Texte et image : les Dictz moraulx d’Henri Baude

The success that the Dictz moraulx pour faire tapisserie enjoyed in their time is testified by the 9 manuscripts, all copied at the hinge between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which transmitted them to us. Four of them (Paris, BnF, 24461, Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, 5066, Chantilly, Musée Condé, 509, Paris, BnF, fr. 2366) are enriched with images illustrating the various poems. The Dictz moraulx was published in 1959 by Annette Scoumanne, who however did not take into account the three illustrated manuscripts. Much remains to be said about the close relationship between text and image in the transmission of these poems. By confronting the tradition of the illustrated Dictz with that of the manuscripts that transmit the Baude pieces without images, I brought to my attention the correspondences and differences that exist between the drawings of decorated copies and the rubrics which describe the content of the poems in the non illuminated manuscripts. The recent identification of a tapestry inspired by five verses from the work of our author – La Pirouette (Paris, Museum of Cluny, early sixteenth century) – proves that Henri Baude’s Dictz moraulx were actuallly intended to accompany, or at least inspire, iconographic representations on cloth.