Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry


The Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry or Très Riches Heures, is the most famous and possibly the best surviving example of manuscript illumination in the late phase of the International Gothic style. It is a book of hours: a collection of prayers to be said at the canonical hours. It was created between and 1416 for the extravagant royal bibliophile and patron John, Duke of Berry, by the Limbourg brothers. When the three painters and their sponsor died in 1416, possibly victims of plague, the manuscript was left unfinished. It was further embellished in the 1440s by an anonymous painter, who many art historians believe was Barthélemy d'Eyck. In 1485–1489, it was brought to its present state by the painter Jean Colombe on behalf of the Duke of Savoy. Acquired by the Duc d'Aumale in 1856, the book is now MS 65 in the Musée Condé, Chantilly, France.
Consisting of a total of 206 leaves of very fine quality parchment, in height by in width, the manuscript contains 66 large miniatures and 65 small. The design of the book, which is long and complex, has undergone many changes and reversals. Many artists contributed to its miniatures, calligraphy, initials, and marginal decorations, but determining their precise number and identity remains a matter of debate. Painted largely by artists from the Low Countries, often using rare and costly pigments and gold, and with an unusually large number of illustrations, the book is one of the most lavish late medieval illuminated manuscripts.
After three centuries in obscurity, the Très Riches Heures gained wide recognition in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, despite having only very limited public exposure at the Musée Condé. Its miniatures helped to shape an ideal image of the Middle Ages in the collective imagination, often being interpreted to serve political and nationalist agendas. This is particularly true for the calendar images, which are the most commonly reproduced. They offer vivid representations of peasants performing agricultural work as well as aristocrats in formal attire, against a background of remarkable medieval architecture.

Historical context

The "Golden Age" of the book of hours in Europe took place from 1350–1480; the book of hours became popular in France around 1400. At this time many major French artists undertook manuscript illumination.

Duke of Berry

, is the French prince for whom the Très Riches Heures was made. Berry was the third son of the future king of France, John the Good, and the brother and uncle of the next two kings. Little is known of Berry’s education, but it is certain that he spent his adolescence among arts and literature. The young prince lived an extravagant life, necessitating frequent loans. He commissioned many works of art, which he amassed in his Saint Chapelle mansion. Upon Berry’s death in 1416, a final inventory was done on his estate that described the incomplete and unbound gatherings of the book as the "très riches heures" to distinguish it from the 15 other books of hours in Berry's collection, including the Belles Heures and Petites Heures .

Provenance

The Très Riches Heures has changed ownership many times since its creation. The gatherings were certainly in Berry's estate on his death in 1416, but after this little is clear until 1485. A good deal is known about the lengthy and messy disposal of Berry's goods to satisfy his many creditors, which was disrupted by the insanity of the king and the Burgundian and English occupation of Paris, but there are no references to the manuscript. It seems to have been in Paris for much of this period, and probably earlier; some borders suggest the style of the Parisian Bedford Master's workshop, and works from the 1410s to the 1440s by the Bedford workshop — later taken over by the Dunois Master — use border designs from other pages, suggesting that the manuscript was available for copying in Paris.
Duke Charles I of Savoy acquired the manuscript, probably as a gift, and commissioned Jean Colombe to complete the manuscript around 1485–1489. Sixteenth-century Flemish artists imitated the figures or entire compositions found in the calendar. The manuscript belonged to Margaret of Austria, Duchess of Savoy, Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands from 1507 to 1515 and again from 1519 to 1530.
After this its history is unknown until the 18th century, when it was given its present bookbinding with the arms of the Serra family of Genoa, Italy.
It was inherited from the Serras by Baron Felix de Margherita of Turin and Milan. The French Orleanist pretender, Henri d'Orléans, Duke of Aumale, then in exile at Twickenham near London, bought it from the baron in 1856. On his return to France in 1871 Aumale placed it in his library at the Château de Chantilly, which he bequeathed to the Institut de France as the home of the Musée Condé.

