Flemish Manuscript Painting in Context

Flemish Manuscript Painting in Context
Recent Research
Flemish Manuscript Painting in Context

Recent Research
Edited by Elizabeth Morrison and Thomas Kren
Based on symposia held at

the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
(September 5 6, 2003), and at
the Courtauld Institute of Art, London
(February 21, 2004, under the
sponsorship of the Courtauld Institute
and the Royal Academy of Arts),
with an additional essay by Margaret Scott
the j. paul getty museum, los angeles
This publication is based on selected papers presented at two symposia, one at

the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (September 5 6, 2003), the other at the
Courtauld Institute of Art, London (February 21, 2004, under the sponsorship
of the Courtauld Institute and the Royal Academy of Arts), and a lecture by
Margaret Scott presented at the Getty Museum August 7, 2003. These events
were held in conjunction with the exhibition lluminating the Renaissance:
The Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe, held at the J. Paul Getty
Museum, Los Angeles, from June 17 to September 7, 2003, and at The Royal
Academy of Arts, London, from November 25, 2003, to February 22, 2004.
2006 J. Paul Getty Trust

Getty Publications
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 500
Los Angeles, California 90049-1682
www.getty.edu
Mark Greenberg, Editor in Chief
Dinah Berland, Editor
Karen Jacobson, Manuscript Editor
Kurt Hauser, Designer
Anita Keys, Production Coordinator
Typesetting by Diane Franco
Printed and bound by Tien Wah Press, Singapore
Unless otherwise specied, all photographs are courtesy of the institution that
owns the work illustrated.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Flemish manuscript painting in context : recent research / edited by Elizabeth
Morrison and Thomas Kren.
p. cm.
Based on symposia held at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (September
5 6, 2003), and at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London (February 21, 2004,
under the sponsorship of the Courtauld Institute and the Royal Academy of Arts),
with an additional essay by Margaret Scott.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-89236-852-5 (pbk.)
ISBN-10: 0-89236-852-7 (pbk.)
1. Illumination of books and manuscripts, Flemish Congresses. 2. Illumination
of books and manuscripts, RenaissanceFlanders Congresses. I. Morrison,
Elizabeth, 1968 II. Kren, Thomas, 1950 III. J. Paul Getty Museum. IV.
Courtauld Institute of Art.
ND3171.F54 2006
745.6'7094931 dc22
2006004171
Front cover
Simon Bening, Saint Luke (detail, g. 6.1).
Back cover
Attributed to the Master of the First Prayer Book of
Maximilian (Alexander Bening?), painted border with dragonfly (detail, g. 13.5).
Frontispiece
Clockwise from upper left: Master of Edward IV, Mary
Magdalene (detail, g. 2.12); Master of Fitzwilliam 268,
Herdsmen Tityrus and Melibeous (detail, g. 10.1); Ghent
Associate of the Vienna Master of Mary of Burgundy, Virgin
and Child with Jan van der Scaghe and Anne de Memere
(detail, g. 1.1); Master of Antoine Rolin, painted border
with crying eyes (detail, g. 13.4); Master of James IV of
Scotland, painted border with The Rest on the Flight into
Egypt (g. 5.22); Attributed to the Master of the First
Prayer Book of Maximilian (Alexander Bening?), painted
border with dragonfly (detail, g. 13.5); Master of Girart de
Roussilon, The Wedding of Girart de Roussilon and Berthe
(detail, g. 4.9); Vienna Master of Mary of Burgundy, Mary
of Burgundy(?) Reading Her Devotions (detail, g. 4.5);
center: Rogier van der Weyden, Presentation of the
Manuscript to Philip the Good (detail, g. 7.1).
Page ix
Master of James IV of Scotland, The Tower of Babel, in the
Grimani Breviary (detail, fig. 13.6).
Contents
vii
Preface
Part 1: Illuminated Manuscripts in the Burgundian Court
chapter 1. Jan van der Scaghe and Anne de Memere, the First Owners of the Hours
se
of 1480 in the Abbey Library at Nov R
Lorne Campbell
9
chapter 2. The Undecorated Margin: The Fashion for Luxury Books without Borders
Catherine Reynolds
27
chapter 3. A Very Burgundian Hero: The Figure of Alexander the Great under the Rule
of Philip the Good

Chrystle Blondeau
43
chapter 4. The Role of Dress in the Image of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy
Margaret Scott
Part 2: Techniques, Media, and the Organization of Production
57
chapter 5. The Suggestive Brush: Painting Techniques in Flemish Manuscripts from
the Collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Huntington Library
Nancy K. Turner
75
chapter 6. Flemish Manuscript Production, Care, and Repair: Fifteenth-Century Sources
Lieve Watteeuw
87
chapter 7. Rogier van der Weyden and Manuscript Illumination
Lorne Campbell
103
chapter 8. On Relationships between Netherlandish Drawing and Manuscript
Illumination in the Fifteenth Century

Stephanie Buck
117
chapter 9. Flemish Illuminated Manuscripts: Assessing Archival Evidence
Jan Van der Stock

Part 3: Individual Illuminators
123
chapter 10. The Master of Fitzwilliam 268: New Discoveries and New and Revisited
Hypotheses
Gregory T. Clark
135
chapter 11. Marketing Books for Burghers: Jean Markants Activity in Tournai, Lille,
and Bruges
Dominique Vanwijnsberghe
149
chapter 12. Iconographic Originality in the Oeuvre of the Master of the David Scenes
Elizabeth Morrison
Part 4: Directions for Further Research

163
chapter 13. Scholarship on Flemish Manuscript Illumination of the Renaissance:
Remarks on Past, Present, and Future

James H. Marrow
177
chapter 14. One Hundred Years of the Study of Netherlandish Manuscripts
Jonathan J. G. Alexander
183
Appendix
Scribe Biographies
Richard Gay
189
191
198
About the Contributors

Index
Photograph Credits
vii
P re f a c e
While working on the catalogue for Illuminating the Renaissance: The

Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe, we and our colleague Scot
McKendrick, who coorganized the exhibition with Thomas Kren, were constantly reminded of the extraordinary vitality of research in the eld of Flemish
manuscript illumination. Even as entries and essays for the catalogue were
being completed for editing, new articles, exhibition catalogues, and books
were appearing that dealt with one aspect or another of the sprawling topic of
Flemish book painting between 1470 and 1560. While there was clearly a need
for a synthetic treatment of the subject in the form of an exhibition and a catalogue, the tremendous scope and richness of the literature that had preceded
our endeavor, going back 150 years, often gave us pause. And there seemed to
be noteworthy additions to the literature every month. Thus, when the opportunity arose to hold symposia in conjunction with both the Los Angeles and
London presentations of the exhibition, signicant scholarship was easy to
identify, sometimes happily arising from the exhibition itself. If anything, the
two conferences proved insufcient to feature all the new research. In the catalogue itself we had deliberately limited the number of contributors in order to
give the volume as unied a scholarly perspective as possible. The conferences
offered the opportunity for a broader range of voices, viewpoints, and methodologies to be heard.
This volume includes a selection of the papers that were presented
at the two symposia. The rst was held at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles
on September 5 6, 2003, under the auspices of the museum, and the second
took place at the Courtauld Institute in London on February 21, 2004, under
the sponsorship of the Courtauld Institute and the Royal Academy of Art. We
have also included a related paper, with changes, by Margaret Scott that was
delivered in the Illuminating the Renaissance lecture series at the Getty on
August 7, 2003. The papers encompass a variety of approaches to the material,
including traditional studies in the form of essays on individual illuminators,
their chronologies, and the denition of their production; cross-disciplinary
research that takes into account cultural inuences; examination of fashions in
Flemish book design; analysis of manuscript illumination by a paintings specialist; and new methods of stylistic analysis abetted by scientic technology.
One of the themes that recurs in many of the papers concerns the evidence of
collaboration of different kinds within the production of a given manuscript or
project. Some of the essays respond to particular issues raised in the catalogue,
while others present entirely different themes and avenues of research.
We are grateful to Deborah Gribbon and William Griswold, former
director and former acting director, respectively, of the Getty Museum, as well
as our new director, Michael Brand, for supporting a program of scholarly
symposia in conjunction with the museums exhibition program. We also thank
John Lowden and Scot McKendrick for organizing the Courtauld event. We are
indebted to the contributors for their original talks and for their efforts in turning their papers into publishable essays, often by taking into account the lively
discussion and debate that ensued at the symposia. Many were helpful in the
viii preface
revision of their colleagues papers. Maryan Ainsworth offered helpful counsel

in the formulation of this volume and in the shaping of several papers. Finally,
we would like to thank Scot McKendrick once again, for his characteristic
thoughtfulness and generosity in serving as an adviser to this publication.
While this volume is intended as a companion to the exhibition catalogue for Illuminating the Renaissance, it is also a sequel to a previous symposium on Flemish manuscript illumination, Margaret of York, Simon Marmion,
and the Visions of Tondal, held at the Getty in 1990 and published in 1992.
We are especially indebted to Richard Gay, Rita Keane, and Brandi Franzman,
who assisted with the planning and expertly handled the administration of the
symposium in Los Angeles. Mark Greenberg, editor in chief, and his ne staff
in the Publications Department are responsible for the production of this handsome book. Dinah Berland, editor; Karen Jacobson, copy editor; Anita Keys,
production coordinator; and Kurt Hauser, designer, were part of the same
superb team that produced the catalogue for Illuminating the Renaissance.
Thomas Kren
Elizabeth Morrison
This page intentionally left blank
Part 1: i l l u m i n at e d m a nu s c r i p t s i n t h e b u r g u n d i a n c o u rt
chapter 1
Jan van der Scaghe and Anne de Memere, the First Owners
se
of the Hours of 1480 in the Abbey Library at Nov R
Lorne Campbell
One of the most beautiful revelations of the Getty

