The artistic patronage of John Stuart, Duke of Albany 1518-19

the 'discovery' of the artist and author, Bremond Domat

Abstract

This paper examines two genealogical manuscripts, dating to 1518–19, connected to John Stuart, Duke of Albany: one currently in Paris, the other in the Hague. Examining these two works together demonstrates that some of the recent scholarship on the Hague Manuscript is inaccurate. A comparison shows that this manuscript is not the work, as frequently stated, of the Franco-Flemish rhetorician, Jean Lemaire de Belges, but rather both manuscripts are the work of the same artist/author: Bremond Domat. Domat was employed by Albany for over a decade in Albany’s home town of Mirefleurs in the Auvergne. These two manuscripts reveal a great deal about Albany’s ambitions and priorities at a time when he was still Regent of Scotland, but also when his prominence was growing in France due to connections to the powerful Florentine Medici family.