Above: Details of illuminations from Folio 6r, Folio 8r, and Folio 10r from the Belles Heures of Jean de France, duc de Berry, 1405–1408/9. Herman, Paul, and Jean de Limbourg (Franco-Netherlandish, active in France by 1399–1416). French; Made in Paris. Ink, tempera, and gold leaf on vellum; 9 3/8 x 6 5/8 in. (23.8 x 16.8 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Cloisters Collection, 1954 (54.1.1).

The special exhibition The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry closed on Sunday, June 13. Thank you for joining me in the discussions of this amazing manuscript. Although I will no longer be writing posts, I encourage you to visit other online resources related to the Museum’s permanent collection of medieval art and The Cloisters, including The Medieval Garden Enclosed, the wonderful blog written by my colleague Deirdre Larkin.

—Wendy A. Stein

So here we are at the end, with all the sections of the manuscript now posted, and this last chance to reflect. What simple questions may not yet have been asked or answered? What open questions remain for future scholars to ponder, or further studies to publish? Who has come to the exhibition, and who has come to the blog, and what do we all take away?

Remember: It’s a Book

Recently I was in the exhibition to look again at pages of the section of the week, and a visitor approached me to ask a question: Where was the book? I explained that almost everything in front of her, all the little pages, all the little paintings in frames all around, were from one book, a manuscript called the Belles Heures that had been temporarily unbound. I was glad to answer her question, but saddened to realize how easy it is to miss this fundamental point.

Unanswered Questions

Details of illuminations from Folio 211r, Folio 99r, and Folio 91r

The Belles Heures has been extensively studied and extensively published, and although much about it is understood, many questions remain. Some may never be answered, but others may yield to further scholarship in the future. Because I am always interested in the stories, the iconographic mysteries jump to my mind: Who are the two figures flanking John the Baptist on Folio 211r? Who are all the figures in the scene in a cemetery introducing the Office of the Dead (Folio 99r), and what should have been written on that placard? Who is the extra figure behind the Duke on Folio 91r, or the one beside Paul in the scene where he sees a Christian tempted (Folio 191r)?

Illumination from Folio 123v

I found precedents for a nimbed Judas, but what further could be learned of the theology behind that choice (Folio 123v)?

All of these questions taken together raise the more fundamental one: Who, if anyone, might have had a role in setting the iconographic program of the manuscript, in instructing the Limbourgs in what to paint or the duke in what special sections to include? Did the Duke’s chaplains advise on such matters? There is also another question for all the novel scenes, scenes apparently never before depicted in art yet narrated in The Golden Legend and other sources: Did the Limbourgs themselves figure out how to paint the needed scene, or were others involved, whether artists or scholars or the duke himself?

One could also ask functional, doctrinal, or liturgical questions. In the Masses section, I cited some authors who have written about Jean de Berry’s use of his books of hours, but I still want to know more about how he used the Belles Heures, to get closer to understanding the balance in him between the connoisseur who commissioned different artists to decorate books and the Christian who employed and praised his chaplains. Did he pray eight times a day?

Then there are the technical questions. The recent conservation and study of the manuscript have answered many of these, and many answers have been published by Margaret Lawson (see Sources), formerly of the Museum’s Paper Conservation Department. New technology permitted the identification of some specific pigments using Raman spectroscopy and other methods, but current instruments cannot identify the binding media used without destructive methods—and nobody intends to flake off pigment from the Belles Heures just to test it. As for other questions of materials and techniques, can we learn more about brushes and magnification?

Big, wonderful, open question: Where is the missing illumination with a portrait of John the Evangelist that once preceded the excerpt from his Gospel, near the beginning of the manuscript? We know from other books of hours that such an image would have been normal, but even more conclusively, we know from internal evidence that such a page once existed. The end (but not beginning) of a Gospel text excerpt from John survives in the Belles Heures on Folio 22r, and an offset of a missing illuminated page can be faintly seen on an existing blank page, Folio 21v. The offset was more visible when the manuscript was rebound in 1972, when John Plummer examined it and described the missing picture as depicting Saint John on Patmos. The page with that miniature appears to have been cut out of the manuscript long ago; perhaps it is sitting in some collector’s cabinet and will resurface one day.

Details of the blank page on Folio 21v and from the illumination on Folio 22r

There is also the question of the manuscript’s history. We know where it was in the fifteenth century and in the nineteenth century, but have no proof of its whereabouts in the intervening years. During our special daylong exploration of the topic on April 11, Christopher De Hamel presented a compelling theory (see video below); is he correct? Can anything further be found to confirm or reject it?

Finally, there is the elephant in the room: We say the artists are the three Limbourg brothers—Herman, Paul, and Jean—but who did what? We will never be able to prove any answer here, but we can expand the question. We have been assuming that each brother worked as an artist on the illuminations, but there are other options. Perhaps one did the ivy rinceaux borders. Perhaps one acted as the executive, coordinating work among his brothers, the scribe of the text, and the duke. Can further insights be made to help us see separate hands at work within this manuscript? Can those hands be identified again in the other works of the Limbourgs, the Très Riches Heures and the Bible Moralisée?

Blogging and Touring and Looking

It has been a wonderful experience for me to write about the Belles Heures and to give tours in the exhibition, but what has made it most rewarding is that these responsibilities have spurred me to go again and again to the galleries to look at the pages of the manuscript.

I learned from others’ experiences of seeing the exhibition, while giving both public and private tours to a wide range of visitors. One group was devout and religiously observant, utterly familiar with Bible texts, but normally averse to painted representations and with no knowledge of Medieval art. It was a delight to share their joy in the experience of discovery, linking verses they knew to what they could see. A very different group included a cultured and educated friend who offered my favorite single comment. He was marveling at the detail in the miniatures, at the ability to render form at such a tiny tiny scale, and said, “It is as though they pulled out one eyelash, and then painted with that.”

I have also learned much from blogging. This task has given me new insight into the way media shape discourse, a little window into the ways the world is changing through such vehicles. Writing in this forum has pushed me to use first person, has tempted me to stress one point or another, has made me aware of other blogs and sites. In the first week of the project, I was stunned to learn of the number of visitors to the blog and the variety of countries from which they originate. As of two weeks ago, this blog counted 53,491 visitors from 136 countries. By the same date, 108,695 visitors had come to the exhibition in the galleries. A small survey undertaken within the Museum indicated that at least some of the gallery visitors had also come from overseas, mainly Europe. I rejoice that people visited the exhibition while it was available, and rejoice that people will be able to continue to visit the images and discussions here to see all the illuminated pages of the Belles Heures, long after the exhibition closes on June 13. The Manuscript Pages section is the real gold mine here: I trust all readers know it contains every single illuminated page in the manuscript. Making these images available to the public is the best gift to future scholarship the Museum has already provided.

Finally, of course, I have learned most from looking. Going back to the pages week after week, I have never stopped seeing new things, or appreciating anew the skill and inventiveness before me. Like everyone else, I will continue to benefit from seeing the illuminations reproduced here and in the monograph and other published works, but I will dearly miss the actual folios spread out before me in the Lehman Wing.

—Wendy A. Stein

Sources

Lawson, Margaret. “The Belles Heures of Jean, Duc de Berry: The Materials and Techniques of the Limbourg Brothers.” In The Limbourg Brothers: Reflections on the Origins and the Legacy of Three Illuminators from Nijmegen. Edited by Rob Dückers and Pieter Roelofs. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2005.

