Battle of Sluys
Jean Froissart·1450
Historical Context
Jean Froissart's Battle of Sluys, painted around 1450 and now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, is a manuscript illumination depicting the famous 1340 naval battle in which the English fleet of Edward III destroyed a French fleet in the Zwin estuary, giving England control of the Channel and opening the Hundred Years' War in earnest. Jean Froissart was the greatest chronicler of the Hundred Years' War, and his Chronicles were illustrated with illuminations that provided medieval readers with vivid visual narratives of the events described in the text.
Technical Analysis
Tempera and gold leaf on vellum, executed in the highly refined manuscript illumination tradition. The naval battle is compressed into a shallow, frontal pictorial space filled with the overlapping hulls of the warships, their coloured heraldic sails, and the swarming figures of the combatants.
