Grandes Chroniques de France
by FOUQUET, Jean, Manuscript (Ms. français 6465), 460 x 350 mm
The illustration on folio 89v depicts the scene when Charles the Great is crowned Emperor by Pope Leo III in St. Peter’s in Rome on 25 December A.D. 800. The miniature is an extraordinary architectural document, because Fouquet must have sketched St. Peter’s when he stayed in Rome between 1444 and 1446, shortly before Pope Nicholas V decided to have it rebuilt.