Lawson, Margaret. “Technical Observations: Materials, Techniques, and Conservation of the Belles Heures Manuscript.” In The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and The Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry by Timothy Husband. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008.

John Plummer, “A Blank Page in the Belles Heures.” In Gatherings in Honor of Dorothy E. Miner. Edited by Ursula E. McCracken, Lilian M. C. Randall, and Richard H. Randall Jr., pp. 193–202. Baltimore: The Walters Art Gallery, 1974.

Above: Details of illuminations from Folio 211v, Folio 215r, and Folio 223v from the Belles Heures of Jean de France, duc de Berry, 1405–1408/9. Herman, Paul, and Jean de Limbourg (Franco-Netherlandish, active in France by 1399–1416). French; Made in Paris. Ink, tempera, and gold leaf on vellum; 9 3/8 x 6 5/8 in. (23.8 x 16.8 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Cloisters Collection, 1954 (54.1.1).

We have come to the final section of the Belles Heures manuscript, mainly a small selection of masses. This is a section that sneaks up on you in interest. It first presents as a traditional element—with most of its text in two columns of black ink—but then inserts a few pages in picture-book format. Like the section dedicated to the Penitential Psalms (Folio 66r through Folio 72r), this one starts out with a series of small quarter-page illuminations, but finishes with magnificently accomplished full-page pictures. Finally, it isn’t fully traditional; not all books of hours contain masses, and their inclusion here leads us into interesting questions about Jean de Berry’s use of his prayerbook.

Masses are not one of the essential texts in a traditional book of hours, but may be added as ancillary material. In general, the presence of masses indicates that the individual who commissioned the book of hours was wealthy enough to employ a private confessor or clergy. In this regard, a fifteenth-century chronicler wrote of Jean de Berry: “Animated always by an ardent devotion to the service of God, he maintained in his home many chaplains who day and night sang the praises of God and celebrated mass, and he took care to compliment them whenever the service lasted longer or was more elaborate than usual.” This cautions us against thinking of the duke as commissioning books of hours only for the luscious pictures. They were first and foremost prayer books, and the variety of texts included in the six different books of hours he commissioned is evidence in itself of his employ of private confessors or priests who advised him on his piety and may also have influenced the iconography of illuminations in his manuscripts.

Illuminations from Folio 195r, Folio 198r, Folio 199v, Folio 202r, Folio 204r, Folio 205v, Folio 207v, and Folio 209r

The particular masses included in the Belles Heures start with a sequence of eight highlighting the most important holy days of the year: Christmas (Folio 195r), Easter (Folio 198r), Ascension (Folio 199v), Pentecost (Folio 202r), Trinity Sunday (Folio 204r), Corpus Christi (Folio 205v), and the Exaltation of the Cross (Folio 207v), followed by a votive mass for the Virgin (Folio 209r). Highlighting these key feasts and masses was associated with the French royal Valois family of the duke. The abbreviated texts of the key masses in his prayer book may have helped the duke follow the service, including private masses held just for him, as illustrated in his book of hours called Petites Heures (Paris, BNF, ms. Lat. 18014, fol. 172). All eight of this group of masses in the Belles Heures are introduced by quarter-page illuminations, and despite their small size, several are charmingly detailed, such as the Nativity with the Annunciation to the shepherds in the background (Folio 195r), and the Ascension (Folio 199v), with Christ disappearing into the clouds. The way Christ’s feet dangle from the clouds as he disappears had been traditional iconography in Anglo-Saxon art since around the year 1000, although the inclusion of Christ’s footprints remaining on the mountaintop is a Gothic element.

After the first eight masses there is a dramatic shift in the Belles Heures. The last four masses have a strikingly different heft, beginning with the Mass for the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist, which is preceded by four full-page illuminations. Of those four full illuminations, we can surmise that only the last one—an image of Herod’s feast, in which Salome presents the head of John the Baptist (Folio 212v)—was originally intended to be included. The text on this page is written in two columns of black ink—the format of the traditional sections of the manuscript, including the other masses in this section—and it identifies it as a mass beginning with the Introit prayer.

Detail of text from Folio 212v

However, the three immediately preceding pages have text in single-column blue and red, and that text narrates elements of the story of Saint John, rather than prayers.

Detail of text from Folio 212r

So as we saw with the Heraclius section that was inserted into the Suffrages, the three extra illuminations about John appear to be expansions of the original plan, and perhaps the inception of the added picture cycles in the manuscript.

Illumination from Folio 211r

Let’s step back to discuss the illuminations themselves. The first of the John pictures, on Folio 211r, shows him in the wilderness holding a lamb, flanked by two unidentified men, another of the iconographic mysteries in the manuscript. The page is accorded a broad band border of vine scroll inside the usual leafy rinceaux, the broad band seemingly indicating the start of a section. (For more about the significance of page borders, see “The Hours of the Virgin,” March 24, 2010.)

Illumination from Folio 211v

Next is the baptism of Christ (Folio 211v), notable for the transparency of the water streaming over Jesus’s semi-nude body, and the even more transparent wisp of drape around his loins. The composition is also pleasing, with the curve of mountain and angel’s wings mirroring one another and forming a mandorla around Christ.

Illumination from Folio 212r

When John is decapitated (Folio 212r), the emphasis on blood recalls some of the martyrdoms from the Suffrages, while the elegant Salome, waiting with her silver salver to hold the head, is the picture of fashion in her ermine-lined pink gown.

Illumination from Folio 212v

Finally (Folio 212v), Salome presents the bleeding head at the feast, precipitating Herod’s horrified reaction. His wife Herodias appears to poke the head with a knife, a reference to a famous relic of the saint that had a hole near the eye. Jean de Berry would have seen the relic at Amiens, and copies of that relic, including the wound above the brow, were widely circulated.

Illumination from Folio 215r

The change in the character of the masses section that begins with the John cycle does not end there. Each of the five final illuminations in the manuscript is not only full page but also richly detailed, beautifully composed, and expertly executed. The first two accompany a mass for Saints Peter and Paul, the apostles. The text is the mass—prayer, not narrative—in black, not blue and red, yet the illuminations are unusual story pictures from the life and death of the saints. Folio 215r shows the saints debunking a false magician: Simon Magus falls from the top of the tower as the devils that were supporting him flee at the command of Peter, seen at lower right in yellow with his keys dangling.

Illumination from Folio 215v

The martyrdom scene that follows, with Paul’s head already slashed from his body, includes the detail of two little puddles, recalling a legend that Paul’s head bounced twice, and springs arose on the spots (Folio 215v). Although an executioner raises his sword, Peter’s death is not explicit. Perhaps the courtier whispering in the emperor’s ear is identifying Peter as non-Roman and therefore ineligible for death by the sword, the reason for his martyrdom by inverted crucifixion.

Illumination from Folio 218r

The illumination for the Mass for All Saints (Folio 218r) is unlike all others in the manuscript, a rigorously composed devotional work of great beauty. One could imagine this composition blown up to the scale of an altarpiece in a cathedral. The treatment of the tender Virgin and Child in the center is so intimate and sensitive, but it is enshrined in an array of glory and monumentality. Cherubs and seraphs support the medallion containing the Virgin, while the dove of the Holy Spirit hovers above, weightless between the Virgin and God the father above. The four largest saints are John the Evangelist and John the Baptist, above, and Paul and Peter, flanking the Virgin. Below are the virgin martyrs, Catherine with her wheel prominent among them. The group of male saints behind Peter and Paul is remarkable in the way the figures overlap to suggest depth and quantity, with only the rims of their halos showing to indicate their number.

