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Between 1407 and 1434, Guillebert de Mets, a Flemish bookseller, scribe, accountant, and hôtelier, wrote a “Description de la ville de Paris et de l’excellence du royaume de France.” It offers an urban portrait of unprecedented detail and richness in its copious lists of churches, colleges, and streets, its observant tours through major edifices, and its catalog of the city’s residents ranging from “loose women” to the queen of France. This talk will explore how the writer selected and organized the myriad parts and pieces of the medieval metropolis into a meaningful whole, his strategies in describing individual buildings, and his purpose in taking the reader into Paris “when the city was in full flower.”
This lecture will be given at Lamar Dodd School of Art, Lecture Hall S150.
Michael T. Davis is Professor of Art History and Coordinator of the Architectural Studies Program at Mount Holyoke College.
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