Christie’s London to Sell Rare Arthurian Manuscript With £2 Million Estimate
A medieval manuscript that brings together King Arthur, Merlin, and the Holy Grail will come to Christie’s London on 8 July, where it is expected to sell for £1.5 million to £2 million. Known as the Clermont-Tonnerre Grail, the work dates to around 1290-1310 and remains one of the most significant illuminated manuscripts to surface in private hands.
Painted on vellum and enriched with gold leaf, the manuscript is thought to have been produced in Metz, in northern France, by the medieval artist known as the Master of the Liège Apocalypse. It contains texts from the Old French Lancelot-Grail cycle, the medieval prose tradition that helped shape the Arthurian legends familiar to later centuries. Among its 126 miniature illustrations is a scene of the Knights of the Round Table returning from battle, a detail that underscores both the narrative scope and the visual ambition of the volume.
Eugenio Donadoni, senior specialist in Medieval & Renaissance Manuscripts at Christie’s, called it a rediscovered manuscript of one of the great medieval romances and emphasized its rarity, describing it as the earliest of only three known examples in private hands. He also pointed to its “impeccable noble, aristocratic and bibliophilic provenance.”
The catalogue traces the manuscript through a distinguished chain of ownership, including Michel de Gronnais, who played an active role in military affairs in Metz in the 15th century; Michel de Chaverson, a 16th-century jouster from Metz; the comte de Clermont-Tonnerre; Sir Thomas Phillipps, the eccentric British collector who amassed more than 60,000 manuscripts and books; and the industrialist Jean Lebaudy, who died in 1969.
Donadoni said the manuscript came from a long-standing private collection and described working on it as a privilege. The text itself offers a fitting coda: “And the story will forever be told and gladly heard for as long as the world lasts.” For collectors of medieval art and manuscript culture, the sale offers a rare chance to encounter an object where literary history, aristocratic collecting, and illuminated craftsmanship converge.