Illumination from Folio 221r

The last mass is that for All Souls, and the image accompanying it is another stunner (Folio 221r). It shows an empty coffin for the requiem for All Souls, but looks like a funeral in a church, the most common image in most books of hours for the Office of the Dead. Typical as the scene is, its execution displays the incredible virtuosity of the Limbourgs. In the exhibition, we have blown up a photograph of this illumination to wall size, which only makes more obvious how much detail is packed into such a small compass here. We have a sense of the monumental cathedral in which the scene takes place and peek inside one corner of it to see the detailed choir stalls and praying monks. Above, light seems to be transmitted through the leaded windows. Every tiny flame on each candle is painted with multiple colors, suggesting their flicker.

Illumination from Folio 223v

Finally we come to the last illumination in this glorious manuscript, the image of the duke on a journey (Folio 223v), accompanied by the text of a prayer for safe travel. We can well imagine the duke fervently reciting such a prayer, for around the time in which the Belles Heures was created, one of his nephews assassinated another one, and his French royal family was split into either side of a civil war. At the same time, France was also in the midst of the Hundred Years’ War with England. Travel among the duke’s seventeen residences can hardly have been safe. Jean de Berry had this prayer for safe travel added to three of the books of hours he commissioned, along with scenes of himself and his entourage traveling. He is here on the far right in a red cloak and mounted on a beautiful caparisoned white steed. It is fitting that the manuscript closes with an image of the great patron who commissioned it and who was so involved in its creation.

While this is the last section of the manuscript, it is not the final week of this blog, which will include one more post, next week. The last day of the exhibition is Sunday, June 13, so if you can, come see it in person. See it again if you have already come, and if you look closely I guarantee you will see something you missed before. Next week I will give a final tour, on Wednesday, June 9, at 2:00 p.m. Meet me at the entrance to the exhibition.

—Wendy A. Stein

Sources:

Kortweg, Anne S. “The Form and Content of Jean de Berry’s Books of Hours,” in The Limbourg Brothers, Nijmegen Masters at the French Court, 1400–1416, Nijmegen: Ludion, 2005.

Manion, Margaret M. “Art and Devotion: The Prayer-books of Jean de Berry,” in Medieval Texts and Images: Studies of Manuscripts from the Middle Ages. Edited by Margaret M. Manion and Bernard J. Muir. Sydney: Craftsman House, 1991.

Schapiro, Meyer. “The Image of the Disappearing Christ,” in Late Antique, Early Christian and Medieval Art. New York: Braziller, 1979.

Above: Details of illuminations from Folio 191v, Folio 193r, and Folio 194r from the Belles Heures of Jean de France, duc de Berry, 1405–1408/9. Herman, Paul, and Jean de Limbourg (Franco-Netherlandish, active in France by 1399–1416). French; Made in Paris. Ink, tempera, and gold leaf on vellum; 9 3/8 x 6 5/8 in. (23.8 x 16.8 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Cloisters Collection, 1954 (54.1.1).

A self-contained quire of two bifolia, eight pages, presents the story of two hermit saints, Paul and Anthony. This is the last of the full-scale added picture cycles in the manuscript, but it is unlikely to have been the last one to be completed. Compositions in this section are conceived for narrative impact, and their layouts support that purpose rather than spatial coherence. Great and crazy stories are here—scenes you never imagined.

Illumination from Folio 191r

The first life of Paul the Hermit was written by Saint Jerome (see last week’s post for more about Jerome), which seems to be one source of the captions in the Belles Heures. The story begins with a shocking scene from the time of the Roman emperor Decius, when Christians were persecuted. One form of torture imposed on young Christian men was to be tempted by an “impure woman.” Folio 191r shows Paul witnessing such a scene: The seductress seated on the Christian’s lap runs her hand up his thigh. Tormented by temptation, his hands bound, the Christian bites off the tip of his tongue and spits it at the evil woman.

Detail of illumination from Folio 191r

Viewing this episode convinced Paul to leave the city and flee into the desert, becoming the first of the hermit saints. The younger man shown behind Paul at far right in the illumination is not explained by the caption or by the full story as recounted in The Golden Legend. He looks like Anthony, who appears in the other scenes in this cycle, but if so, it is an iconographic error, as the two hermits did not meet until many years later.

Illuminations from Folio 191v and Folio 192r

When Jean de Berry turned that page of his book, he came next to two facing pictures showing the journey undertaken by Anthony to find Paul at his hermitage in Egypt (Folio 191v and Folio 192r). The dominant swath of vermilion on each page is the perfectly Red Sea. Although it is meant to be a desert landscape, trees and springs abound, but the peril of the journey is suggested by the dragons and snakes seen on the verso. In both of these pages, we can see that here is little interest in a convincing representation of space: on the verso, the land extends up to the top of the picture, with no horizon at all, and the smallest trees are at the saint’s feet, where we would expect a foreground; on the recto, the contours of the landscape are scarcely more convincing.

A startling image on Folio 192r is the composite beast giving directions to Anthony, a combination of the two creatures, centaur and satyr, mentioned in the caption. Strange as it is to see this scene with this mythical beast, it is the second time it was painted by the Limbourgs in a book of hours for Jean de Berry. Its presence in the bas de page of the Très Belles Heures de Notre-Dame (see image) (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, nouv. Acq. Lat. 3093, p. 240) is another testament to the delight in strange stories shared by the Limbourgs and the duke.

Illuminations from Folio 192v and Folio 193r

In the next opening, on Folio 192v, we see an innovative device invented by the Limbourgs to encourage narrative reading from the verso to the recto. Each illumination has a distant portal on the left and right edges of the scene, as if to invite walking through the gate from one page to the next. The scenes represent charming anecdotes from the two saints’ lives. On Folio 192v is the avian delivery of food to the ascetic fathers. Saint Paul, who had already lived in the desert for years, was fed by a daily delivery of bread by a raven. When Anthony showed up, the bird brought a double portion, a point noted in the caption, with the word dupplicatã in red, beginning the second line.

Detail of text from Folio 192v

Paul, accustomed to the miraculous feeding, calmly goes on reading his book, but the newcomer, Anthony, is astounded and raises his arm in wonder at the appearance of the bird. Instead of the raven or crow (corvus) specified in the caption, the bird appears as the dove of the Holy Spirit, and the bread is depicted as the host rather than a loaf. On Folio 193r, Paul dies, and Anthony witnesses his soul being transported to heaven by angels, while Paul’s body remains in his cell at the right, continuing in a posture of prayer.

Illumination from Folio 193v

When Anthony attempts to bury Paul, he has no tools to dig in the ground, and lions come to help him (Folio 193v). Look closely here at Anthony’s sorrowing face, and the way Paul’s body is limp and pale in death. Paul’s garment is mentioned in the caption as having been made from palms, and, in fact, it appears with a braided basket weave in the illumination. Again a portal at upper right connects it to the facing page, where we see the Temptation of Saint Anthony (Folio 194r).