Museums exhibition Illuminating the Renaissance: The Triumph of Flemish
Manuscript Painting in Europe was the book of hours from the Premonstraten e in the Czech Republic. On display were folios 16v and
sian Abbey of Nov Rs
17 (gs. 1.1, 1.2).1 The rst owners, represented praying before the Virgin and
Child on folio 16v, tried hard to ensure that they would be remembered. On the
added folios 16 and 17,2 they included their portraits; their coats of arms; their
initials, I and A; their mottoes, Je ne puis and Tous iours ioieuls;3 the date
1480; and a prayer in Dutch to the Virgin and Child, in which the initial letters
of the lines form acrostics of their names (gs. 1.2, 1.3). Because scholars had
not noticed the acrostics, the couple remained unidentied. The acrostics name
them ian van der scaghe and tannekin smemtrs. The illuminator of the
initials made a mistake in the thirteenth line on folio 17v, where he wrote T
instead of E (see g. 1.3). The line should read Eenpaerlic ghy draechd /[Raed.
troost. ghestadich], and the womans surname should be smemers, s Memers
or de Memere.4 Tannekin is a diminutive form of Anne; her name is therefore
Anne de Memere. It will be shown that Anne used the coat of arms represented
e manuscript, or else a chevron sable between three annulets(?)
in the Nov Rs
5
gules. The van der Scaghe family of Ghent used the coat of arms shown for the
man: argent a chevron gules between three molettes of eight points gules.6 The
man is Jan van der Scaghe, and the lady is his wife, Anne de Memere.
Anne de Memere and her sister were the last of a family that had prospered in Ypres (Ieper) between about 1375 and about 1445. Although no de
Memere took an active part in the government of the town, they intermarried
with its leading families.7 Born in about 1439, Anne was one of the four children of Jan de Memere, who died in about 1445 and who owned two houses
near the Menen Gate as well as land in the surrounding districts, at Zonnebeke,
Geluveld, Wijtschate, Dikkebus, and Vlamertinge.8 Annes widowed mother,
Anne de Brievere, married as her second husband Roeland Bryde, who in 1450
inherited the lordship of Boezinge and who died in or after 1461. He was frequently an alderman or councillor of Ypres, fought on the Burgundian side during the revolt of Ghent, and was described in 1455 by Philip the Good as notre
amez et feal escuier, who had served him in the Ghent war and in other ways.9
With his parents, Joos Bryde and Yolande Belle, and with his siblings, Roeland
was represented kneeling before the Virgin and Child in the memorial picture
of Yolande Belle, who died on February 1, 1421.10
2 campbell
Figure 1.1
Ghent Associate of the Vienna Master
of Mary of Burgundy. Virgin and Child
with Jan van der Scaghe and Anne de
Memere, in the Hours of Jan van der
e,
Scaghe and Anne de Memere. Nov Rs
e,
Premonstratensian Abbey of Nov Rs
Ms. 10, fol. 16 v.
Figure 1.2
Prayer, in the Hours of Jan van der
e,
e,
Ms. 10, fol. 17.
Figure 1.3
Prayer, in the Hours of Jan van der
e,
e,
Ms. 10, fol. 17 v.
chapter 1: jan van der scaghe and anne de memere
Annes brother, Adriaan de Memere, and their sister Catharina died

young. Her other sister, Marie, married in about 1460 Christiaan de Wale,
a rich widower who was frequently an alderman11 and who went in 1468
to Bruges as one of the representatives of Ypres at the marriage festivities of
Charles the Bold and Margaret of York.12 In 1466 Christiaan had acted as
procurator for Annes rst husband.13
Anne de Memere would have met her rst husband, Guilbert de
Ruple, in Ypres, where, between 1454 and 1463, he was an ofcial of the
Council of Flanders, then established in the town. He came from Poperinge
and was Philip the Goods receiver general of all the nances between 1464 and
1467, Charles the Bolds argentier between 1468 and 1470, again receiver
general between 1471 and 1472, treasurer of wars between 1472 and 1473,
and master of Margaret of Yorks chambre aux deniers in 1474.14 Anne and
Guilbert were married at Ypres on April 26, 1457.15 In 1471 they joined the
Bruges Confraternity of the Dry Tree.16 Guilbert died in 1474. Anne almost
immediately became a burgess of Ypres. By 1476 she had married Jan van der
Scaghe,17 and their book of hours is dated 1480, when Anne would have been
about forty.
The date of her death is not known; no references to any children have
been found. Her coat of arms impaled with that of her rst husband, Guilbert
de Ruple appeared on his tomb in the Church of Saint Bertin at Poperinge. It
was copied in a sixteenth-century collection of epitaphs in the University
Library in Ghent (g. 1.4). The same arms can still be seen carved into the
stonework of the Sacrament Chapel there, formerly the Lady Chapel,18 and
e manuscript.
correspond to the coat of arms represented in the Nov Rs
Figure 1.4
Epitaph of Guilbert de Ruple and Anne
de Memere, from the Epitaphier de
Flandre. Ghent, Universiteitsbibliotheek,
Ms. G. 12925, fol. 102.
4 campbell
Figure 1.5
Hugo van der Goes. Hippolyte de
Berthoz and Elisabeth Hugheyns,
from the Saint Hippolytus Triptych
(left wing), ca. 1475. Oil on oak,
91 40 cm (35 7 8 153 4 in.).
Bruges, Cathedral of Saint Salvator.
Figure 1.5
Hugo van der Goes. Hippolyte de
Berthoz and Elisabeth Hugheyns,
from the Saint Hippolytus Triptych
(left panel), after 1468. Bruges,
Cathedral of the Holy Savior.
Jan van der Scaghe came from a prominent Ghent family that intermarried with the Utenhoves and the Borluuts.19 His father, another Jan van der
Scaghe, was bailiff of the Abbey of Saint Peter in Ghent,20 and they owned
estates in the district south of Ghent.21 Jans mother was Jacqueline van de
Wyncle, and he had four sisters, one of whom, Elisabeth, married Jacob de
Gruutere and died, venerable and distinguished, in 1516.22 By 1464 65
Jan his name frenchied as Haquinet de le Scaghe was clerk to the
receiver general Guilbert de Ruple (Anne de Memeres rst husband),23 and he
remained in his service while he was argentier. In August 1469 Jehanin or
Jehan de Le Staghe, clerk to the argentier, was sent from The Hague to
Bruges to collect, from the goldsmith Grard Loyet, two collars of the Golden
Fleece and, from a priest named Jehan dInghelsche, ung ancien livret that
belonged to Charles the Bold.24 The priest had copied into it several prayers and
choses salutaires and had commissioned for it six ymages.25 Entrusted
with large amounts of money, Jan also traveled to Burgundy and then, in the
company of Guillaume de La Baume, to Bern.26
Between 1471 and 1473 Jan was commis la recette gnrale de
Bourgogne, in effect receiver of the duchy of Burgundy; his principal function
at Dijon was to repay various debts owed by Charles the Bold in Basel and elsewhere.27 In December 1473 he was made receiver of the taxes known as aides
in Holland and Friesland.28 By 1476 he had married Anne;29 by 1477 he was
counselor to Maximilian;30 and between 1477 and 1479 he was receiver of the
Bruges District of Flanders.31 Because many of the receivers accounts from this
troubled time have been lost, it has not been possible to chart exactly his subsequent career, but he was described in October 1480 as receiver general of
Flanders,32 in September 1482 as receiver of the extraordinary revenues
of Flanders,33 and in August 148334 and October 148435 as receiver general of
Flanders. In 1484 he was counselor to Maximilian.36 In 148537 and April
148938 he was called receiver general of Flanders; in 1494 he was receiver of the
extraordinary revenues of Flanders.39 In 1504 and 1510 he was once again
described as receiver general of Flanders.40 Although he is said to have been
buried with his father in the Dominican church in Ghent and to have died
in 1483,41 the epitaph collectors were not infallible, and the date of death is
clearly mistaken. He appears to have died during the 1510s.42 After the death
of Anne, he married a second wife, Margaretha van Hemsbrouck.43 It has not
been possible to establish whether he had children.
e Hours are reminiscent
The portraits of Jan and Anne in the Nov Rs
of the portraits of Hippolyte de Berthoz and his wife, Elisabeth Hugheyns, that
were added by Hugo van der Goes to a triptych of the martyrdom of Saint
Hippolytus begun by Dirk Bouts (g. 1.5).44 Like Jan van der Scaghe, Hippolyte
de Berthoz had been, in 1472, in the service of Guilbert de Ruple.45 He and
Jan must have been acquainted; Jan probably knew about the works of art that
Hippolyte commissioned.
6 campbell
The receivers general of all the nances, including Guilbert de Ruple,

