Resumen de Versions of Pygmalion in the illuminated "Roman de la Rose" (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Douce 195): the artist and the work of art
Ms. Douce 195, a late fi fteenth-century copy of the Roman de la Rose, contains an unusual sequence of nine images for the poem’s Pygmalion digression, the work of the illuminator Robert Testard. This paper focuses on differences between the story of Pygmalion as it is told in the text of the Rose and in Testard’s miniatures. Building on scholarship on the Rose that sees the Pygmalion digression along with the poem’s Narcissus episode as the poets’ refl ections on poetry itself, and on representations of images and the use of frames in miniatures throughout Ms. Douce 195, the paper argues that the Pygmalion sequence likewise represents Testard’s refl ections on the changing status of the artist and the work of art.