Illumination from Folio 194r

Three beasts and a devil attack Anthony, who lies in the coffin that was seen empty in the background in two earlier pages (Folio 192r and Folio 192v). The devil is especially energetic in attacking with a stick, and the saint throws out both hands in submission and defeat. The scene prefigures representations of the same event by Schöngauer (see image), Bosch, and Grünewald, among others, including the young Michelangelo Buonarroti (see Michelangelo’s First Painting).

Illumination from Folio 194v

The final scene, Folio 194v, is a beautiful painting, the only interior in the cycle, and quietly expressive in its rendering. The body of Saint Anthony is laid out on a trestle table as four monks read from large books. The saturated hues in the illumination rotate around the central black and brown of the figures’ robes, with the vivid pink and yellow floor tiles, colorful tomes, and bright blue vaults punctuating the scene. The Limbourgs’ interest in the realistic and detailed depiction of familiar tools and objects is represented here by the foreground ecclesiastical instruments: a yellow round brazier burns incense and stands beside two implements for holy water, a bucket (situla) and tool for sprinkling it (aspergillum). Equally articulated are the oil lamps mounted on iron brackets high on the walls.

—Wendy A. Stein

Gallery Talk

For those of you who would like to join me for a tour of the exhibition, I will be giving one last gallery talk on Wednesday, June 9, at 2:00 p.m. While I especially appreciate comments and questions posted here, I also welcome the opportunity to respond to your questions in person.

Above: Details of illuminations from Folio 186r, Folio 187r, and Folio 189r from the Belles Heures of Jean de France, duc de Berry, 1405–1408/9. Herman, Paul, and Jean de Limbourg (Franco-Netherlandish, active in France by 1399–1416). French; Made in Paris. Ink, tempera, and gold leaf on vellum; 9 3/8 x 6 5/8 in. (23.8 x 16.8 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Cloisters Collection, 1954 (54.1.1).

Now we turn to another great added picture cycle in the Belles Heures, the story of Saint Jerome (ca. 347–420 A.D.). This section of the manuscript traces the saint’s long life from his early interest in classical rhetoric, through his translation of the Bible, to his death and funeral. It includes twelve full-page illuminations replete with unique iconography, extraordinarily subtle modeling, narrative skill, and compositional strength and variety. It also offers a good opportunity for me to discuss the Limbourgs’ spatial construction.

Illumination from Folio 183r

The story opens with the sainted monk seated on the floor as he listens to a lecture on classical, pagan philosophy (Folio 183r). While he professes himself to be a Christian, the text below tells us he is instead accused of being a Ciceronian, and the picture shows the saint’s discomfiture with his realization of the conflict between his study of Plato and his professed faith. The scene takes place within a wonderfully elaborated ecclesiastical space, where color helps us read the depth and complexity of the structure.

Illumination from Folio 183v

In the next scene (Folio 183v), angels flog the saint as the judging God looks on, all of it meant to represent a dream vision of the sleeping monk below—but the text tells us that Jerome woke from the dream with terrible scars on his shoulders. These stories are told in The Golden Legend, but had never been represented in art before, demonstrating once again the narrative inventiveness of the Limbourgs.

Illumination from Folio 184r

The next scene is remarkable for its graphic impact. Folio 184r shows Jerome, seen from the back in his monk’s habit, being offered the hat of a cardinal by the pope. A bold symmetrical form composed of choir stalls structures the scene, with flanking figures echoing the symmetry but varying it in the placement of colors of their habits. We see here one of the most rigorously composed scenes in the entire manuscript.

Illumination from Folio 184v

We then come to one of the strangest pages in the manuscript, Folio 184v. A practical joke is played upon the pious Jerome: In the dark of night, another monk steals into the saint’s cell and replaces his habit with a woman’s dress. The saint, waking in the pre-dawn hour of Matins, puts on the dress and goes into the church, where the seated monks whisper at the scandal of seeing Jerome, beard and all, in the blue dress of a lady. In this remarkable scene, we again sense the intimate symbiosis of artists and patron, with their shared passion for unusual and racy stories, including humor.

Illumination from Folio 186v

Skipping forward a few pages, we come to the lovely and tender scene where Jerome removes a thorn from a lion’s paw (Folio 186v). As the four lines of red and blue script explain, the lion came limping into the monastery. Although other monks fled, Jerome welcomed the lion as a guest, liberating him from the pain in his paw, after which the lion lived among them. The astonished monks surrounding Jerome in this picture are a miniature symphony of brown, with subtle, tiny brushstrokes articulating their drapery. The tame lion recurs three times on the next page (Folio 187r) in a scene of continuous narration, and then, most traditionally, in the saint’s study (Folio 187v) as Jerome translates the Bible, a task, we are told in the caption, that took fifty-five years and six months.

Illumination from Folio 189v

The final scene in the Jerome cycle (Folio 189v) depicts his funeral, and illustrates the caption’s reference to miracles by including three maimed petitioners around the saint’s bier. Twenty-six figures are included in this busy scene, although some of them can only be inferred from a pink skirt or hat. The clerics pouring out of a portal at the right give a great sense of movement and song, while the bells over their heads toll mightily.

Spatial Construction

The depiction of space is one of the great themes in the history of art, and the early fifteenth century, when the Belles Heures was being created, marks one of the pivotal ages of transition in this regard. The Jerome cycle is an ideal section in which to witness both the achievements and the contradictions in spatial constructions that were taking place at the time.

In the discussion of the Hours of the Passion, I pointed out scenes where the still-maturing artists seemed to get confused in their representation of space. An arcade that appeared to be at the back of a scene was connected to a column whose bottom was at the front of the same scene (see Folio 131v), for example. No such confusions occur here, as the Limbourg brothers have developed as artists during the course of painting the manuscript.

Illumination from Folio 187v

Looking at the illumination where Jerome is translating the Bible (Folio 187v), we see the saint in a rich ecclesiastical structure. The columns nearest the picture plane form the exterior corners of the structure, while just inside are two arched openings, one framing the saint and the other framing the lion. By establishing a foreground plane, these arches make the interior space inhabited by the saint more convincing. Beyond them, we read the blue vaults above the saint and the stained-glass windows forming the back plane. A coherent interior space is constructed, but make no mistake: We are not viewing precise mathematical perspective with true orthogonals here. The receding lines of the floor tile do not work together with the angles of the pews or with the saint’s throne-like cathedra. The idea that lines converge toward the horizon is here, but it is not precisely understood. Within a generation after the Belles Heures, Masaccio (1401–ca. 1428) in Florence was using Brunelleschian mathematical perspective, as in the Holy Trinity fresco in Santa Maria Novella, but that is not what we see here.

Illumination from Folio 185r

Mathematical perspective applies a formula to the diminution in size of objects in space; the other broad device for depicting the illusion of space is atmospheric perspective. This technique, applicable for landscape painting, shows the progressive loss of local color in distant objects and the way the sky modulates from dark to light at the horizon. The Limbourgs show themselves to be masters of this on many pages of the Belles Heures, including on Folio 185r, where the distant city fades to blue and the sky is paler at the horizon line than at the top of the illumination. Yet on the next page (Folio 185v) and on many others in the manuscript, the background is filled with an ornamental design.

Illumination from Folio 185v

These patterns (called diapered or tessellated, after the word tessera, which is a single mosaic piece) were typical of the backgrounds in earlier Gothic manuscripts. The Limbourgs seem to feel no contradiction or hierarchy in this; whether a page receives a tessellated background or a naturalistic sky does not correlate with the most accomplished representations in other regards.