and the receivers general of rich counties and duchies like Flanders and
Burgundy, including Jan van der Scaghe, were powerful and rich men whose
receiverships usually enabled them to become still richer. Most came from
relatively obscure backgrounds; several, like Jan van der Scaghe, started their
careers as clerks. They were upwardly mobile men on the make who frequently managed to become landowners and to have themselves ennobled.
They or their children often intermarried with noble families; many of their
descendants were to be absorbed into the nobility.46 The activities of these new
men and their wives as patrons of the arts should be further investigated. That
would make possible a reassessment of the relative signicance of the ruling
dynasty, the old nobility, and the new men in the development of the new
style of illumination.
It would be interesting to identify the building in the lower-right cor e miniature and to understand the importance that it held
ner of the Nov Rs
for the couple. More should be discovered about them, their residences, their
devices, and their mottoes. In 1480, the date of the miniature, Jan was described
as a parishioner of Saint Marys and Saint Peters in Ghent.47 It may prove possible to identify the illuminator one of the Ghent Associates of the Master
of Mary of Burgundy48 and to make connections between Jan and Anne and
the later owners of the book, who wrote on folio 1 names and passages in Latin
and Italian.49
Notes
This essay could not have been written

without the help of Albert Derolez, Jan
Dumolyn, Jelle Haemers, Anne Korteweg,
Thomas Kren, Scot McKendrick, Elizabeth
Morrison, Kristof Papin, Catherine Reynolds,
Nancy Turner, Christiane Van den BergenPantens, and Lieve Watteeuw. To all of them
I am exceedingly grateful.
1. Thomas Kren, in Thomas Kren and Scot
McKendrick, Illuminating the Renaissance:
The Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting
in Europe, exh. cat. (Los Angeles: J. Paul
Getty Museum, 2003), 180 81, no. 36.
See also J. Cibulka and A. Matejcek,
Francouzsk a msk iluminovan rukopisy
v knihovne Premonstrtsk Kanonie v Nov
si. (Soupisn psspevky), Pamtky archeoR
logick / Monuments archologiques: Revue
pour larchologie prhistorique et pour
lhistoire des beaux-arts en Tchco-Slovaquie
34 (1924 25): 22 40, esp. 3137 and pls.
xvi xix; Bodo Brinkmann, Die mische
Buchmalerei am Ende des Burgunderreiches:
Der Meister des Dresdener Gebetbuchs und
die Miniaturisten seiner Zeit (Turnhout:
Brepols, 1997), 124 29, 393, color pls.
1114, black-and-white pls. 10710.
2. Folio 16 is pasted to folio 15, the last folio
of one of the two ternions of the calendar;
folio 17 is an insertion held by a stub and by
sewing; the next gathering starts on folio 18.
I am grateful to Elizabeth Morrison, who, on
my behalf, examined the manuscript and
checked its collation.
3. These are perhaps answering mottoes with
the sense Je ne puis [tre] toujours joyeux
(I cannot be always joyful).
4. It was Albert Derolez who, in 2003, rst
pointed out to me the scribes mistake and
who, in consultation with Jan Dumolyn, rst
identied the lady.
5. The annulets appear in perspective.
6. The coat of arms appeared on the tomb of
Jan and his father, once in the Dominican
church at Ghent (Graf- en gedenkschriften
Oost Vlaanderen, 2nd ser., Kloosterkerken,
Gent, pt. 1 [Ghent, 1866], Predikheerenkerk,
24, no. 30); on various seals used by Jan
(see J.-Th. De Raadt, Sceaux armoris des
Pays-Bas et des pays avoisinants [Brussels:
Socit belge de librairie, 18971901], vol. 3,
367; on a seal used in 1478 and 1479, before
his fathers death, a label differenced the
arms); in various armorials (see, for instance,
Paul Bergmans, Armorial de Flandre du XVIe
sicle, familles et communes amandes
mtiers gantois [Brussels: G. van Oest, 1919],
fol. 69, no. 737), and in Philippe de lEspinoy,
Recherches des antiquitez et noblesse de

Flandres (Douai, 1632), 648, 669, etc.
7. Kristof Papin most kindly sent information
from the Merghelynck papers (Brussels,
Bibliothque royale de Belgique, Section des
Manuscrits, Fonds Merghelynck; copies in
the Stadsarchief at Ypres), which contain
information transcribed from records in the
old Stadsarchief of Ypres, destroyed in 1914.
8. Information sent by Kristof Papin and taken
from the Merghelynck transcripts, particularly
that of the Weeskamer record of 1448 concerning the estate of Jan de Memere. Papin
deduced Annes date of birth from the fact
that in 1457 she relieved her guardians of
their responsibilities, presumably because, at
eighteen, she had attained her majority.
9. Arthur Merghelynck, Recueil de gnalogies
indites de Flandre dresses sur titres et
daprs danciens manuscrits (Bruges, 1877),
vol. 2, 454; Kristof Papin, Een hertogelijk
parvenu in het kluwen van de heersende
machtsverhoudingen in de Ieperse stad en
kasselrij omstreeks het midden van de 15de
eeuw: De mislukte benoeming van Roeland
Bryde tot ontvanger van de kasselrij Ieper,
Handelingen der Maatschappij voor
Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde te Gent, n.s.,
56 (2002): 93109 (quotation on 102). Bryde
had also served Philips illegitimate son
Cornelis, who had been killed during the
Ghent war.
10. Ypres, Museum Godshuis Belle; reproduced in Margaret Scott, Late Gothic Europe,
14001500 (London: Mills and Boon, 1980),
106. See also R. H. Marijnissen, Schilderijen:
Echt, fraude, vals: Moderne onderzoekingsmethoden van de schilderijenexpertise
(Brussels: Elsevier, 1985), 354 61, who
suggested that the painting might be a
seventeenth-century copy.
11. Once again, I must acknowledge the generous help of Kristof Papin, who provided this
information; Christiaans rst wife and the
mother of two of his children was Catharina
Belle (Merghelynck, Recueil de gnalogies,
vol. 1, 121, 200).
12. Willem Pieter Blockmans, Handelingen
van de Leden en van de Staten van
Vlaanderen, 14671477 (Brussels: Paleis
der Academin, 1971), 28 29. Christiaan
went with two horses and was away from
Ypres for fourteen days.
13. De Raadt, Sceaux armoris, vol. 4, 187.
14. Kristof Papin, Guilbert de Ruple:
Biograe van een topman uit de
Bourgondische nancile administratie,
Handelingen der Maatschappij voor
Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde te Gent, n.s.,

52 (1999): 99 123.
15. Jan Dumolyn, Staatsvorming en vorstelijke
ambtenaren in het graafschap Vlaanderen
(14191477) (Antwerp and Apeldoorn:
Garant, 2003, and Proso Data [CD-ROM],
s.v. Guilbert de Ruple), has discovered an
undated letter (Lille, Archives dpartementales
du Nord, 12 g 29) in which Guilbert, clerk
to Jan Wielant, grefer of the Council of
Flanders, invited the Chapter of Saint Peters
in Lille to his forthcoming marriage at Ypres
on Tuesday, April 26, to Anne, daughter of
deceased Jehan de Memere. Dumolyn dated
the letter 1440, but it is clearly from 1457,
when April 26 again fell on a Tuesday.
16. Bruges, Stadsarchief, Gilde Droogenboom,
Ledenlijst van de gilde, fol. 13.
17. Papin, Guilbert de Ruple, 119, 121.
18. Papin, Guilbert de Ruple, 117.
19. See, for example, Philippe de lEspinoy,
Recherches, 243; Stroobant, Notice historique et gnalogique sur les seigneurs
dOisquercq et de Val, Annales de lAcadmie
darchologie de Belgique 5 (1848): 351 432,
esp. 369; and particularly J. Wyseur, De familie Utenhove en de Bourgondische staatsvorming (ca. 1384 ca. 1460) (Ph.D. diss., licentiaatsverhandeling, Ghent, 2000), vol. 2, 1015.
Once again, I must acknowledge the generous
help of Jelle Haemers, who brought this dissertation to my attention and sent notes on the
relevant pages.
20. Kloosterkerken, Gent, pt. 1,
Predikheerenkerk, 24, no. 30. According to
his epitaph, he died on February 9, 1480 81.
21. At Melle and Wetteren, Moortzele and
Lemberge: see Frans De Potter and Jan
Broeckaert, Geschiedenis van de gemeenten
der provincie Oost-Vlaanderen, 1st ser.,
Arrondissement Gent (Ghent, 1864 70),
vol. 5, Moortzele, 4 n. 5; A. De Vos,
Inventaris der landbouwpachten in de Gentse
Jaarregisters van de Keure: Verhandelingen
der Maatschappij voor Geschiedenis en
Oudheidkunde te Gent (Ghent, 1958 60),
vol. 1, 106, 129, 134, 161, 169, 172, and
vol. 2, 11, 14, 20.
22. Wyseur, De familie Utenhove (see note
19); Kloosterkerken, Gent, pt. 1,
Predikheerenkerk (see note 6), 38.
23. Papin, Guilbert de Ruple, 119 n. 122.
24. Anke Greve, Emilie Lebailly, and Werner
Paravicini, Comptes de largentier de Charles
le Tmraire, duc de Bourgogne, vol. 2, Anne
1469 (Paris: Boccard, 2002), 146, no. 559,
148 49, no. 569. In the same month, Charles
received his famous prayer book illuminated
by Lieven van Lathem: see Kren, in Kren and
campbell
McKendrick, Illuminating the Renaissance,

