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The Belles Heures in The Cloisters collection in New York City is one of the great monuments of fifteenth-century French manuscript illumination. Art historical examination of the manuscript has focused primarily on the miniatures by the Van Lymborch brothers. Style and iconography have been the primary focus of art historians. Going back to Millard Meiss's catalog of manuscripts appended to his monumental study of early fifteenth-century Parisian manuscript production, works are sorted by miniature style. Much of the beauty of this page is attributable to the nameless craftsman responsible for the magnificent border decoration.  French court culture can be characterized as a display culture which put great emphasis on the material display of wealth. The work of the decorators played a major role in creating the sense of magnificence of a luxury manuscript like the Belles Heures. While the beauty of the marginal decoration is acknowledged, it has rarely been systematically studied. The roles of the scribes and decorators have been only given marginal consideration. As the topics in this website will attempt to demonstrate, examination of the script and marginal decoration can reveal links between manuscripts otherwise not observed by just focusing on the miniatures and give us a better picture of the workings of the book industry.  The marginal does matter.

BnF fr. 598, folio 86r, Thamar.

BnF fr. 598, folio 47r, Polyxena.

Miniature style will only be given secondary consideration on this website. A challenge for the art historian studying miniature style has been to identify the contributions of individual makers. Reflecting his grounding in Italian painting, Millard Meiss assumed a miniature style was the creation of an individual. More recent scholarship has called into question this assumption. Christine Andrews in her study of the work Meiss related to the Boucicaut Master has come to the conclusion that a group of illuminators worked collaboratively and inventively in a common style.1 This is a view echoed by Catherine Reynolds in her sensible assessment of the work associated with the Bedford Master. She writes: "Instead of looking for a Bedford Master, it is perhaps more realistic to refer simply to a Bedford Style, which originated with the artist or artists who led the illumination of the ducal manuscripts and which changed with time and with personnel, without drawing conclusions about that personnel."2 Such a model works for other miniature styles like that Meiss identifies with his Master of Berry's Cleres femmes. Even within the eponymous manuscript, BnF fr. 598, there is such variety that it is difficult to isolate the work of a specific individual. Contrast the subtle modeling and airiness of the Thamar miniature  to the expressiveness of the Polyxena illustration.  Following the lead of Andrews and Reynolds, I will avoid attributing miniatures to specific individuals. I will leave to others with keener eyes to discriminate the work of specific individuals.

St. Maur Hours, Paris, BnF Nouv. Acq. Lat. 3107, folio 33r.

Ironically while standardization and consistency were essential for the work of decorators in order to maintain the integrity of a manuscript, I feel much more confident in identifying the work of the individual decorator. Repetition of a common repertoire of decorative elements like rinceaux leaves, bar staffs, initials, and line-endings allow for direct comparisons and the isolation of the contributions of specific makers. In a 1993 article, I examined the work of a decorator identified as the A Master of the Belles Heures. 3 The work of the A Master's principal collaborator in the Belles Heures, the B Master, has been the subject of recent research by Rob Dückers.4 The page from the Belles Heures illustrated above is a prime example of this decorator's work  which is identifiable in details like the penned rinceaux with tendrils formed by a curl terminated by a comparatively tight curlicue. The sawtooth outlining of the cornerpieces of the staff and the pronounced cusping of the rinceaux leaves are also characteristic of this decorator's work. The white filigree decoration of initials consistently have a serrated line. All these same elements are found on a page from the St. Maur Hours. The same elaborate staff of bunches of ivy leaves weaving back and forth along a central stem is used on both pages. A repertoire of elaborate staffs can be identified for individual decorators.5

Catherine Reynolds in her article on the Bedford style cited earlier concludes her essay by observing the value of a study of the border decoration as a way of dating and sorting the groups of Bedford manuscripts.  One of the topics to be introduced will be the decoration of a group of manuscripts that can be connected to the beginnings of the Bedford style.