Moreover, the narrative needs of a given image supersede the importance of the unity of space. Alongside a scene showing a single moment may appear a scene of continuous narration, in which four episodes from a story are depicted within one landscape. This is the case with Folio 186v and Folio 187r. Another example is in the scene where Jerome is tempted by dancing girls (Folio 186r), in which the young ladies are as tall as the city gate; individual objects and figures are rendered convincingly, but there is no coherence of overall scale, and no apparent concern for the contradictions.

The first decade of the fifteenth century, the time of the Belles Heures, was a moment of great transition in art, and the Limbourgs were evolving and leading the way in some aspects of great innovation of the time. But the progressive movement was not always consistent, and in the pages of the Jerome cycle and elsewhere, we see different conceptions of space, different degrees of monumentality in figural presentation, and different compositional values, all within the compendium of this wonderful manuscript.

—Wendy A. Stein

Gallery Talk

For those of you who would like to join me for a tour of the exhibition, I will be giving one last gallery talk on Wednesday, June 9, at 2:00 p.m. While I especially appreciate comments and questions posted here, I also welcome the opportunity to respond to your questions in person.

—Wendy A. Stein

Above: Details of illuminations from Folio 162v, Folio 165v, and Folio 179r from the Belles Heures of Jean de France, duc de Berry, 1405–1408/9. Herman, Paul, and Jean de Limbourg (Franco-Netherlandish, active in France by 1399–1416). French; Made in Paris. Ink, tempera, and gold leaf on vellum; 9 3/8 x 6 5/8 in. (23.8 x 16.8 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Cloisters Collection, 1954 (54.1.1).

Last week I introduced the section of the manuscript with the Suffrages of the Saints—short prayers or memorials to individuals found in many books of hours. As this section can be personalized for the patron in many ways—most simply, in the number and choice of saints included, as well as in the number accorded decoration—it is one place we can look to sense the personality of the patron and artists involved. This week I want to pick out a few more of the individual saints in the Belles Heures, and raise a question that has concerned me for some time: Is this an unusually violent manuscript?  Let’s begin by looking at the most violent among the Suffrages.

Illumination from Folio 161r

The most gruesome martyrdom is that of Saint Bartholomew (Folio 161r), whose flesh was ripped from his body. The nude figure is tied down to a table while three men work intently at their horrifying task. Especially graphic is the figure in pink at the left, whose supporting foot on the table leg emphasizes his strength and effort in pulling off the saint’s skin. Blood streams from the saint’s multiple wounds, and pools on the table.

Illumination from Folio 162r

Saint Stephen (Folio 162r), the first martyr in the Early Christian period, was stoned to death. He falls to his knees before the onslaught of stones that his tormentors hold in their folded garments. The story is made vivid with remarkable action, the musculature of the figures, as well as the convincing foreshortening of the figure in the foreground picking up another rock. The violence here is more in the display of physical force rather than in the blood issuing from the saint’s wounds.

Illumination from Folio 166v

After Saint Denis (and his companions) were beheaded (Folio 166v), he picked up his head and walked to the site of his burial in Montmartre. The type of saint who carries his own head is so common in medieval art generally that it has a name: cephalophore. What makes this representation notable is the depiction of blood spurting from the neck of the saint and his companion.

Illumination from Folio 171r

Similarly, depictions of Saint Francis receiving the stigmata (Folio 171r) are not rare, but the copious blood flowing from Christ’s wounds and echoed in those of the saint is notable. What I really appreciate about this page is not the violence, but the way the parchment itself seems to break open to the vision of the crucifix, interrupting the patterned background of the scene.

Illuminations from Folio 177r and Folio 178v

Saint Margaret (Folio 177r) emerges unscathed from the belly of a dragon, but the beast does not fare so well, and the Limbourgs take this, too, as an opportunity to include streams of blood. Finally, the martyrdom of Ursula and her eleven thousand virgin friends (Folio 178v) is shown with particular relish in the blood streaming down the gangplank and the disembodied head on the quay.

When I first began to study the Belles Heures it struck me as violent, but I knew I needed to put it in the context of its time and to have a sense of how it compares with other contemporaneous manuscripts and objects.

The suffrages invoke individual saints, including martyrs, whose violent deaths were known to the medieval viewer.  In some books of hours, these saints are honored only with standing portraits, but in others, as here, they are depicted in narrative scenes that can’t help but include violence. To the modern eye, struck with the beauty of the Limbourgs’ elegant style and luscious color, the violence may be jarring, but it would not have been so to the medieval viewer. Nevertheless, it does seem that when blood appears, it’s never just a drop. Even compared to other luxury books of hours with elaborate cycles of suffrages, there is more blood and more narrative intensity here than in most. The same sensibility is evident throughout most sections of the manuscript.

Illumination from Folio 59v

In most books of hours, the Hours of the Virgin includes the Flight into Egypt as a traditional scene to mark Vespers. The Belles Heures, though, bypasses this scene and instead features the most violent possible moment in the narrative: the Massacre of the Innocents (Folio 59v). Although this is not unique among books of hours, it is not the most common choice either, and its presence here is an indication of a sensationalist sensibility. Moreover, among medieval representations of this scene, this one is particularly graphic in that it focuses not on the grieving mothers but rather on the hacked and dismembered bodies of the babies.

Illumination from Folio 123v

Of course the Passion cycle has many essential scenes of violence. The incident of Malchus’s ear in the Betrayal scene (Folio 123v) is typically included in representations of the period, yet this one involves more blood than most.

Illumination from Folio 145r

Of the three crucifixion scenes, that with the lance (Folio 145r) is the bloodiest, which is to be expected, but here blood streams not only whence the lance pierced Christ’s side, but also flows from his feet and hands, running down his arms. This treatment suggests an emphasis on Christ’s blood that was a developing theology of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century—a veneration of Christ’s wounds and a blood piety. One of its most graphic representations is on the Man of Sorrows page in the Hours of Catherine of Cleves (see image). In the bottom border, Christ is represented in a wine press, his blood pouring out directly into a communion chalice. In this theological preoccupation with blood, the blood is always living, liquid, and red. (For more on this subject, see Carolyn Walker Bynum, Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond.)

Illumination from Folio 19r

In the Catherine story near the beginning of the Belles Heures (see “The Story of Saint Catherine“), and in the masses toward the end, there are other bloody scenes. The execution of Porphyrius and his companions (Folio 19r) features at least three gory beheadings.

Illuminations from Folio 212r and Folio 215v

When John the Baptist is beheaded (Folio 212r), his lifeless trunk spurts a fountain of blood that trails down to the ground. When Peter and Paul are martyred (Folio 215v), Paul’s severed head lies adjacent to his body, both elements bloodied. As elsewhere, the story motivates the depiction, but the depiction appears to emphasize the violent and particularly bloody aspect.

Above: Details of illuminations from Folio 73v, Folio 74r, and Folio 95r

There are other scenes that focus on death or corpses, notably in the Litany (Folio 73r through 74v) and Bruno (Folio 94r through 97v) cycles. Some books of hours put a different emphasis on death from that in the Belles Heures. For example, for the Hours of the Dead section, the hours of Catherine of Cleves, among other manuscripts, has deathbed scenes. Death is seen in the home, as part of life. I consider this domesticated death, very unlike the action scenes of horrible deaths and tortures featured in the Belles Heures.