128 31.
25. Greve et al., Comptes de largentier, vol. 2,
414, no. 1534.
26. Greve et al., Comptes d largentier, vol. 2,
205 6, no. 756, 212, no. 776.
27. John Bartier, Lgistes et gens de nances
au XVe sicle: Les Conseillers des ducs de
Bourgogne Philippe le Bon et Charles le
Tmraire (Brussels: J. Duculot, 1955 57),
46 n. 2; Pierre Cockshaw, La Comptabilit
publique dans les tats bourguignons:
Lexemple des comptes gnraux, in
Mlanges offertes Claire Dickstein-Bernard,
ed. P. Bonenfant and P. Cockshaw (Brussels:
Bibliothque royale de Belgique and Socit
Royale dArchologie de Bruxelles, 1999),
37106, esp. 83.
28. Bartier, Lgistes et gens de nances,
46 n. 2; Papin, Guilbert de Ruple, 119.
31. L.-P. Gachard, Inventaire des archives des
Chambres des comptes, prcd dune notice
historique sur ces anciennes institutions, vols.
2 3 (Brussels: Hayez, 1845 51), vol. 2, 33,
145, 163, and vol. 3, 211, 215; H. Nlis,
Inventaire des archives des Chambres des
comptes (Brussels: Hayez, 1931), vol. 6, 146;
De Raadt, Sceaux armoris, vol. 3, 367.
32. Monique Vleeschouwers-van Melkebeek,
Compotus sigilliferi curie Tornacensis:
Rekeningen van de ofcialiteit van Doornik
14291481 (Brussels: Commission royale
dhistoire, 1995), vol. 2, 1183, no. 16409.
Throughout the period 1480 97, Roland
Le Fvre, a loyal supporter of Maximilian of
Austria, also held this title and ofce. See
Nicolaes Despars, Cronijcke van den lande
ende graefscepe van Vlaenderen . . . van de
jaeren 405 tot 1492 . . . , ed. J. De Jonghe,
2nd ed. (Bruges; Rotterdam: W. Messchert,
1839 40), vol. 4, 237, 273, 288, 330, etc.;
Gachard, Inventaire, vol. 2, 500, and vol. 3,
396; E. Feys and D. van de Casteele, Histoire
dOudenbourg (Bruges: Imprimerie dAim
de Zuttere, 187378), vol. 2, 482; E. Feys,
Roland le Fvre, Annales de la Socit
dEmulation pour ltude de lHistoire et des
Antiquits de la Flandre, 5th ser., 4 (1891):
35171; R. Wellens, Fvre (Roland Le), in
Biographie nationale . . . de Belgique, vol. 35,
Supplment, vol. 7 (Brussels, 1970), cols.
260 62.
33. De Potter and Broeckaert, Geschiedenis,
4 n. 5.
34. A. Pinchart, Inventaire des archives des
Chambres des comptes (Brussels: F. Hayez,
1879), vol. 5, 83.
35. A. Pinchart, Inventaire des archives des

Chambres des comptes (Brussels: F. Hayez,
1865), vol. 4, 28.
36. C. Dehaisnes, Inventaire sommaire des
archives dpartementales antrieures 1790,
Nord, Srie B (Lille, 1881), vol. 4, 264 65.
37. Feys and van de Casteele, Histoire
dOudenbourg, 474; De Raadt, Sceaux
armoris, vol. 3, 367.
38. Feys and van de Casteele, Histoire
dOudenbourg, 481.
39. Myriam Carlier, Kinderen van de minne?
Bastaarden in het vijftiende- eeuwse
Vlaanderen (Brussels: Paleis der Academin,
2001), 140 (Jans name is misprinted here and
on p. 161 as van der Scraghe).
40. S. Th. E. Brekelmans, E. J. Schreuder, and
C. L. Verkerk, Chronologische lijsten van der
gextendeerde sententin berustende in het
archief van de Grote Raad van Mechelen,
vol. 2, 15041531 (Brussels: Koninklijke
Commissie voor de Uitgave der Oude Wetten
en Verordeningen van Belgie, 1971), 14, 97.
41. Kloosterkerken, Gent, pt. 1 (Ghent, 1866),
Predikheerenkerk, 24, no. 30: Sepulture van
Jan Vander Schaeghen, s voorseyts Jans sone,
raedt ons gheduchts Heeren s Hertoghen van
Bourgoingnen, grave van Vlaendren, ende syne
ontfangher generael van Vlaendren, die overleet in t jaer m. cccc. lxxxiij, den . . . The
church was destroyed in 1566.
42. De Vos, Inventaris der landbouwpachten,
vol. 2, 11, 14, 20.
43. Wyseur, De familie Utenhove (see
note 19).
44. Christiane Van den Bergen-Pantens,
tude et datation du Triptyque de Saint
Hippolyte (Cathdrale Saint-Sauveur
Bruges), in Bouts Studies: Proceedings of the
International Colloquium (Leuven, 2628
November 1998), ed. Bert Cardon et al.
(Louvain: Peeters, 2001), 1118.
45. For Hippolytes career, see Mireille Jean,
La Chambre des Comptes de Lille
(14771667): LInstitution et les hommes
(Paris: cole des Chartes, 1992), 284 85.
46. Bartier, Lgistes et gens de nances, passim; for lists of the receivers during the period
1372 1477, see Cockshaw, La Comptabilit
publique, 53106.
47. Vleeschouwers-van Melkebeek, Compotus
sigilliferi curie Tornacensis, vol. 2, 1183, no.
16409.
48. Kren, in Kren and McKendrick,
Illuminating the Renaissance, 179 81.
49. Cibulka and Matejcek, Francouzsk a
msk iluminovan rukopisy, 32.
chapter 2
The Undecorated Margin:

The Fashion for Luxury Books without Borders
C a t h e r i n e R ey n o l d s
Many illuminated manuscripts have undecorated margins.

This investigation concerns the convention, evident in the Netherlands from the
mid-fteenth century, of luxury books in which miniatures and initials in gold
and ne colors make the total absence of borders noteworthy. The contrast
between the opening pages of the rst volume of the Chroniques de Hainaut,
illuminated in the 1440s, and of the second volume, for which Willem Vrelant
was paid in 1468, should make the point (g. 2.1, and see g. 7.1). In the same
year Loyset Lidet was paid for illuminating the third volume, also without borders.1 Since the three volumes were copied consecutively for Philip the Good
between 1447 and 1453 to form a matching set, there can be little doubt that
the second and third volumes were originally intended to follow the pattern of
the rst, with borders on the opening pages and on many of the following
miniature pages. Between the late 1440s and the late 1460s, however, a shift in
taste made it acceptable for such grand and profusely illustrated volumes to
omit decorated borders altogether.2
Volumes that have escaped trimming suggest that generous margins
were one of the features that elevated a books status: the ostentatious wasting
of parchment around text and miniatures had its own aesthetic appeal, sometimes directed by carefully planned proportions.3 Few other art forms offered
the same possibilities for blank surrounds. In windows, the isolating of stained
panels within areas of clear glass had obvious practical advantages but also
contributed to, or coincided with, a similar aesthetic.4 Artistic conventions
must be aesthetically pleasing to become conventional; to exist at all they must
be possible and affordable. Clear glass or undecorated margins required less
time and less money. Speed of completion, however, seems unconvincing as a
primary motivation for borderless books, since unbound leaves allowed several
illuminators to work simultaneously. Cost seems equally unsatisfactory as the
essential factor. For copies of his household ordinances in 1469, Charles the
Bold paid Nicolas Spierinc sixteen sous for a miniature, ten sous for a large
border, and one sou for a small border.5 For volumes with many miniatures, a
border at the opening or a few small borders at the most signicant divisions
would have added proportionately little to the price.
The absence of borders is, of course, a characteristic of overtly
cheaper manuscripts, particularly those on paper with color-washed drawings
and ourished initials without gold. Such manuscripts have, and had, their own
appeal, which outweighed their down-market image and perhaps encouraged
the acceptance of the undecorated margin. Among other paper manuscripts,
10 reynolds
Figure 2.1
Willem Vrelant. Reading before Philip the Good,
in Jacques de Guise, Chroniques de Hainaut, vol. 2.
h: 44 cm (17 3 8 in.). Brussels, Bibliothque royale
de Belgique, Ms. 9243, fol. 1.
chapter 2: the undecorated margin
Philip the Good owned at least eight romances illustrated by the Wavrin Master
or his imitators.6 Between the extremes of blatantly expensive, fully illuminated texts on parchment and cheap and cheerful paper manuscripts, however sophisticated, were parchment manuscripts, employing gold yet with
comparatively thinly painted miniatures and often without borders. A prestigious example is Jean Milots Vie et miracles de Saint Josse (or Vie de Saint
Josse), written for Philip the Good in 1449 (g. 2.2), which is apparently
derived from earlier books such as Philips copy of Guillaume de Deguilevilles
Plerinage de la vie humaine, made around 1400, with loosely painted miniatures, ourished initials, and no borders.7 Among the older volumes in Philips
library were lavish books that predated the fashion for bordering full-page
miniatures, like the thirteenth-century Picture Book of Madame Marie.8 Older
books that had not entered permanent collections continued to circulate in the
book trade, since age did not necessarily lessen either a books monetary value
or its aesthetic appeal. Indeed, the borderless layouts of works with interdependent text and images, like the twelfth-century Liber Floridus, were sometimes carefully preserved in new copies.9 Familiarity with earlier books surely
encouraged the appreciation of empty margins in contemporary, assertively
luxurious volumes.
Figure 2.2
Anonymous master. Saint Josse
Traveling with Pilgrims, in Jean Milot,
Vie et miracles de Saint Josse. h: 29 cm
(113 8 in.). Brussels, Bibliothque royale
de Belgique, Ms. 10958, fols. 3v 4.
11
12 reynolds
Figure 2.3
Anonymous master. Abbot Leo; Abbot
Godescalc, by the Bronze Fountain He
Had Made for the Abbey of Saint-Bertin,
Greeting Thomas Becket, in Catalogus
abbatum Bertiniensium. h: 26.8 cm
(10 1 2 in.). Saint-Omer, Bibliothque de
lAgglomration, Ms. 755, pp. 4344.
Figure 2.4
Jean Tavernier. Adoration of the Magi,
in the grisaille Book of Hours of
Philip the Good. h: 26.8 cm (10 1 2 in.).
The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek,
Ms. 76 F 2, fols. 143v 144.
Tradition was perhaps deliberately evoked in books like the chronicles