 

Stages of Completion in the Salisbury Breviary (BnF lat. 17294)

This essay examines the production of the three earliest copies of the French translation of Boccaccio's De Claris Mulieribus: BnF fr. 12420 which was presented to Philip the Bold, the Duke of Burgundy, by the Italian merchant Jacques Rapondi on New Year's Day of 1403; BnF fr. 598 which Jean de Berry was given in February of 1404; and KBR 9509, a copy which appears in the inventories of the Burgundian collection. Study of these manuscripts will show that every stage of their production—from the work of the scribes, through the execution of the secondary decoration, to the conception of the miniature cycles—is interconnected. The same scribes appear in multiple manuscripts, while many of the artists responsible for the secondary decoration collaborated across different copies. Although the miniature cycles were executed by different painters, they nevertheless follow the same iconographic program, apparently derived from a common set of verbal instructions, most likely devised by the otherwise unknown translator of Boccaccio’s text.

The previous essay examined the three earliest copies of the French translation of Boccaccio's De claris mulieribus. This present essay expands the scope of this study to a larger group of manuscripts. Central in this discussion will be manuscripts connected with the activity of the Lucchese merchant  Jacques Rapondi in providing books for Philippe le Hardi.  In addition to Philippe's copy of the Boccaccio text (BnF fr. 12420), Rapondi is linked in the Burgundian accounts with a copy of the Livre des Propriétés des choses in the Bibliothèque royale (KBR 9094) and a Hayton, Fleur des histoires de la terre d'Orient (BnF fr. 12201).  Examination of the scribal work and the secondary decoration of these manuscripts reveal the activity of many of the same scribes and decorators who were responsible for the early copies of the Boccaccio Cleres femmes. On the basis of the identification of these makers additional manuscripts including a Bible historiale in Soissons (Bibliothèque municipale, Mss. 210-212) and a Bible moralisée in the Vatican (Reg. lat. 25) can likely be connected to Rapondi and the patronage of Philippe le Hardi.  Special attention is directed to a scribe who can be identified as Oudin de Carvanay whose name appears in a copy of Guillaume de Deguileville's Pélerinages (BnF fr. 823). Oudin can be seen to be the primary scribe of many of these projects. Evidence suggests he played a supervisory role and was likely the libraire responsible for coordinating the production of these manuscripts.

Future Projects

The Decoration of Douce 144 and Related Manuscripts

The Creation of a Group of Bible historiales

The Work of Petrus Gilberti

A Reconsideration of a Marginal Master: other works by the Belles heures A Master

Lost in the Shuffle: the Production of three Books of Hours connected to the Master of the Brussels Initials.

  1. Christine Geisler Andrews, "The Boucicaut Masters," Gesta, 41, 2002, pp. 29-38. [↩]
  2. Catherine Reynolds, "The Workshop of the Master of the Duke of Bedford: Definitions and Identities," in Patrons, Authors and Workshops: Books and Book Production in Paris around 1400, Godfried Croenen and Peter Aisnworth eds., Louvain, 2006, pp. 437-472, p. 449 esp. [↩]
  3. Allen S. Farber, "Considering a Marginal Master: The Work of an Early Fifteenth-Century, Parisian Manuscript Decorator," Gesta, 32, 1993, pp. 21-39. See also Allen S. Farber,"A Study of the Secondary Decoration of the Belles Heures and Related Manuscripts" (unpublished doctoral thesis, Cornell University, 1980). [↩]
  4. Rob Dückers, "An Unrecorded Book of Hours for Jean, Duke of Berry?" Maelwael Van Lymborch Studies 2, pp. 88-109 and idem, "The B Master Hours Revisited: A Lost Duc de Berry Book of Hours Hypothesized, Maelwael Van Lymborch Studies 3, pp. 198-225. [↩]
  5. See Farber, 1993, especially pp. 24-25 and Figure 14. [↩]
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