However, looking at the Belles Heures in the context of its time cautions against calling it a violent book, because all these examples are justified by the story to be told. Several aspects of medieval piety, including the cult of the saints and the late medieval emphasis on an extravagantly emotional empathy and pathos, promoted a visualization of violence in a religious context. Both death and disability were extremely visible in medieval society, and more available to art. What sets the Belles Heures apart is the skill of the Limbourgs as narrative artists—their ability to tell stories with graphic vitality and conviction. The Duke of Berry met that skill with his own increasing interest in narrative detail in his books of hours, and encouraged the Limbourgs’ development as narrative artists.  We have here a perfect symbiosis of artist and patron, with a patron as interested in action, violence, nudity, and beautiful luxury as any aficionado of blockbuster media today. It is not so much that it is a violent book; rather, it is a book of vivid story-telling; action pictures packed into a prayer book cover.

—Wendy A. Stein

Sources:

Huizinga, Johann. The Waning of the Middle Ages. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor, 1954. First published 1924.

Walker Bynum, Carolyn. Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.

Above: Details of illuminations from Folio 158r, Folio 163v, and Folio 173r from the Belles Heures of Jean de France, duc de Berry, 1405–1408/9. Herman, Paul, and Jean de Limbourg (Franco-Netherlandish, active in France by 1399–1416). French; Made in Paris. Ink, tempera, and gold leaf on vellum; 9 3/8 x 6 5/8 in. (23.8 x 16.8 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Cloisters Collection, 1954 (54.1.1).

This section of the manuscript contains a microcosm of all the complexity of structure and variety of book design to be found in the Belles Heures. It is a traditional section, yet embedded within it is an added picture-book cycle. It is inconsistent in the level of decoration accorded the various saints: some get no picture, while others get quarter-page or full-page illuminations. The border treatments also vary between narrow and broad bands. It includes stories told in single climactic scenes as well as simple, standing “portraits” of individual saints. In this section, we witness the Belles Heures in transition between a traditional book of hours and the exceptional work it became.

Most books of hours have a selection of suffrages—brief prayers and invocations to holy persons or concepts. Depending on the cost and luxury of the manuscript, there may be only a few of these memorials, or there may be more than a hundred; similarly they may include only one illumination for the group, or a picture for every saint. In the Belles Heures there are fifty-six suffrages, graced with fourteen full-page and twenty-seven quarter-page illuminations. Unlike some other lavish books of hours, in which we have a sense of a firm plan for book design, variety reigns here, and a true internal shift in layout can be discerned.

Illumination from Folio 157r

We can see clearly that this section began with a traditional layout; its pages were ruled for two columns of black script. All of the suffrages or memorials are written in this way. One of the first memorials (Folio 157r) honors the Cross and is marked by a full-page illumination of the cross on an altar, adored by princely figures, with a few lines of text in black ink and two columns beneath. Interestingly, this traditional layout follows two nontraditional folios (Folio 156r and Folio 156v) that feature full-page pictures of Heraclius and the True Cross. We may presume that the artists created 157r first, which means that within these three pages we are witnessing one of the moments in which the book design switched—when patron and artists moved out from tradition to innovation, where the decision was taken to expand the opportunity for story telling by inserting a picture-book cycle with four single-column lines of text in alternating red and blue, even though the page had been ruled for two columns. In addition to the narrative they depict, these three folios tell a story about the creation of the book itself.

Illumination from Folio 156r

Heraclius was the great Byzantine emperor of the seventh century who recovered the True Cross from the Persians and returned it to Jerusalem, a story recounted in The Golden Legend. Folio 156r shows Heraclius grandly riding with the cross in a splendid carriage, a composition echoed in a bronze medal on view in the exhibition. It is possible that both the medal and the page were designed by the Limbourg brothers, or that one was copied from the other; in any case, we have a sense here of the Limbourgs as court artists, working with access to the duke’s collections in a variety of media. Looking again at the page, we see that the gates to Jerusalem are closing as the carriage nears: Heraclius is not allowed to enter in such a grand fashion.

Illumination from Folio 156v

On Folio 156v, we see Heraclius, dismounted from his chariot, more humbly dressed, and carrying the cross on his back, with the gates of Jerusalem now open to receive emperor and cross.

Among the many other illuminations of specific saints in this section, I’ll highlight only a handful of my favorites this week, and return to the section for more illuminations in the next post. (Remember, you can browse through all of them—and enlarge them to see the amazing detail—in the Manuscript Pages section.)

Illumination from Folio 164v

Saint Eustace (Folio 164v), a Roman soldier who was exiled after he converted to Christianity, was traveling with his sons when he came to a river. He carried one son across and was on his way to get the other when each boy was abducted by a wild beast—one by a lion and the other by a wolf. Here Eustace is shown lamenting in mid-stream, unaware that his Christian faith will ultimately reunite him with his loved ones.

Illumination from Folio 167r

Saint George and the Dragon (Folio 167r) is one of the most familiar scenes in this section. The heroic knight in shining armor, rescuing a damsel in distress from the dreaded monster, hits all the buttons of medieval cliché. The Limbourg brothers nevertheless enliven the scene with idiosyncratic details. I especially like the dragon babies, emerging from their cave in distress at the fate of their mommy, and the way the angel takes on the duties of a feudal page, holding the saint’s helmet for him.

Illumination from Folio 174r

Charlemagne (Folio 174r) sits regally on his elaborate throne, a majestic figure in a composition very different from all the other saints. His coat of arms includes the fleur-de-lis of France along with the imperial eagle of the Holy Roman Empire; their equal billing stresses the independent descent of the French royal family from Charlemagne’s line. (See “The Garden in Heraldry” on The Medieval Garden Enclosed blog for more about coats of arms and the fleur-de-lis, in particular.) This massive kingly figure reminds me of a work of art in a very different medium and scale: the Heroes Tapestries at The Cloisters. That ensemble is among the oldest tapestries in the Museum’s collection, was certainly known to Jean de Berry and may have been in his collection or in that of another member of his royal family.

Illuminations from Folio 170r and Folio 168r

Two of the saints in the suffrages section are shown working weather miracles. Saint Anthony of Padua (Folio 170r) is shown preaching outdoors when a devil sent a storm to disrupt the proceedings. Anthony admonished the listeners not to flee, and raised his hand in benediction, sending the storm away. We can see the devil fleeing in the upper right corner, taking his darkness, thunderbolt, and hail with him. Saint Nicholas (Folio 168r) saved seafarers who were panicking in a storm that had already broken the mast of their ship. While some were reaching for lifeboats in despair, others called on the saint, who grasped the mast to steady the boat. Look at the sky to the left: where Nicholas has already been, he has cleared the storm, while on the right, amazingly free brushstrokes create the dark turbulence of the tempest. The frothy sea is painted with silver, which is preserved under a clear glaze.

Illumination from Folio 162v

Even the saints recognized only with a quarter-page illumination can be outstanding. The Limbourg brothers were capable of demonstrating their narrative power in an incredibly small compass. The scene of the martyrdom of Saint Lawrence (Folio 162v) is packed with eleven figures, a raging fire, a mountainous landscape, and a blue firmament, all within a space measuring close to 1 x 3 inches. The nude saint is chained to a grill, while a man in blue plies bellows to stoke the fire beneath, as a king and his entourage look on, and God blesses the scene from above. Once again, this manuscript astonishes with its miracles in miniature.