of the abbots of Saint-Bertin, created at or for the abbey: in copies of 1405 and
1437, full-page borderless miniatures ll the opening gathering, like the prefatory miniatures to an earlier psalter or book of hours. In a different version
of the abbeys history from around 1405, each page is devoted to one abbot,
with text below a miniature executed in pen and wash with touches of red
(g. 2.3).10 Although on parchment, this Saint-Bertin codex of around 1405
is typical of the grisaille and semigrisaille manuscripts that followed the conventions of cheaper books by deploying ourished initials, without gold, and
omitting borders. Cost might have inuenced the choice of grisaille, yet its popularity, across many art forms and at varying levels of expense, demonstrates
the impossibility of neatly dividing aesthetic and economic motivations.
Although many grisaille or semigrisaille manuscripts have elaborate borders, it
seems that blank margins were also thought particularly appropriate.11 Most of
the so-called Delft grisaille miniatures were left isolated, even in books in which
text pages were bordered;12 the Hours of Kaetzart van Zaers of about 1440 has
colored miniatures with borders and grisaille miniatures without borders.13 The
convention was apparently recognized in Bruges: an Annunciation, seemingly
imitating a Delft grisaille, is the only miniature left borderless in an hours
attributed to Vrelants workshop in the later 1450s.14
Grisaille apparently prompted some of the earliest elaborate borderless books commissioned by Philip the Good. In 1455 Jean Tavernier was paid
for grisaille miniatures without borders in a book of hours, apparently lost,
while Philips surviving grisaille hours, with miniatures by Tavernier, is probably a little earlier (g. 2.4).15 There the decision to deploy ourished initials,
without gold, is hierarchically appropriate to the grisaille miniatures and the
empty margins. Gold initials and gold frames, however, enrich the grisaille
miniatures in Philips Charlemagne, with one bar and no borders, for which
Tavernier was paid in 1460, and in his borderless Miracles de Nostre Dame,
probably illuminated by Tavernier soon after its transcription in 1456.16 The
same pattern of semigrisaille or grisaille decoration, with gold but without
borders, was followed by Vrelant for Philips Vie de Sainte Catherine, written
in 1457; his Epitre dOtha; his Premire Guerre punique; Jean dAuxys
Lgende dore;17 and by the illuminator identied as Dreux Jean for Philips
Ci nous dist, transcribed in 1462.18
Inevitably the undecorated margin retained connotations of inferior
status. The elaborate miniature frames of Philips grisaille hours imply a need
to compensate for the absence of borders in such an ambitious volume (see
g. 2.4). The Master of the Ghent Privileges equated large frames with borders
in the fully colored Hours of Jan Eggert of around 1450, in which wide-framed
miniatures face bordered text pages.19 Philips grisaille hours is one of comparatively few profusely illustrated yet completely borderless books of hours or
liturgical books surviving from the southern Netherlands. Further examples in
grisaille are two hours illuminated by Simon Marmion and a psalter for the
English market illuminated by Vrelant.20 While some borderless devotional
books were illuminated in full color,21 it seems to have been principally grisaille, with its connotations of restraint and abstinence, that made the convention appropriate for honoring the Almighty. When it was generally held that
God should be worshiped with due splendor and richness, even grisaille could
13
14 reynolds
Figure 2.5
Loyset Lidet. Pepin Rescues Charles
Martel and His Courtiers from an
Escaped Lion, in David Aubert, Histoire
de Charles Martel, vol. 2. h: 41 cm
(16 1 8 in.). Brussels, Bibliothque royale
de Belgique, Ms. 7, fols. 59 v 60.
not make the convention widespread for elaborate liturgical or quasiliturgical

