Tabula of Cebes

Tabula of Cebes

Around the 2nd century AD, a work known as the Kébetos Pínax (Tabula of Cebes), formerly attributed to the Socratic disciple Cebes of Thebes, literally paints a picture with words: An elderly man explains to some strangers an allegorical painting on the walls of an ancient temple of Kronos. The painting shows the human path of life, which is led down crooked paths by numerous distractions in the form of vices, bad behavior, but also false education and the pursuit of external happiness. The goal of life, however, is the achievement of felicity through true education and the striving for virtue.

A Humanist Adaptation of the Ancient " Allegory of Life"

In 1506, this Greek text was adapted by the Mantuan humanist Filippo Alberici, who was in Paris at the time. He translated Cebes' work into Latin hexameters and had the text, which he had put on paper himself, illuminated with six full-page miniatures by the Parisian illuminator Jean Coene IV (active around 1500). The resulting small manuscript Tabula Cebetis was intended to be an ornate demonstration of his talent, as he hoped to obtain an employment at the court of the English King Henry VII (1491–1547) with it as a gift. To this end, he preceded the Tabula with a Dedication to the King and traveled to Cambridge in the summer of 1507.

Dashed Hopes of a Widely Traveled Artist

However, a royal audience was probably never granted, so that Alberici's hopes were quickly dashed. Thereupon he added another poem of praise for Henry VII as well as his own work De mortis effectibus (On Dying Well). The latter 'completes' the content of the ancient work with advices for a good end of life (according to Christian ideas). Alberici also had an illuminator from Cambridge add a further miniature to this text, which is stylistically based on those of Coene. Finally, he assigned this gradually developed and therefore all the more captivating manuscript to Joachim Bretoner, the seneschal of King's Hall.

A Royal Owner

In 1608, Elizabeth Stuart (1596–1662), daughter of King James I, appears as the next owner, who entered a note with her name and date on one of the back pages of the manuscript. Via the Earl of Totnes, George Carew (1555–1629), the codex finally came to Thomas Howard (1585–1646), the founder of the famous Arundel Library, most of which is now kept in the British Library, where the autograph is located today.

Allegorical Illuminations

Jean Coene IV, who had previously worked for the French royal family, provided Alberici's Tabula Cebetis with six wonderful illuminations, which visualize the text for the reader in an exquisite palette of colours. The full-page miniatures introduce the respective sections, beginning with the scene in front of the ** temple of Kronos**. This is followed by depictions of the three rings of human life with all their personified confusions and distractions, a picture of the gate of true education leading to the garden of felicity shown in the sixth miniature. The gold-decorated images are complemented by magnificent borders and elegant initials and complete this impressive manuscript, which is an artistic testimony to the radiance with which the humanist spirit of the Italian Renaissance spread throughout Europe around 1500.