We have only begun to look at this section of the manuscript. Next week I will take on a few more saints, and also pose the question: Is the Belles Heures a violent book?

—Wendy A. Stein

Above: Details of illuminations from Folio 132r, Folio 138v, and Folio 145r from the Belles Heures of Jean de France, duc de Berry, 1405–1408/9. Herman, Paul, and Jean de Limbourg (Franco-Netherlandish, active in France by 1399–1416). French; Made in Paris. Ink, tempera, and gold leaf on vellum; 9 3/8 x 6 5/8 in. (23.8 x 16.8 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Cloisters Collection, 1954 (54.1.1).

As much as a book of hours is about devotion to the Virgin, the heart of the Christian story is still the drama and suffering of the Passion of Christ, a narrative expressively explored in detail in the Belles Heures.

The Hours of the Passion is a longer version of the Hours of the Cross, and the Belles Heures has both, with a full cycle of illuminations in the (less common) Hours of the Passion. There are three miniatures for Matins, and two each for all the other hours, providing the Limbourgs with a more expansive canvas for narrative than any of the other traditional sections of the book of hours. Seventeen full-page illuminations, including three scenes of the crucifixion, permit a detailed depiction of the physical and emotional trials suffered by Jesus between the Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane (Folio 123r) and the Soldiers at the Tomb (Folio 152v).

This traditional suite of illuminations was probably completed by the Limbourg brothers before they began any of the added picture cycles, and we can see that they are not yet mature as artists. Some of the scenes reveal weakness in  the depiction of space. In the Mocking of Christ (Folio 131v), for example, the right and left edge of the miniature is defined by a slender colonnette. Follow that colonnette to the bottom and it clearly appears in the front plane of the space, but follow it to the top and its capital may be behind the miter of the priest. That capital also supports a series of arches that seem to be behind the action of the figures.

Illumination from Folio 131v

Or look at the large figure in pink at the right in the scene of Pilate washing his hands (Folio 138r). His elbow is cut off; does it go behind Pilate? But the bottom of his robe clearly indicates that he is in a plane in front of Pilate’s throne.

Illumination from Folio 138r

But if there are deficiencies here in the depiction of space, there is strength in story-telling. Despite being a traditional section, in which the text largely consists of prayers and psalms, the scenes do reflect the narrative interests of the patron and the expressive skills of the artists. The various moments of the story, dependent as they are upon earlier artistic precedents, yet address novel anecdotes and include unusual details.

Illumination from Folio 123v

I was startled the other day to notice that Judas has a halo in the complicated scene on Folio 123v, which can be called either The Betrayal or The Arrest of Christ, as both moments are depicted. In fact, this one page is full of separate episodes, described variously in the different Gospel accounts: Judas reveals the identity of Christ and betrays him by kissing him; Peter, the hothead, cuts off Malchus’ ear; Christ heals the ear and tells Peter to put up his sword; Peter sheaths his sword; the Roman soldiers grab Christ and arrest him as others hold up lanterns. Each of these separate moments is here, similar to the versions of this scene in other books of hours owned by Jean de Berry, such as the Petites Heures (Paris, BNF, ms. Lat. 18014, fol. 76), but only in the Belles Heures is Judas shown with a nimbus.  This is a rare but not unknown iconography. For example, Judas has a halo in a French Life of Christ from the twelfth century (Morgan Library, M. 44, fol. 7v; see image), and fourteenth-century examples exist, too. A generation after the Belles Heures, all the iconographical details of the scene, including the haloed Judas, recur in a book of hours from Poitiers, around 1450 (Morgan Library, M. 190, fol. 42r; see image). Perhaps the most dramatic version of the scene is in a fresco by Fra Angelico in San Marco in Florence, which presents Judas in a black halo (see image). This all fascinates me, because it raises a crucial question: Who decided to put that halo on Judas in the Belles Heures? Who decided to add a detail of iconography that has theological implications—the artists, the patron, or some other spiritual advisor to the duke that we don’t know about?

Illumination and detail from Folio 141v

The scene of Christ being nailed to the cross (Folio 141v) gives us another opportunity to see an underdrawing that was never executed, the crown of thorns sketched under the green ground, visible just under and to the left of Christ’s chest. It is a bit surprising to me that more is not made of the crown of thorns, as Jean de Berry owned a large reliquary of one of the thorns, one of the very few of his jeweled treasures to survive (see image). There is no scene of the crowning, and Jesus does not wear the crown in any of the passion scenes.

Illumination and detail from Folio 142r

Each of the three Crucifixion scenes adds action and detail to the story.  In the first, Folio 142r, Jesus is offered the vinegar-soaked sponge. This is the first appearance in the manuscript of a shield decorated with an expressive face, a detail the Limbourgs repeated on multiple occasions (Folio 152v, Folio 156r, and Folio 198).

Illumination from Folio 145r

In the second crucifixion scene (Folio 145r), he is pierced with the lance by the Roman soldier Longinus. This episode shows a detail derived from The Golden Legend that is rarely depicted in art: The blind Longinus’ arms are directed by another figure, but the blood and water running from Christ’s wounds heals his blindness. Meanwhile, other figures at the foot of the toss dice for Christ’s robe.

Illumination from Folio 145v

The final crucifixion scene, Folio 145v, is the most surprising of all: Here in the midst of this manuscript full of intense saturated color, we see a dark and ominous image, almost in grisaille. Our eye needs to adjust to see the subtle colors to read the scene, and then we realize how faithful it is to the Gospel account: At the hour of Jesus’ death, the sky grew dark, the earth opened up, rocks broke, and the dead climbed out of their graves.

Illumination from Folio 149r

The Deposition on Folio 149r is interesting to compare with that marking the Hours of the Cross (Folio 80r), for while that one is more devotional, almost presenting the figure of Christ like an icon, this one is more narrative, giving a real sense of the weight of the body being lowered, even if the figure of Nicodemus (shown in the saffron-colored robe) is not entirely clear.

Illuminations from Folio 149v and Folio 152r

Both the Lamentation (Folio 149v) and the Entombment (Folio 152r) feature mourning women grasping their hair, an expressive detail that seems to be borrowed from an Italian source. Some scholars have speculated that the Limbourg brothers visited Italy, but they could also have become aware of Italian art monuments through drawings and pattern books that circulated in this period. Northern influence can also be seen in the bloodied and angular figure of Christ in the Lamentation, so similar to a painting by the Limbourgs’ uncle Maelwel, also written Malouel, now in the collection of the Louvre (see image).

—Wendy A. Stein

Above: Details of illuminations from Folio 221r, Folio 15r, and Folio 73v from the Belles Heures of Jean de France, duc de Berry, 1405–1408/9. Herman, Paul, and Jean de Limbourg (Franco-Netherlandish, active in France by 1399–1416). French; Made in Paris. Ink, tempera, and gold leaf on vellum; 9 3/8 x 6 5/8 in. (23.8 x 16.8 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Cloisters Collection, 1954 (54.1.1).

Last week saw a wonderful gathering of scholarly thought and performance around the Belles Heures, and I want to share a few highlights of two very different events presented here at the Museum.

