heiBOOKS

How are medieval books transmitted with pictures and text and how do these change in the course of copying processes? This book explores this question and examines the transmission of pictures of the 'Welsche Gast' from an art historical perspective with the help of philological approaches. The 'Welsche Gast' is a Middle High German didactic poem written in 1215/1216 by the Italian cleric Thomasin von Zerklaere. Today, 24 copies of the manuscript have been preserved and large parts of them have been illuminated with a picture cycle. This book analyses the structure and genesis of the picture cycle as well as the changes within the 250-year transmission.