books. The undecorated margin in luxury volumes is predominantly a fashion
of nonliturgical books.
The acceptability of undecorated margins for grisaille, even in books
of hours, may have encouraged people to appreciate positive qualities in the
absence of border decoration, an appreciation that they could then bring to
manuscripts painted in full color. The appreciation is evident: all seven of Philip
the Goods nonliturgical manuscripts illuminated by Vrelant are without
borders, whether in grisaille or color (see g. 2.1).22 Lidet illustrated six and
perhaps nine borderless manuscripts for Philip, of which only one is not fully
colored,23 in addition to the eleven that he completed for Charles the Bold
(g. 2.5).24 Charles also commissioned entirely new manuscripts illuminated by
Lidet without borders, notably Vasco da Lucenas Alexander;25 the prestigious
Livre dor Charles presented to the Guild of Saint Sebastian at Linkebeek has
empty margins.26 Since the two dukes were the greatest commissioners of borderless books, Charless military preoccupations and early death help to explain
the apparent fall in production in the 1470s.27 What is now apparent may be
an inaccurate representation of what actually happened, since Lidets undocumented work doubtless extended beyond 1472, when he last appears in the
surviving ducal records, and the ducal example of borderless manuscripts did
not lose its appeal: Jacques Donche, one of Charless councillors, had Caesars
Commentaries written on parchment and paper in 1476 with gold-ground initials, ten miniatures, and no borders.28
For specially commissioned volumes, patrons were likely to be
involved in decisions about borders, and the taste of individual patrons does
seem to be a signicant factor. Other bibliophiles active from the 1470s
apparently preferred decorated margins: of Margaret of Yorks surviving books,
only one is borderless and was probably bought ready-made.29 Louis of
Gruuthuse and Anthony of Burgundy overwhelmingly preferred borders;
Edward IV apparently ordered exclusively books with borders.30 A contributory motivation may have been the desire to incorporate marks of ownership,
which would otherwise be isolated in the margins or restricted to large initials
(see gs. 2.1, 2.12). Jean and Philippe de Cro in the 1460s and 1470s and
Philip of Cleves from the 1480s were among the collectors acquiring some manuscripts without borders, but this may reect their willingness to purchase
whatever was available.31 In the 1480s and 1490s Baudouin II de Lannoy
demonstrated a distinct preference for borderless manuscripts, of a lavishness
indicative of aesthetic, rather than nancial, motivations (see g. 2.12).32
The ultimate power of the patron does not negate the signicance of
the artist, who may have been selected for his appropriateness. The comparatively routine borders associated with Vrelant and Lidet were sufciently
pleasing to attract Philip the Good and others,33 yet creators of innovatively
beautiful borders were not usually wasted on borderless books. Lieven van
Lathem (see g. 2.10) was apparently so employed only once, when Vrelant
was the principal illuminator.34 Although Lidet is especially linked to the convention (see gs. 2.5, 2.7), the absence of certain dates makes it impossible to
know who decorated the rst nongrisaille example for Philip, possibly Lidet
with the Chroniques normandes, copied in 1459, or Vrelant with the one
miniature of the Salutation anglique, copied in 1461.35 Certainly Lidet, who
concentrated on vernacular texts, had more opportunity to produce borderless books than Vrelant, responsible for numerous books of hours. Subsequently the Master of 1482 and the Master of Edward IV were the chief
illuminators of nondevotional books and so most associated with empty margins (see g. 2.12).36
The fashion for luxurious but borderless books is particularly associated with a single-column layout, since single-column books predominated
when the fashion arose. Not all borderless books, however, were single column,
and the choice of one or two columns seems to coincide with the choices made
for books with borders: single-column under Philip the Good, with a return of
two-column layouts under Charles the Bold.37 The coincidence of predominantly single-column layouts and the omission of borders may not be accidental, since the grand simplicity of a single text column, perhaps embracing
miniatures and initials within its connes, is enhanced by wide, empty margins.
Did some scribes see the provision of borders as a distraction from their work
instead of a tting embellishment? Borders were the one decorative element not
preordained by the positioning of text. Whereas spaces left for miniatures or
initials had to be lled to their predetermined dimensions to avoid obvious
incompleteness, the size and positioning of the text block on the page did not
necessitate the provision of a border; if a border was provided, its dimensions
between the boundaries of text block and page remained exible. Decisions
15
16 reynolds
Figure 2.6
Anonymous master. Paris and Helen;
Cephalus and Procris, in Christine
de Pizan, Epistre dOtha. h: 42.3 cm
(16 5 8 in.). Waddesdon Manor, James A.
de Rothschild Collection, Ms. 8,
fols. 41 v 42.
about initials and miniatures had to be made before writing began; decisions
about borders could wait until writing was complete.
Even though scribes were not necessarily involved in decisions about
borders, a fashion popularized, perhaps originated, by Philip the Goods commissions from the 1450s surely involved the ducal scribes, Jean Milot (see
gs. 2.2, 2.4, 2.6, 2.7) and David Aubert (see g. 2.5). Aubertscribe of the
Charlemagne of 1458, the Chroniques normandes of 1459, Milots Salutation
anglique of 1461, and a series of borderless books mostly illuminated by
Lidethas been judged its originator.38 He is generally credited with devising
the borderless single-column layout, written in a large script that allows the
eye to follow the line easily, even across a wide column like that of the
Charlemagne, with a justication of 260 by 165 millimeters on a page of 420
by 290 millimeters. Milot, however, apparently engaged earlier with the convention for omitting borders: author of the Vie de Saint Josse of 1449; scribe of
Philips grisaille hours; author of the Miracles de Nostre Dame of 1456, apparently copied by one of his collaborators with a justication of 275 by 172 millimeters on a page of 390 by 290 millimeters; and scribe and author of the Vie
de Sainte Catherine of 1457, justication 222 by 140 millimeters on a page 370
by 250 millimeters.39 Demonstrably concerned with the overall appearance of
his books, Milot was salaried as translator, scribe, and historiator but was
probably more active with the pen as designer/draftsman than with the brush.
His minutes, or trials, are draft layouts for his books comprising text, miniatures, and decorationin one case explicitly histori, cadel et escript by his
own hand.40 Aubert, despite his inevitable involvement in design, made only the
ambiguous claim of having organized, ordonn, some texts. His one certain
minute of 1459 60, for text only, consigns illustration to the next stage of production: Perceforest is icy minut en papier pour le faire grosser et historier en
beau vellin.41
Furthermore, as L. M. J. Delaiss remarked, Milot is not noted for
rened marginal decoration, which does not suit the style of his books.42 His
dual role perhaps encouraged comparative neglect of borders. For a designer,
borders are the elements least satisfactorily rendered in ink; for a scribe, borders would cramp his elaborate cadels. For the 1469 ordinances, Spierinc was
specically paid for penwork decorations ou il na aucune enluminure.43
Towering cadels contribute to one of Milots least successful layouts, an
unusual solution to Christine de Pizans Epistre dOtha, which was abandoned
without miniatures, perhaps because the experiment was judged a failure. It
was eventually completed for Philip of Cleves, perhaps not the most demanding of patrons, around 1480 (see g. 2.6).44 Inspired by traditional glossed
books, Milot arranged Christines complex composition with each regular
section on an individually designed page on which, below a miniature, the four
lines of text are followed by the gloss and, down the right side, the allegory,
both of varying lengths.
In his presumably later reworking of the Epistre of 1460, successfully
completed with miniatures by Lidet, Milot further revised Christines text to
place form before content (see g. 2.7).45 At the end of this version, he explains
17
Figure 2.7
Loyset Lidet. Paris and Helen, in
Christine de Pizan, Epistre dOtha.
h: 37 cm (145 8 in.). Brussels, Bibliothque
royale, Ms. 9392, fols. 78 v 79.
18 reynolds
Figure 2.8
Anonymous master and Nicolas Spierinc.
Opening from the Hours of the Cross,
in the Vienna Hours of Mary of
Burgundy. h: 22.5 cm (8 7 8 in.). Vienna,
sterreichische Nationalbibliothek,
Ms. 1857, fols. 44v 45.
that he has altered the original text primarily for its appearance: an que les
cent gloses . . . soient egales les unes aux autres comme sont les quatre lignes de
texte . . . a este faitte et composee de nouvel une addition ou declaration. . . . Et
est tousiours laditte addition ou declaracion assise en la n de la greigneur part
des plus briefves gloses . . . an que tant seulement de rendre lesdittes gloses et
allegories de ce livre dune mesme quantite descripture les unes aux autres.46
To match the regularity of the four-line texts with a consistent length for the
glosses and allegories, Milot placed each text under a miniature on a verso
and then extended many of the glosses, and occasionally the allegories, to ll
the rest of the verso and the facing recto. Clarication of meaning is given as a
second reason for the changes, pour ce que souvent briefvete rend les materes
obscures aux liseurs, although to achieve visual uniformity he actually shortened Christines rst, irregularly long texts. Despite subordinating content to
appearance, Milot still structured reading through illumination, giving each
text a gold-ground initial and the dependent gloss and allegory lower-status
gold-stave initials. No border decoration springs from the initials, an absence
that simplies the layout and lessens the difference between verso and recto.
The desired effect is one of regularity, reminiscent of the Vie de Saint Josse
(see g. 2.2), although now governed not by the individual page, but by the
opening across two pages.
It is an apparent paradox that borderless books were in demand just
as borders were becoming ever more varied and more prominent. The freeing
of initials from border decoration can be considered in reverse: as the liberation
of borders from initials. Borders can then appear on every page, whether or not
there are large initials or even, on one page in the Vienna Hours of Mary of
Burgundy, any text at all.47 The self-contained border, often framed, can move
to the outer margin of the recto, to balance in width and position that on
the verso (g. 2.8). Sensitivity to the balance of the opening may underlie both
the borders elimination and its growing importance as a decorative element
in its own right, freed from dependence on text. The same feeling for symmetry perhaps prompted these apparently diametrically opposed systems of
book design.
If the appeal of borderless books is to be credited, at least in part, to
their potential for greater symmetry, then the fashion for symmetry needs to be
considered. Obviously the impulse to greater symmetry has no simple cause or
easily charted progression. In some of Milots manuscripts and minutes with
drawn miniatures, in which his personal contribution was perhaps greatest, his
concern for symmetry on the page resulted in inner and outer margins receiving borders of equal width.48 This was unusual, although symmetrical border
decoration was occasionally associated with drawings.49 Otherwise, rolls were
sometimes designed symmetrically, and independent illuminations were probably always presented symmetrically, appropriately conforming to the overall
aesthetic of independent paintings.50 What seems new in the fteenth century
is the extension of that aesthetic to illumination in books. The exhibition
Illuminating the Renaissance: The Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in
Europe demonstrated the signicance of panel painting for the transformation
of miniatures and borders, yet the dominance of painting was perhaps more
pervasive, extending beyond the painted elements on the page to expectations
of the whole visual experience.
Size is the most obvious difference between the van Eycks Ghent
Altarpiece and its bravura compression in van Lathems miniature in the Prayer
Book of Charles the Bold (gs. 2.9, 2.10).51 If the comparison is extended to
the whole page, the most obvious difference, applicable on any scale, is one
of symmetry in the assemblage of framed panels against the asymmetry traditional to page design. Arguably, symmetry applied to the page, as in the
Italianate layouts of the Master of Charles V,52 is inappropriate to book design,
where symmetry is more successfully achieved across the opening (see g. 2.8).
This is most evident when equal lines of text are subordinated to paired miniatures within balanced borders, so that initials alone break the layouts symmetry in the Soane Hours even the initials are balanced, if not symmetrical, with
the rst letter on the recto, irrespective of signicance, arbitrarily matching the
opening initial on the verso (g. 2.11).53 Although such balance was impossible
with a miniature on just one page, borders could do much to coordinate the
opening and equalize the pictorial content.54 In nonliturgical manuscripts, seldom so densely decorated, an alternative was to eliminate the borders, leaving
19
20 reynolds
Figure 2.9
Hubert and Jan van Eyck. The Ghent
Altarpiece, oil on panel, 375 520 cm
(147 5 8 2043 4 in.). Ghent,
St-Baafskathedraal.
Figure 2.10
Lieven van Lathem. All Saints, in the
Prayer Book of Charles the Bold.
h: 12.4 cm (8 in.). Los Angeles, J. Paul
Getty Museum, Ms. 37, fols. 42v 43.
Figure 2.11
Master of the Soane Hours. Procession
of Saint Gregory, in the Soane Hours.
h: 20.9 cm (8 1 4 in.). London, Sir John
Soanes Museum, Ms. 4, fols. 136 v 137.
21
22 reynolds
the miniature to dominate and making the asymmetrical placement of the text
on the page less obvious (g. 2.12). Especially with a large volume on a lectern,
the viewer could focus on the miniature, much as he might on a panel painting.
While the transfer of the aesthetic expectations of panel painting was
doubtless only one factor in the new emphasis on symmetry in book design, it
seems likely to have been a signicant one, when the aims of book and panel
painters increasingly coincided and fueled patrons desires for books that
matched the achievements of panels. It is also a factor that helps to explain both
the taste for luxury books without borders, evident from the 1450s, and the
later, but coexisting, taste for books with enticingly elaborate borders, evident
from the 1460s. The difference in date between the beginnings of these developments may be connected with the Netherlandish convention for inserted
single-leaf miniatures, which meant that designing across the opening became
routine later in the Netherlands than in France.
When printed books reached the Netherlands in the 1450s, their purchasers faced the same choices over illumination that confronted the buyers of
manuscripts. After some decades, competition from printing provided further
encouragement for purchasers of illuminated manuscripts to shift their priorities from text to image and for illuminators to revivify their conventions
through the aesthetics of independent paintings. It was through intensively decorated liturgical or quasi-liturgical books that illumination survived as a vital
art form into the mid-sixteenth century. As printers exchanged varied colors for
varied sizing and spacing, it would be the printing press that brought a whole
new validity to the undecorated margin in luxury volumes.
Figure 2.12
Master of Edward IV. Mary Magdalene,
the Sinner, Is Brought to Repentance
by an Angel and Fear of Death, in Jean
dEeckhoute, Le Second Mariage et
espousement entre Dieu le Filz et lme
pcheresse en la personne de Marie
Magdalene. h: 38.8 cm (15 1 4 in.).
Valenciennes, Bibliothque municipale,
Ms. 243, fol. 4.
23
24
reynolds
Notes
1. Thomas Kren and Scot McKendrick,