Recent history

When Aumale saw the manuscript in Genoa he was able to recognize it as a commission of Berry, probably because he was familiar with a set of plates of other manuscripts of Berry published in 1834, and subsidized by the government of the duke's father, King Louis Philippe I. Aumale gave the German art historian Gustav Friedrich Waagen breakfast and a private view of the manuscript at Orleans House, just in time for a 10-page account to appear in Waagen's Galleries and Cabinets of Art in Great Britain in 1857, so beginning its rise to fame. He also exhibited it in 1862 to the members of the Fine Arts Club.
The connection with the "très riches heures" listed in the 1416 inventory was made by Léopold Victor Delisle of the Bibliothèque nationale de France and communicated to Aumale in 1881, before being published in 1884 in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts; it has never been seriously disputed. The manuscript took pride of place in a three-part article on all of Berry's manuscripts then known, and was the only one illustrated, with four plates in heliogravure. However the manuscript was called the "Grandes Heures du duc de Berry" in this, a title now given to another manuscript, based on its larger page size. The name "Heures de Chantilly" was also used in the next decades.
A monograph with 65 heliogravure plates was published by Paul Durrieu in 1904, to coincide with a major exhibition of French Gothic art in Paris where it was exhibited in the form of 12 plates from the Durrieu monograph, as the terms of Aumale's bequest forbade its removal from Chantilly. The work became increasingly famous, and increasingly reproduced. The first colour reproductions, using the technique of photogravure, appeared in 1940 in the French art quarterly Verve. Each issue of this lavish magazine cost three hundred francs. In January 1948, the very popular American photo-magazine Life published a feature with full-page reproductions of the 12 calendar scenes, at a little larger than their actual size but at very low-quality. Catering to American sensibilities of the time, the magazine censored one of the images by retouching the genitals of the peasant in the February scene. The Musée Condé decided in the 1980s, somewhat controversially, to remove the manuscript completely both from public display and scholarly access, replacing it with copies of a complete modern facsimile. Michael Camille argues that this completes the logic of the reception history of a work that has almost entirely become famous through reproductions of its images, with the most famous images having been seen in the original by only a very small number of people.

Artists

There has been much debate regarding the identity and number of artists who contributed to the Très Riches Heures.

The Limbourg brothers

In 1884, Léopold Delisle correlated the manuscript with the description of an item in an inventory drawn up after Berry's death: "several gatherings of a very rich book of hours , richly historiated and illuminated, that Pol and his brothers made". Delisle's resulting attribution to Paul de Limbourg and his two brothers, Jean and Herman, "has received general acceptance and also provided the manuscript with its name."
The three Limbourg brothers had originally worked under the supervision of Berry’s brother, Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, on a Bible Moralisée and had come to work for Berry after Philip’s death. By 1411, the Limbourgs were permanent members of Berry's household. It is also generally agreed that another of Berry's books of hours, the Belles Heures, completed between 1408 and 1409, can also be attributed to the brothers. It is thought that the Limbourg contribution to the Très Riches Heures was between about 1412 and their deaths in 1416. Documentation from 1416 was found indicating that Jean, followed by Paul and Herman, had died. Jean de Berry died later that year. Apart from the main campaign of illumination, the text, border decorations, and gilding were most likely executed by assistants or specialists who remain unknown.
The choice of castles in the calendar is one factor in the dating of the brothers' contribution. The Château of Bicêtre, just outside Paris, was one of Berry's grandest residences, but does not appear in the calendar. It seems likely that this was because no image had been created by October 1411, when a large mob from Paris looted it and set it on fire in the Armagnac–Burgundian Civil War. However the châteaux at Dourdan and Étampes are both shown, although Berry lost them to the Burgundians at the end of 1411, with Étampes being badly damaged in the siege.
'', with Duke Charles I of Savoy and his wife from 1485 to 1489; folio 75r

Jean Colombe

Folio 75 of the Très Riches Heures includes Duke Charles I of Savoy and his wife. The two were married in 1485 and the Duke died in 1489, implying that it was not one of the original folios. The second painter was identified by Paul Durrieu as Jean Colombe, who was paid 25 gold pieces by the Duke to complete certain canonical hours.
There were some miniatures which were incomplete and needed filling in, for example, the foreground figures and faces of the miniature illustrating the Office of the Dead, known as the Funeral of Raymond Diocrès.
There are other subtle differences between the miniatures created by the Limbourgs and Colombe. Colombe chose to set large miniatures in frames of marble and gold columns. His faces are less delicate, with more pronounced features. He also used a very intense blue paint that is seen in the landscape of some miniatures. Colombe is worked in his own style without attempting to imitate that of the Limbourgs. In folio 75 he followed the Limbourgs by including a depiction of one of his patron's castles in the Duchy of Savoy in the landscape background.

