distribution, with Cornelis Floris one of its most prolific printmakers. He specialised in devising bizarre scenes incorporating fantastic monsters and the natural world. Scene from 'The Capture of the Golden Fleece by Prince Jason' 1563 Rene Boyvin (about 1525-after 1580) France, Paris Engraving on paper Museum no. E.2023-1908
Object history
Robert Dumesnil, VIII. Nos. 7, 8, 13, 15-21 2nd state. Nos. 2, 23-25 3rd state. Nos. 1, 4, 9, 10 3rd state,with added shading. Nos. 7, 8, 20 have burin scratches since 1563 edition.

Historical significance: This engraving comes from a set of twenty six by the same engraver after the same artist of the story of the Golden Fleece. The artist Thiry, was assistant to Rosso Fiorentino at the French royal chateau of Fontainebleau. Using Thiry's designs, the printmaker Boyvin has successfully translated the formula of a large, fresco painting of figures surrounded by a stucco frame from the Gallery Francois I at Fontainebleau into a small, easily portable multiple object made of ink on paper, that nevertheless conveys something of the essence of its inspiration. The transposition of a design idea from a courtly, rural setting at Fontainebleau to the publishing world of one of Europe's capital cities also ensured it was prints which spread the influence of Fontainebleau internationally.
Historical context
In order to delay her father who is chasing after the Argo, Medea commits the first of many awful crimes and kills her brother Apsyrtus. She slices him into pieces forcing her father to stop and retrieve all the limbs. The belief was, indeed, that you had to be buried with your whole body to reach the afterlife.
Production
Plate 15 from 'Livre de la conqueste de la Toison d'Or' (Book of the Conquest of the Golden Fleece)
Subjects depicted
Places depicted
Summary
The artist who designed this print worked as assistant to the Italian artist, Rosso Fiorentino, at the French royal palace of Fontainebleau. The most clebrated interior at Fontainebleau was the Galerie Francois I, named after the then king, which featured fresco paintings set into elaborate plaster frames. This black and white print translates this idea into a form which was both much more affordable and portable, and thus enabled the influence of Fontainebleau to travel right across Europe.
Associated objects
Bibliographic references
  • The French Renaissance in Prints from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Los Angeles, 1994. p. 309.
  • The French Renaissance in Prints from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Los Angeles, 1994. p. 466.
  • Zerner, Henri. Thiry, Leonard. Grove Art Online. Oxford University Press [9/12/05].
  • Osborne, Harold /Jordan, Harold Fontainebleau in Hugh Brigstocke, ed The Oxford Companion to Western Art. Oxford University Press 2001. Grove Art Online. Oxford University Press, 2005 [9/12/05].
  • Robert-Dumesnil, A.P.F. Le peintre-graveur français. Paris, 1835-71. vol VIII, nos. 39-64. This image p. 41, no. 53.
  • Boyvin, René and Leonard Thiry. Liure de la Conqueste de la Toison d'or par le Prince Iason de Tessalie; faict par figures auec exposition d'icelles. A Paris. Auec prieulege du Roy. 1563.
  • Zorach, Rebecca. Blood, milk, ink, gold : abundance and excess in the French Renaissance. Chicago & London: University of Chicago, 2005. 314 p., ill. ISBN 0226989372. pp. 158-188 and 271-275.
  • Peter Ward Jackson, Some Main Streams and Tributaries in European Ornament from 1500 to 1750, London, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1969.
  • Linzeler, A. and Jean Adhémar., Inventaire du fonds français; graveurs du seizième siècle (Paris: M. Le Garrec; Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, 1932-1935, 1932): vol. 1, p. 175.
  • Levron, J., René Boyvin, graveur angevin du XVIe siècle, avec le catalogue de son oeuvre et la reproduction de 114 estampes (Anger, France: Les Lettres et la Vie Française. Éditions Jacques Petit, 1941), cat. 30.
Collection
Accession number
E.2023-1908

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Record createdDecember 2, 2005
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