Cocharelli Codex
Type:
Illuminated manuscripts
Date:
ca. 1325–35
Location or Findspot (Modern-Day Country):
Italy
Dimensions:
Cleveland page: 16.3 × 10.3 cm
Description:
The Cocharelli Codex is an illustrated treatise composed before 1324 by a wealthy merchant of Genoa's Cocharelli family; it was meant to serve as a moralizing guidebook for his sons. Unfortunately, only twenty-seven folios survive, dispersed among three different countries. The miniatures include such contemporary realia as depictions of the natural world, daily life, and historical events. The author of the treatise is unknown, but he reports that he took many anecdotes from writings by his grandfather, Pellegrino Cocharelli.
Twenty of the preserved folios deal with vices. The Latin inscription near the top of the page in Cleveland (Cleveland Museum of Art, MS 1953.152) says, "Capitulum quartum de accidia et speciebus eius, ‹et› unde ipssa dicitur et quomodo conspectum ab alia distingatur" (Chapter 4, On Sloth and its species, whence it is called and how to distinguish one from another). This introductory page is illustrated with a group of female courtiers slothfully playing dice around a polygonal table. The artist has depicted Islamicate textiles in great detail (clothing, carpet, wall hangings); they attest to flourishing Genoese (and Cocharelli) trade across the Mediterranean. On the verso are characters in varied dress (a Muslim in a turban, a Mongol below him); a cardinal and two bishops occupy roundels at the bottom. In the text, animals mark the ends of lines.
On a folio in London (BL, Add MS 27695), men shown drinking in a tavern represent the vice of Gluttony. The man at the left drinks moderately, from a glass, but his companions imbibe excessively from bottles and glasses. The man on the right has dropped his bottle while he vomits. Below them, the cellarer passes up refills. Northern Italy was a center for glass production in the fourteenth century. But vices crossed cultural borders: the frontispiece to the Gluttony chapter depicts a feast at the court of a Mongol khan.
Envy is represented by the siege and fall of Acre (now Akko, Israel) in 1291, which marked the definitive end of the Latin Kingdom in the eastern Mediterranean. The calamity is attributed in the treatise, and in other coeval texts, to the envy and quarrels between the Templars and Hospitallers, the two Christian military orders that ruled the city. After the fall of Tripoli (Lebanon), the worried rulers of Acre sent for more troops, and the pope responded. When the Italian reinforcements arrived, however, they attacked the Muslim merchants in the city. The Mamluk sultan—Al-Ashraf Khalil, the son of Qala'un—demanded an explanation, and when the rulers denied responsibility, the sultan used it as a pretext to capture the city. Acre was often characterized in late medieval texts as a den of vice, akin to the biblical Sodom. In the painting, the harbor city shown in bird's-eye view is hemmed in by Mamluk tents. In the largest tent, the sultan is receiving (unsuccessful) ambassadors. The Mamluks fight under the sign of a lion; they are attacked at the right by Hospitallers, bearing a white cross on their black shields, and on the left by the Templars, who wear red crosses on their white tunics. At the center of the city, a building with a crenellated roofline is decorated with an image of St. George defeating the dragon, the symbol of Genoa; on the right is the winged lion of St. Mark, symbol of Venice (the red on the left likely represents the flag of Pisa). These cities had their own neighborhoods in Acre until they were expelled by the Mamluks (Genoa in 1258). In the miniature, most of the ships fly the Genoese flag with the cross of St. George.
The codex says that Pellegrino Cocharelli lived in Acre but, seeing that the city was ruled badly and likely destined for ruin, he moved his family and his fortune to Genoa. To improve the behavior of his son John, he narrated a series of exempla—improving stories—and these stories were later inserted into the treatise written by his grandson.
Twenty of the preserved folios deal with vices. The Latin inscription near the top of the page in Cleveland (Cleveland Museum of Art, MS 1953.152) says, "Capitulum quartum de accidia et speciebus eius, ‹et› unde ipssa dicitur et quomodo conspectum ab alia distingatur" (Chapter 4, On Sloth and its species, whence it is called and how to distinguish one from another). This introductory page is illustrated with a group of female courtiers slothfully playing dice around a polygonal table. The artist has depicted Islamicate textiles in great detail (clothing, carpet, wall hangings); they attest to flourishing Genoese (and Cocharelli) trade across the Mediterranean. On the verso are characters in varied dress (a Muslim in a turban, a Mongol below him); a cardinal and two bishops occupy roundels at the bottom. In the text, animals mark the ends of lines.
On a folio in London (BL, Add MS 27695), men shown drinking in a tavern represent the vice of Gluttony. The man at the left drinks moderately, from a glass, but his companions imbibe excessively from bottles and glasses. The man on the right has dropped his bottle while he vomits. Below them, the cellarer passes up refills. Northern Italy was a center for glass production in the fourteenth century. But vices crossed cultural borders: the frontispiece to the Gluttony chapter depicts a feast at the court of a Mongol khan.
Envy is represented by the siege and fall of Acre (now Akko, Israel) in 1291, which marked the definitive end of the Latin Kingdom in the eastern Mediterranean. The calamity is attributed in the treatise, and in other coeval texts, to the envy and quarrels between the Templars and Hospitallers, the two Christian military orders that ruled the city. After the fall of Tripoli (Lebanon), the worried rulers of Acre sent for more troops, and the pope responded. When the Italian reinforcements arrived, however, they attacked the Muslim merchants in the city. The Mamluk sultan—Al-Ashraf Khalil, the son of Qala'un—demanded an explanation, and when the rulers denied responsibility, the sultan used it as a pretext to capture the city. Acre was often characterized in late medieval texts as a den of vice, akin to the biblical Sodom. In the painting, the harbor city shown in bird's-eye view is hemmed in by Mamluk tents. In the largest tent, the sultan is receiving (unsuccessful) ambassadors. The Mamluks fight under the sign of a lion; they are attacked at the right by Hospitallers, bearing a white cross on their black shields, and on the left by the Templars, who wear red crosses on their white tunics. At the center of the city, a building with a crenellated roofline is decorated with an image of St. George defeating the dragon, the symbol of Genoa; on the right is the winged lion of St. Mark, symbol of Venice (the red on the left likely represents the flag of Pisa). These cities had their own neighborhoods in Acre until they were expelled by the Mamluks (Genoa in 1258). In the miniature, most of the ships fly the Genoese flag with the cross of St. George.
The codex says that Pellegrino Cocharelli lived in Acre but, seeing that the city was ruled badly and likely destined for ruin, he moved his family and his fortune to Genoa. To improve the behavior of his son John, he narrated a series of exempla—improving stories—and these stories were later inserted into the treatise written by his grandson.
Relevant Textbook Chapter(s):
9
Repository and Online Resources:
• Hear art historian Liz Teviotdale's overview of the 2025 facsimile edition of the Cocharelli Codex here.
• See the Bargello page here.
• See the Cleveland page here.
• See the British Library page here.
Image Credits:
Cleveland Museum of Art, British Library, Bargello Museum (Wikimedia Commons)
