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he illuminated manuscript recording Marco Polo’s travels is one of the most celebrated documents of the middle ages and one of the pinnacles of French book illustration. Marco Polo is an extraordinary illuminated manuscript in every respect. Rarely has an exclusively secular event been covered in such comprehensive detail. The fact that Marco Polo’s account of his adventures to the Far East survived at all was pure coincidence. In 1298 Marco Polo was captured by the Genoese and incarcerated. His cell mate was a man of letters named Rusticello, who wrote down Marco Polo’s narration in French. The original version is no longer extant, but numerous other versions have survived, including one in Franco-Italian. This was the manuscript upon which the French text of our version is based.

The book was not only the first precise geographical and ethnological documentation of the countries and peoples of the Orient, but also the first account by a Westerner of a journey that took in the whole of Asia.

Marco Polo’s tales were virtually made to be illustrated, mainly because people in the 15th century were so extremely curious about life in the Orient. Great illustrators like the Boucicaut Master and the Bedford Master’s assistants needed little bidding to set about illuminating the account of Marco Polo’s adventures. They decorated the manuscript with gold and magnificent colours, and in the process created an extraordinarily lavish manuscript in which fantasy blends seamlessly with reality.

The manuscript was owned by Duke John the Fearless, Duke of Berry, and from 1523 onward, by the Kings of France. Today, the original is one of several documents known collectively as the "Book of Wonders" and is kept under shelfmark ms.fr 2810 at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.

The 192 large format pages of the manuscript are reproduced in actual size (40 x 30cm) in minute detail. Eighty-four of them contain superb, vividly coloured miniatures, all absolutely faithful to the originals. The Fine Art Facsimile Edition of Marco Polo which is an exact replica of the original manuscript, is the progeny of a happy marriage between state of the art technologies and traditional craftsmanship.

The Facsimile volume, which is limited to 980 copies world-wide, comes with a bilingual (French/German) commentary volume and a slipcase. The latter has been specially made for the facsimile edition and is covered with genuine deep blue Chinese silk embossed in gold.

A documentation kit containing 2 sample pages, in the original size, from the Marco Polo Fine Art Facsimile Volume, plus an illustrated, 12 page information brochure, is available for $US110.