The Art of Illumination

Above: Details of illuminations from Folio 94v, Folio 95r, and Folio 96v 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 inserts another novel picture cycle between traditional sections, and we get to enjoy another display of the Limbourg brothers’ genius. This story is taken from a thirteenth-century Life of Saint Bruno, and like the other added sections, the text is reduced to four lines per page in alternating red and blue ink. It recounts the legend around Saint Bruno’s foundation of the Carthusian order, a reformist monastic sect that allowed individual monks to live as hermits but with some communal elements. Jean de Berry’s brother Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, was a major patron of the Carthusian Order and built its famous monument, the Chartreuse de Champmol in Dijon. (Incidentally, the Chartreuse in Dijon is also where John the Fearless—Philip’s son and Jean de Berry’s nephew—was buried. His tomb featured the carved alabaster figures of mourners now on view at the Met in the special exhibition The Mourners: Tomb Sculpture from the Court of Burgundy.) Read more »

Above: Details of illuminations from Folio 73v, Folio 80r, and Folio 91r 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).

It is a jolt to move from the Penitential Psalms, which were among the earliest pages to be painted, to the Institution of the Great Litany, one of the added picture-book cycles created when the Limbourg brothers were more fully developed as artists. The Great Litany was one of the last sections to be completed, and the illuminations represent the artists near the pinnacle of their powers of expressive narration. Here, in a single, inserted bifolium—one sheet of parchment folded to make four pages—we see a great drama of life, death, and faith played out. Read more »

Above: Detail of illumination from Folio 66r 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 Book of Psalms from the Hebrew Bible forms the backbone of a great deal of Christian liturgy, and the text of the psalms provided much of the text of a standard book of hours. In addition to the psalms embedded within various sections throughout the manuscript, many books of hours, including the Belles Heures, have a specific section dedicated to the seven penitential psalms (Psalms 6, 31, 37, 50, 101, 129, and 142 in the Douai translation). Read more »

Above: Details of illuminations from Folio 30r, Folio 54v, and Folio 57r 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 essential text of any book of hours is the Hours of the Virgin, also known as the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is a devotional work composed of a set of psalms interspersed with lessons, prayers, and brief phrases of praise and petition. It was first written in the ninth century for the use of the clergy, but adapted over time for the laity, and was extremely popular from the mid-thirteenth through sixteenth centuries. By the end of the period, printed books rather than manuscripts dominated. The “hours” refer to the eight canonical hours of the day: Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline. These hours were based in the ancient Roman systems for time, and were the hours of prayer in the Divine Office, chanted in monasteries and by the clergy, beginning with Matins and Lauds, which were sung before dawn. Books of hours were also used to teach children to read; the word “primer” comes from “Prime,” the first daytime hour. Read more »

Above: Details of illuminations from Folio 15r, Folio 17r, and Folio 19v 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).

Every book of hours is unique in some way. What makes the Belles Heures unique is the addition of seven “picture book” cycles. Unlike the texts traditional to books of hours, these are not prayers or other devotional writing, but highly abbreviated narratives—stories about saints and sacred history. The texts are shortened versions of stories mostly taken from The Golden Legend, a popular collection of saints’ lives dating to the thirteenth century. But while the texts are abbreviated, the illustrations in the Belles Heures are not. In one sense, they’re like children’s picture books in that they have a succession of richly detailed painted images with only a few lines of text per page. The picture book cycles seem to have been added to the manuscript after the traditional sections were completed, to showcase the Limbourg brothers’ talents as artists, and to give Jean de Berry more action pictures to enjoy. Read more »

Since we’re talking about calendars, I’d like to point out a particularly lucky calendar confluence for those of us who are in New York right now (and for those who aren’t, how worthwhile it would be to visit). Three extraordinary exhibitions of medieval art with complex interrelations are here for a few more months.

At the Met, we have both The Art of Illumination and The Mourners. These exhibitions are related by patronage: the Valois dynasty was the patron in both cases, as Jean de Berry was the uncle of John the Fearless (Jean sans Peur), whose tomb is celebrated in The Mourners. Meanwhile, at The Morgan Library and Museum, you can see the exhibition Demons and Devotion: The Hours of Catherine of Cleves, featuring a different book of hours that has been taken apart to show many of its illuminations as individual leaves. The Hours of Catherine of Cleves was made a generation after the Belles Heures and was painted in the Netherlands rather than France. Having two luxury books of hours exhibited this way is unprecedented, and there is no better way to understand both the uniqueness and the shared, key features of every book of hours. Each book exemplifies private, personal ownership and devotion, and Catherine of Cleves made different choices than Jean de Berry.

—Wendy Stein

Above: Folio 1r, Folio 97v, and Folio 149r from the Belles Heures of Jean of France, duc de Berry, 1405–1408/9. Herman, Paul, and Jean 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).

Welcome to the journey through the illuminated pages of the Belles Heures manuscript, occasioned by the current exhibition The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. While the exhibition is on view, now through June 13, 2010, I will post weekly discussions of one or more sections of the manuscript. I welcome your comments or questions—about the weekly posts or about the exhibition itself. (See About This Blog for more information about submitting comments.) Above all, I hope you will enjoy the richness of images presented here from the pages of the glorious Belles Heures; see Manuscript Pages for a complete list of images of the illuminations from this magnificent manuscript. Read more »