The Sunday at the Met series offers free programs in the Museum’s Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium. It includes lectures, films, panel discussions, literary presentations, and musical performances based on a special exhibition or cultural theme. Last week’s program—in conjunction with the two current medieval exhibitions, The Art of Illumination and The Mourners—included two speakers and a special musical performance. (Videos of each part of the program are available on the Museum’s YouTube channel.)

First, Christopher de Hamel of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, one of the world’s greatest experts on medieval manuscripts, presented “The Belles Heures after the Duke of Berry,” which addressed a great mystery: What happened to the manuscript during the five hundred years between 1417 (when it was bought by Yolande of Aragon, one year after the duke’s death) and its rediscovery in the nineteenth century? Using scraps of evidence in the manuscript itself, a close reading of the duke’s inventories, an encyclopedic knowledge of history and the market for manuscripts, and an inside story on recent scholarship, Christopher has pieced together a convincing theory that the manuscript was in the safekeeping of the cathedral of Le Mans for centuries, where it would have been kept in a shrine, perfectly preserved. He extracted specific valuations for the Belles Heures and other manuscripts from the 1416 and 1936 inventories, demonstrating the fluctuation of value associated with the quality of the art within, compared with the jeweled bindings in which some were encased in the Middle Ages. During the course of his talk, he also suggested the possibility that one of the duke’s portraits in the manuscript (Folio 91r) was actually repainted at one point to depict the duke’s nephew, and that the portrait assumed to be the duchess (Folio 91v) is instead Yolande of Aragon, queen of Sicily. (Watch the video of Christopher de Hamel’s lecture.)

Details from Folio 91r and Folio 91v

For the third event of the day, Richard Porterfield, a scholar, performer of medieval music and liturgy, and founding member of the vocal ensemble Lionheart, put together a truly illuminating presentation based on part of text from the Office of the Dead. (The second presentation—an excellent lecture by Sherry Lindquist, visiting assistant professor at Knox College, about The Mourners—was called “Innovations in Sculpture and the Status of Artists at the Court of Burgundy.” I encourage everyone to watch the video.) As I mentioned in last week’s post, the Office of the Dead has only one miniature in the Belles Heures, but Richard’s presentation included the following text pages (including Folio 101r) as well, which he brought to life by chanting them with his students from the Scuola Cantorum of Mannes College and by simultaneously projecting their images (and running translations) in real time.

Detail of text from Folio 101r

Through Richard’s performance, we in the audience were able to realize as never before the liturgical sound of this office—the beautiful chant, and the way an antiphon differs musically from the recital of a psalm. As this office is the one place in a book of hours where the text is the same as that used by the clergy, we could imagine that Jean de Berry would have been familiar with the sound of it being chanted, and that someone reading the text in the book of hours might recall in his or her own mind the way it sounded in church. The presentation made me understand the way the manuscript is full of silent music—that all its prayers might recall their presence in a fully liturgical context in which they were sung a capella, not spoken.

The second event of the week was a “Scholars’ Day” on Monday, while the Museum was closed to the public. Thirty scholars were invited to enjoy the exhibition in private and to discuss it afterward as a group. This special privilege furthers the Museum’s mission of education and research; shared exchange among scholars in the presence of the art is the seedbed of profound understanding and new discovery. Our discussion’s moderators included three eminent thinkers: Thomas Kren, Curator of Manuscripts at the Getty Museum; James Marrow, Professor Emeritus of Art History, Princeton University; and Roger Wieck, Curator of Medieval Manuscripts at the Morgan Library. Along with Tim Husband, curator of the exhibition, they opened the day by posing some questions to consider. An unstructured hour of looking followed, with all participants closely examining the illuminations. After lunch, the group reconvened in the galleries and a lively roundtable discussion ensued.

Details from Folio 17v and Folio 74v

One of the big themes was the exceptionally close relationship between the Limbourg brothers and their patron, Jean de Berry, and the way it likely affected not only what was painted but also how it was painted. The inclusion in the manuscript of exciting stories, violent themes, and even comic relief draws upon interests of the patron that the teenage artists were well equipped to deliver. The representation of nude or semi-nude bodies (Folio 17v and Folio 74v, for example) speaks to a sensualist taste as well as to forward-looking artistic achievement. This last observation caused the scholars to discuss a controversial 2001 article by Michael Camille.

Illumination from Folio 136r

At times, specific details were clarified. The identification of one figure in the Hours of the Passion (in Folio 136r) was changed. The layout of the text in two columns (in the traditional sections) was explained as a possible imitation of the style of clerical books. The way the Belles Heures does not appear to have been well planned in advance was noted; it was even called a hodgepodge! The Belles Heures was characterized as the fulcrum in the development of the Limbourgs between the Bible Moralisée discussed in “The Penitential Psalms” post (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms Fr166; see image) and the Très Riches Heures. Italianate influences were mentioned, but whether they were the result of drawings circulating in France or of direct travel to Italy was not determined. The tendency of members of the royal French family to own multiple books of hours was documented. The extraordinary technical accomplishment of the Limbourgs in the handling of pigments and gold was extolled. The wonderful term “microscopic realism” was coined.

Another big theme we discussed was the identification of separate hands in the Belles Heures: Can we identify the three individual brothers here, as Millard Meiss did forty years ago? Everyone recognizes differences among the illuminations, whether in quality and monumentality, style of figural representation, depiction of space or other matters (compare Folio 63r and Folio 138v, for example):

Illuminations from Folio 63r and Folio 138v

These differences could be attributed to the narrative needs of the particular illumination, the development of the artists over the course of creating the book, different hands, or even an off day. We don’t even know if all three brothers were artists, or whether each had a different task associated with the making of the manuscript. Margaret Lawson, the principal conservator of the Belles Heures, brought a book of infrared photographs of the manuscript, which had led her to discern different hands.

Infrared photographs of Folio 141v and Folio 205v

You can read more about this in Margaret’s writings in the appendix to The Art of Illumination catalogue, as well as in an article for an earlier exhibition on the Limbourg brothers held in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Ultimately there was no concurrence as to the identification of hands—some present indicated that if we had no documentary evidence of three brothers, we might not assume multiple hands at all. There was agreement, however, that for art historians the question is vital, useful to be posed, and important to consider. For us to hold ourselves to looking closely and identifying similarities and differences is a prerequisite to the in-depth examination of art that is fundamental to its appreciation and understanding.

—Wendy A. Stein

Sources

Camille, Michael. “‘For our devotion and pleasure’: The Sexual Objects of Jean Duc de Berry.” In Other Objects of Desire: Collectors and Collecting Queerly, edited by Michael Camille and Adrian Rifkin. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001.

Lawson, Margaret. “The Belles Heures of Jean, Duc de Berry: The Materials and Techniques of the Limbourg Brothers.” In The Limbourg Brothers: Reflections on the Origins and the Legacy of Three Illuminators from Nijmegen. Edited by Rob Dückers and Pieter Roelofs. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2005.

Lawson, Margaret. “Technical Observations: Materials, Techniques, and Conservation of the Belles Heures Manuscript.” In The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and The Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry by Timothy Husband. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008.

Meiss, Millard. French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry—The Limbourgs and their Contemporaries. New York: Braziller, 1974.

Meiss, Millard and Elizabeth Beatson. The Belles Heures of Jean, Duke of Berry. New York: Braziller, 1974.