Pierre Desrey

Pierre Desrey de Troyes (c. 1450–1514) was a French chronicler, historian, genealogist and translator.

[8] His writings include a Latin version of the Danse Macabre (1490), a translation of Nicholas of Lyra's Les Postilles et Expositions des Epistres et Evangilles Dominacales (1493), a translation of Werner Rolevinck's Fasciculus Temporum entitled Fleurs et Manières des Temps Passées (1495), a compilation La genealogie avecques les gestes et nobles faitz d'armes du trespreux et renommé prince Godeffroy de Boulion (1504), Parement et triumphe des Dames d'Olivier de la Marche (1510) and contributions on Monstrelet (1512) and Gaguin (1514) to the Grandes Chroniques de France.

They gave a good sense of the details he thought important as an iconographer, but left considerable freedom of expression to the artist.

[1] Item, to begin the representation ... a domestic tabernacle shaped like a noble palace will be portrayed in which glorious St. Urban will be depicted, dressed as a young schoolboy, hands joined, eyes looking up to heaven, kneeling humbly before an altar.

It gives a complete history of the Crusades, starting with the birth of the Chevalier au Cygne (Knight of the Swan), the mythical ancestor of Godfrey of Bouillon (1060–1100), and ending after the accession of Philip IV of France (1268–1314).