The Intermediate Painter

The "intermediate painter", also called the Master of the Shadows, as shadows are an element of his style, is often thought to be Barthélemy van Eyck who would probably have been at work in the 1440s. Other scholars put his work as early as the 1420s, though there is no documentation for this. At any rate, the intermediate artist is assumed to have worked on the manuscript sometime between 1416 and 1485. Evidence from the artistic style, as well as the details of costume, suggests that the Limbourgs did not paint some of the calendar miniatures. Figures in the miniatures for January, April, May, and August are dressed in styles from 1420. The figures strolling in October are dressed in a sober fashion indicative of the mid-fifteenth century. It is known that the gatherings fell into hands of King Charles VII after Berry's death, and it is assumed that the intermediate painter is associated with his court.
Catherine Reynolds, in an article of 2005, approached the dating of the "intermediate painter"'s work through the borrowings from it visible in the work of other Parisian illuminators, and placed it in the late 1430s or at the start of the 1440s. This is inconveniently early for what she describes as the "generally accepted" identification with Barthélemy van Eyck, and in any case she detects a number of stylistic differences between van Eyck and the "intermediate painter." Jonathan Alexander sees no stylistic need to hypothesize an intermediate painter at all.

Attribution of the calendar miniatures

The artists of the calendar miniatures have been identified as follows :
Pognon gives the following breakdown of the main miniatures in the Calendar, using more cautious stylistic names for the artists:
In addition Pognon identifies the "pious painter" who painted many of the religious scenes later in the book during the initial campaign. The "courtly", "rustic" and "pious" painters would probably equate to the three Limbourg brothers, or perhaps other artists in their workshop. There are alternative analyses and divisions proposed by other specialists.

Function

A breviary consists of a number of prayers and readings in a short form, generally for use by the clergy. The book of hours is a simplified form of breviary designed for use by the laity where the prayers are intended for recital at the canonical hours of the liturgical day. Canonical hours refer to the division of day and night for the purpose of prayers. The regular rhythm of reading led to the term "book of hours".
The book of hours consists of prayers and devotional exercises, freely arranged into primary, secondary and supplementary texts. Other than the calendar at the beginning, the order is random and can be customized for the recipient or region. The Hours of the Virgin were regarded as the most important, and therefore subject to the most lavish illustration. The Très Riches Heures is rare in that it includes several miracles performed before the commencement of the passion.

Calendar gallery

Fuller descriptions are available at a University of Chicago website.

Technique

Vellum

The parchment or vellum used in the 206 folios is fine quality calfskin. All bi-folios are complete rectangles and the edges are unblemished and therefore must have been cut from the centre of skins of sufficient size. The folios measure 30 cm in height by 21.5 cm in width, although the original size was larger as evidenced by several cuts into the miniatures. The tears and natural flaws in the vellum are infrequent and almost go unnoticed.

Illustrations

The ground colors were moistened with water and thickened with either gum Arabic or tragacanth gum. Approximately ten shades are used besides white and black. The detailed work required extremely small brushes and probably a lens.

Contents

The contents of the book are typical of those of a book of hours, though the quantity of illumination is extremely unusual.
, f. 113v, Jean Colombe
  • Anatomical Zodiac Man: Folio 14
  • Readings from the Gospels: Folios 17–19
  • Prayers to the Virgin: Folios 22–25
  • Fall of Man: Folio 25
  • Hours of the Virgin Matins: Folios 26–60
  • Psalms: Folio 61–63
  • The Penitential Psalms: Folio 64–71
  • Hours of the Cross: Folios 75–78
  • Hours of the Holy Ghost: Folios 79–81
, f. 79r
The Limbourg brothers had artistic freedom but worked within a framework of the religious didactic manuscript. Several artistic innovations by the Limbourg brothers can be noticed in the Très Riches Heures. In the October miniature, the study of light was momentous for Western painting. People were shown reflected in the water, the earliest representation of this type of reflection known thus far. Miniature scenes had new informality, with no strong framing forms at the edges. This allowed for continuity beyond the frame of view to be vividly defined. The Limbourgs developed a more naturalistic mode of representation and developed portraiture of people and surroundings. Religious figures do not inhabit free open space and courtiers are framed by vegetation. This is reminiscent of a more classical representation. Some conventions used by the Limbourgs, such as a diaper background or the portrayal of night, were influenced by artists such as Taddeo Gaddi. These conventions were transformed completely into the artist's unique interpretation.
Manion offers a stylistic analysis of the psalter specifically. The psalters offer a systematic program of illuminations corresponding to the individual psalms. These images are linked together, but are not in the numerical order of the psalter. This emphasizes the idea of the abbreviated psalter, where each psalm is illustrated once. The miniatures are not modeled on any specific visual or literary precedence when compared with other fourteenth century psalters. The manuscript offers a literal interpretation of the words and lacks a selection of more personal prayers. This emphasizes the didactic use of the book of hours.

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