ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses all Arthurian illustrations in Middle Dutch manuscripts. There are only four manuscripts containing such illustrations, only two of which are real Arthurian romances, and together they contain no more than seven Arthurian illuminations. The best-known Middle Dutch Arthurian illustration is probably the full-page opening miniature of the Roman van Walewein. Jacob van Maerlant criticizes the fact that French romances describe Arthurian knights who are not found in Latin chronicles and who, therefore, in his view, never existed, as opposed to Gawain, Mordred and Kay, present in the Latin tradition. The Arthurian illustrations in Middle Dutch texts may be few in number, but the ways in which they are executed are very diverse. They make use of the iconographical and heraldic traditions, which shows that those traditions have not passed the Low Countries by as completely as might be inferred from the scarcity of these illustrations in Middle Dutch manuscripts.
