Rochefoucauld Grail

It contains the Lancelot-Grail cycle in French prose, the oldest and most comprehensive surviving version of the legend of King Arthur and the Holy Grail.

[4] Two other complete versions of the text are held by the British Library, Add MSS 10292-10294 of c. 1315 and Royal MS 14 E III, both produced by the same team of artists and scribes.

The four volumes were created in Flanders or Artois, possibly for the French nobleman Guy VII, Baron de Rochefoucauld, perhaps around the years 1315 to 1325 (based on the dating of similar manuscripts).

The three volumes previously in Amsterdam were acquired in two separate purchases by the 19th-century English antiquary and book collector Sir Thomas Phillipps and have subsequently been sold twice.

The scenes often have a riotous energy... lofty towers poking through the borders... and figures tumbling out on to the blank page as they fall or scramble to escape their enemies.