A MUSIC BOOK FOR MARY TUDOR, QUEEN OF FRANCE

Abstract

Frank Dobbins in memoriam In 1976 Louise Litterick proposed that Cambridge, Magdalene College, Pepys Library MS 1760 was originally prepared for Louis XII and Anne of Brittany of France but was gifted to Henry VIII of England in 1509. That the manuscript actually was prepared as a wedding gift from Louis to his third wife Mary Tudor in 1514, however, is indicated by its decorative and textual imagery, which mirrors the decoration of a book of hours given by Louis to Mary and the textual imagery used in her four royal entries. Analysis of the manuscript’s tabula and texts suggests that MS 1760 was planned by Louis’s chapelmaster Hilaire Bernonneau (d. 1524) at the king’s behest. The new theory elucidates the content and significance of Gascongne’s twelve-voice canon Ista est speciosa, which appeared beneath an original portrait of Mary Tudor and was intended to mirror the perfection of the Blessed Virgin and her ‘godchild’ Mary.