Illuminating the Renaissance: The Triumph
of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe,
exh. cat. (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum,
2003), no. 3.
2. Although undecorated margins in any context of elaborate illumination demonstrate the
spread of the fashion and its acceptability, this
essay does not discuss the many volumes with
only one or a few borders, for example, Philip
the Goods Triomphe des dames, in which the
opening page with miniature and large initial
is borderless and the one border opens the text
proper (Brussels, Bibliothque royale de
Belgique, Ms. 10778, fols. 1, 13; Bernard
Bousmanne et al., La Librairie des ducs de
Bourgogne: Manuscrits conservs la
Bibliothque royale de Belgique, vol. 2
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 189 92; other
categories not discussed include the omission
of borders to establish a decorative hierarchy
by marking the miniature at the opening or
at major divisions with a border and leaving
miniatures at lesser divisions unadorned;
full-page miniatures that leave no space for
borders; miniatures left unbordered because
borders, reecting their origin in letter extensions, are triggered only by large initials (conversely, the border can surround the miniature
alone, excluding initial and text below, or,
when initial and miniature are on different
pages, the border may accompany the miniature as the summit of the decorative hierarchy); for examples, see Kren and McKendrick,
Illuminating the Renaissance, nos. 56, 96,
20, 32, 33, 44, 53, 114, 139, 14, 79, 112,
respectively.
3. Medieval Mastery: Book Illumination from
Charlemagne to Charles the Bold, exh. cat.
(Louvain: Stedelijk Museum Van der Kelen
Mertens, 2002), 266; Claudine Lemaire,
Justications remarquables dans des manuscrits miniatures du XVe sicle conservs
la Bibliothque Royale Bruxelles, in
Als ich can: Liber Amicorum in Memory
of Professor Dr. Maurits Smeyers, ed. Bert
Cardon, Jan Van der Stock, and Dominique
Vanwijnsberghe (Louvain: Peeters, 2002),
795 813.
4. Kren and McKendrick, Illuminating the
Renaissance, no. 46.
5. Antoine de Schryver, Nicolas Spierinc, calligraphe et enlumineur des Ordonnances des
Etats de lHtel de Charles le Tmraire,
Scriptorium 23 (1969): 434 58; on costs, see
Kren and McKendrick, Illuminating the
Renaissance, 62 63.
6. Georges Dogaer, Flemish Miniature Painting
in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
(Amsterdam: B. M. Isral, 1987), 9192;

Georges Dogaer and Marguerite Debae,
La Librairie de Philippe le Bon, exh. cat.
(Brussels: Bibliothque royale de Belgique,
1967), 158 59, 161 63.
7. Brussels, Bibliothque royale, Mss. 10958,
10176 78; see Frdric Lyna and Christiane
Van den Bergen-Pantens, Les Principaux
manuscrits peintures de la Bibliothque
royale de Belgique (Brussels: Bibliothque
royale Albert Ier, 1989), vol. 3, no. 309;
Bernard Bousmanne and Celine van
Hoorebeeck eds., La Librairie des ducs de
Bourgogne: Manuscrits conservs la
Bibliothque royale de Belgique (Brussels:
Brepols, 2000), vol. 1, 197204.
8. Paris, Bibliothque nationale de France,
Ms. nouv. acq. fr. 16251 (Medieval Mastery,
no. 44).
9. E.g., Chantilly, Muse Cond, Ms. 724,
for Philippe Courault, Abbot of Saint Peters,
Ghent, ca. 1470; for four further copies, see
J. Gumbert, Recherches sur le stemma des
copies du Liber Floridus, in Liber Floridus
Colloquium: Papers Read at the International
Meeting in the University Library, Ghent, on
35 September 1967, ed. Albert Derolez
(Ghent: E. Story-Scientia, 1973), 3750.
10. Saint-Omer, Bibliothque de
lAgglomration, Mss. 739, 740, 755; Marc
Gil and Ludovic Nys, Saint-Omer gothique:
Les Arts guratifs Saint-Omer la n du
Moyen ge, 12501550 (Valenciennes: Presses
universitaires de Valenciennes, 2004), 96 97,
212, gs. 74 78.
11. For examples, see Pierre Cockshaw,
Miniatures en grisaille, exh. cat. (Brussels:
Bibliothque royale de Belgique, 1986); Kren
and McKendrick, Illuminating the
Renaissance, nos. 27, 28, 29, 43, 50, 85, 94.
12. E.g., Brussels, Bibliothque royale, Ms.
21696, of the 1440s, and Utrecht,
Rijksmuseum het Catharijneconvent, Ms.
BMH 55, of the 1460s; see Henri Defoer et
al., The Golden Age of Dutch Manuscript
Painting, exh. cat. (New York: G. Braziller,
1989), nos. 5354.
13. Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Ms. bpl
224; see Marta Osterstrom-Renger, The
Netherlandish Grisaille Miniatures: Some
Unexplored Aspects, Wallraf-RichartzJahrbuch 44 (1983): 145 73, gs. 12; of the
fteen Netherlandish manuscripts listed by
Osterstrom-Renger (171 n. 5), only four have
borders around miniatures: Baltimore, Walters
Art Gallery, Ms. W.165; Copenhagen,
Kongelige Bibliotek, GKS n. 3445 8o (with
four detached miniatures, Hamburg, Museum
fr Kunst und Gewerbe, EG 1991, 5, 1 4;
Blicke in verborgene Schatzkammern, exh. cat.

[Hamburg: Museum fr Kunst und Gewerbe,
1998], no. 35); New York, Pierpont Morgan
Library, Ms. M.349; Oxford, Bodleian
Library, Ms. Douce 248.
14. Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery, Ms. W.240,
fol. 162v; see Lilian M. C. Randall, Medieval
and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Walters
Art Gallery, vol. 3, Belgium, 12501530
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press in
association with the Walters Art Gallery,
1997), no. 248; Bernard Bousmanne, Item a
Guillaume Wyelant aussi enlumineur: Willem
Vrelant, un aspect de lenluminure dans les
Pays-Bas mridionaux, sous le mcnat des
ducs de Bourgogne Philippe le Bon et Charles
le Tmraire (Brussels: Bibliothque royale de
Belgique, 1997), 105, 219 21; Medieval
Mastery, no. 82.
15. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms.
76 F 2; for it and the 1455 document, see
Anne S. Korteweg, The Book of Hours of
Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, in The
Hague and Its Later Adaptation, in Cardon
et al., eds., Als ich can, 75771.
16. Brussels, Bibliothque royale, Mss.
9066 68 (Lyna and Pantens, Principaux
Manuscrits, no. 315); Paris, Bibliothque
nationale, Ms. fr. 9198, and Oxford, Bodleian
Library, Ms. Douce 374 (L. M. J. Delaiss,
La Miniature amande: Le Mcnat de
Philippe le Bon, exh. cat. [Brussels: Palais des
Beaux-Arts, 1959], nos. 9394).
17. Paris, Bibliothque nationale, Ms. fr. 6449;
Erlangen, Universittsbibliothek, Ms. 2361;
Brussels, Bibliothque royale, Ms. 10777 (not
necessarily made for Philip); New York,
Pierpont Morgan Library, Mss. M.672 75,
and Mcon, Bibliothque municipale, Ms. 3;
see Bousmanne, Item a Guillaume Wyelant,
108, 296 97, 178, 249 50, 176, 23334,
281 83, respectively.
18. Brussels, Bibliothque royale, Ms. 9017
(Lyna and Pantens, Les Principaux manuscrits,
no. 282).
19. Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery, W.172;
elsewhere the master gave borders to broadframed miniatures; see Gregory T. Clark,
Made in Flanders: The Master of the Ghent
Privileges and Manuscript Painting in the
Southern Netherlands in the Time of Philip the
Good (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), col.
gs. 3, 10, 15, gs. 2, 21, 24, 36, 94 104.
20. Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, Ms. Res.
149, Hours of Guillaume Rolin (Jean-Bernard
de Vaivre, Les Armoiries et devises des
Rolin, in Le Splendeur des Rolin: Un
Mcnat priv la cour de Bourgogne: Table
ronde, 2728 fvrier 1995, ed. Brigitte

