The British Library Meliadus de Leonnois: Additional MS 12228, Pisanello, and Alfonso I of Naples

London, British Library, Additional MS 12228 is a royal, deluxe version of the Old French chivalric romance Meliadus de Leonnois. The manuscript was begun in Naples after May 1352 in the workshop of Cristoforo Orimina, probably commissioned for the coronation of Queen Giovanna I of Anjou and Prince Louis of Taranto but only completed ca. 1450. The manuscript ends incomplete at fol. 352v, col. 1. Its first 259 folios employ a consistent mis-en-page of double-column text, generally illustrated in framed narrative scenes across the entire bas-de-page. These reveal a consistent iconography and projection of Louis as Meliadus to reinforce his claims to rule Angevin Naples. The work falls into two parts: the first follows the adventures of Arthur’s Round Table and their forbearers among the Tavola vecchia; the second involves the affair between Meliadus and the queen of Scotland, setting off a Trojan-like war before the walls of Leonnois. Orimina and workshop finished the illustrations to fol. 259r, leaving the last third of the manuscript unillustrated but laid out with space for images. At fol. 259v there is an abrupt change to an unidentified quattrocento artist who uses the topography of Naples as a stand-in for Arthurian Leonnois and abandons Orimina’s mis-enpage. Based on both heraldic and stylistic analysis of these later illustrations and their similarities to other works, this article proposes that their creator was the famed artist Pisanello (ca. 1394–1455) under the patronage of Aragonese King Alfonso I of Naples (r. 1442–58). It compares Pisanello’s chivalric frescoes in Mantua to his other works in Naples ca. 1448–50 and concludes that the manuscript’s completion was among the primary motives for Alfonso’s patronage. Pisanello’s reimagining of Add. 12228 reflects broader changes in Alfonso’s court culture and in the role of chivalric works in the Aragonese renovatio of the Angevin kingdom.