Maurice-Chabard [Paris: Picard, 1999],
5355); Turin, Museo Civico, Ms. 558, with
possible Rolin arms (Giovanna Giacobello
Bernard and Enrica Pagella eds., Van Eyck,
Antonello, Leonardo: Tre capolavori del
Rinascimento, exh. cat. [Turin: Museo Civico
dArte Antica e Palazzo Madama, 2003],
no. 7); Christies, London, July 11, 2000, lot
34, Psalter of Lady Ingoldisthorpe, sister of
Sir John Tiptoft.
21. E.g., Philip the Goods prayers of Saint
Anselm, with two historiated initials, ca.
1450, Brussels, Bibliothque royale, Ms.
11052 (Bousmanne and van Hoorebeeck, eds.,
Librairie des ducs de Bourgogne, 280 82);
Bruges prayer book, ca. 1480, with historiated
initials, Bibliothque royale, Ms. IV 414
(Johan Oosterman, Guilliame van Sconehove,
Scrivere and Scoelmeester, in Cardon et al.,
eds., Als ich can, 1079 94); an hours by the
Master of Antoine Rolin, Antwerp, private
collection (Anne-Marie Legar, The Master
of Antoine Rolin, in Margaret of York,
Simon Marmion, and the Visions of Tondal,
ed. Thomas Kren [Malibu, Calif.: J. Paul Getty
Museum, 1992], 209 22, no. 5); an hours
with colored and grisaille miniatures by the
same master (Kren and McKendrick,
Illuminating the Renaissance, no. 94).
22. See note 17 and Brussels, Bibliothque
royale, Mss. 9270, 9243; Paris, Petit Palais,
Dutuit Ms. 456; Valenciennes, Bibliothque
municipale, Ms. 240 (possibly that paid for in
1469); see Bousmanne, Item a Guillaume
Wyelant, 22730, 29798, 302 3; Kren and
340.
23. Completed for Philip: Brussels,
Bibliothque royale, Mss. 9967, IV 106 and
probably 9392; The Hague, Koninklijke
Bibliotheek, Ms. 76 F 10; and Paris,
Bibliothque de lArsenal, Mss. 5067,
5089 90, 6328. Bibliothque royale, Ms.
9287 88, the one in semigrisaille, was apparently written for Philip in 1461 but possibly
illuminated later; Bibliothque royale, Ms.
9303 4, was owned, not necessarily commissioned, by Philip; see Dogaer and Debae,
Librairie de Philippe le Bon, 158 59, 161 63.
24. For a lost Bible moralise and ten surviving works seemingly written for Philip and
illuminated for Charles, see Kren and
230 31, no. 55.
Renaissance, no. 54; also Brussels,
Bibliothque royale, Mss. 9029 and possibly
10986 (Lyna and Pantens, Les Principaux
manuscrits, nos. 261, 270; Bousmanne et al.,

Librairie des ducs de Bourgogne, 206 9);
New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, M.68,
with arms of Philip or Charles (Suzanne
Lewis, The Apocalypse of Margaret of York
in Kren, ed., Visions of Tondal, 79 80).
26. Linkebeek, Saint Sebastian; D.
Coekelberghs, ed., Catalogue de lexposition
Trsors dart des glises de Bruxelles,
Annales de la Socit royale darchologie
de Bruxelles 56 (1979): no. 31.
Renaissance, 66.
28. Yale University, Beinecke Ms. 226 (Barbara
A. Shailor, Catalogue of the Medieval and
Renaissance Manuscripts in the Beinecke
Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale
University, vol. 1 [Binghamton, N.Y.:
Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies,
1984], 31719); for two other borderless
copies, London, British Library, Egerton
Ms. 1065, and Oxford, Bodleian Library,
Ms. Douce 208, by the Master of 1482, see
Renaissance, 77 n. 67, 278.
29. Yale University, Beinecke Ms. 639, by
the Master of Edward IV (Walter Cahn,
Margaret of Yorks Guide to the Pilgrimage
Churches of Rome, in Kren, ed., Visions
of Tondal, 89 102); she apparently owned
Valenciennes, Bibliothque municipale,
Ms. 240 (see note 22).
30. For a rare instance for Gruuthuse without
borders, see Paris, Bibliothque nationale,
Ms. fr.1837, attributed to the Master of 1482
(M. Martens, ed., Lodewijk van Gruuthuse,
exh. cat. [Bruges: Gruuthusemuseum, 1992],
178 81); Anthonys known borderless book,
Biblioteca Vaticana, Pal. lat. 1995, was written
by Aubert, 1467, and illuminated by a Vrelant
follower for Guillaume Bourgeois (Christiane
Van den Bergen-Pantens, Hraldique et bibliophilie: Le Cas dAntoine, Grand Btard de
Bourgogne (14211504), in Miscellanea
Martin Wittek: Album de codicologie et de
palographie offert Martin Wittek, ed. Anny
Raman and Eugne Manning [Louvain:
Peeters, 1993], 32353, no. xlii).
31. Jean de Cro, Brussels, Bibliothque royale,
Ms. 9014, 1462, in the style associated with
Jean Pilavaine; Philippe de Cro, Bibliothque
royale, Ms. 10943-97, 1460, in related style;
Paris, Arsenal, Ms. 5028, with grisailles
(Marguerite Debae, La Bibliothque de
Marguerite dAutriche: Essai de reconstitution
daprs linventaire de 15231524 [Louvain:
Peeters, 1995], nos. 97, 105, 11, respectively);
Philip of Cleves, The Hague, Koninklijke
Bibliotheek, Mss. 133 A 5, Master of 1482,
25
and 128 C 5 (paper), Master of Antoine Rolin

(Anne S. Korteweg, Boeken van OranjeNassau, exh. cat. [The Hague: Museum van
het Boek, 1998), 33 42, 48); Vienna, sterreichische Nationalbibliothek, cod. 2616 (Otto
Pcht and Dagmar Thoss, Die illuminierten
Handschriften und Inkunabeln der sterreichischen Nationalbibliothek, vol. 7,
Flmische Schule II [Vienna: Verlag der sterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften,
1990], 365 66); this treatise is also in Yale
University, Beinecke Ms. 230, by the Master
of 1482 without borders (Shailor, Medieval
and Renaissance Manuscripts, 33135).
Renaissance, nos. 95, 97; Valenciennes,
Bibliothque municipale, Mss. 209, 230,
and 243 (A. Molinier, Catalogue gnrale
des manuscrits des bibliothques publiques
de France, XXV [Paris, 1894], 279 80,
288 89, 298 99); he also owned Ms. 240
(see note 22).
33. For Lidets bordered books for Philip,
see Kren and McKendrick, Illuminating
the Renaissance, 231 n. 8, and Brussels,
Bibliothque royale, Ms. 9308 (Bousmanne
et al., Librairie des ducs de Bourgogne,
88 92); for his borders for others, see
Antoine de Schryver, Marc Dykmans, and Jos
Ruysschaert, Le Pontical de Ferry de Clugny,
cardinal et evque de Tournai (Vatican:
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1989), 5774;
for Vrelants vernacular bordered books for
Philip: Brussels, Bibliothque royale, Mss.
9469 70, 9545 46; for other, identied,
patrons: Ghent, Universiteitsbibliotheek,
Ms. 2; Paris, Muse du Louvre, Cabinet des
dessins, R.F.1698; Paris, Bibliothque
nationale, Mss. fr. 308 11; see Bousmanne,
Item a Guillaume Wyelant, 230, 232 33,
252 54, 290 96.
34. Paris, Petit Palais, Ms. Dutuit 456; see
note 22.
35. Paris, Arsenal, Ms. 6328; Brussels,
Bibliothque royale, Ms. 9270; see notes
23, 22, respectively.
Renaissance, 66, 295 96.
Renaissance, 76 n. 40. A survey of borderless
books, with no pretense to completeness,
shows Philip to have commissioned no twocolumn examples: the Chroniques de Hainaut
(Bibliothque royale, Mss. 9243 44) was
probably intended to have borders (see note 1
above); his richly illustrated Roi Modus et
reine Ratio (Bibliothque royale, Mss.
10218 19) is in two columns but has one border on a text page (Bousmanne et al., Librairie
26
reynolds
des ducs de Bourgogne, 154 63); the Cit de

Dieu of 1462, acquired by Jean de Cro
(Bibliothque royale, Ms. 9014), is in two
columns (see note 31 above). Charles the Bold,
however, commissioned two borderless books
in two columns: his Alexander (Bibliothque
nationale, Ms. fr. 22547; Kren and
no. 54) and his Chroniques de Pise
(Bibliothque royale, Ms. 9029; Lyna and
Pantens, Principaux Manuscrits, no. 261). At
least six borderless manuscripts attributed to
the Master of 1482 are in two columns: The
Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 133 A 5;
London, British Library, Add. Ms. 19720 and
Egerton Ms. 1065; Oxford, Bodleian Library,
Ms. Douce 208; Yale University, Beinecke
Mss. 228, 230 (Kren and McKendrick,
Illuminating the Renaissance, 77 n. 67).
38. Delaiss, Miniature amande, 101; see
Richard E. F. Straub, David Aubert, escripvain
et clerc (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995); Pascale
Charron and Marc Gil, Les enlumineurs
des manuscrits de David Aubert, in Les
Manuscrits de David Aubert, ed. Danielle
Quruel (Paris: Presses de lUniversit de
Paris-Sorbonne, 1999), 81100.
39. For Milot, see Bousmanne, Item a
Guillaume Wyelant, 167 68, with references.
40. Brussels, Bibliothque royale, Ms.
9249 50, fol. 2; also Ms. II 239 and Paris,
Bibliothque nationale, Ms. fr. 17001
(Dogaer, Flemish Miniature Painting, 87 88).
41. Paris, Arsenal, Mss. 348394, red headings, ourished initials with Philips arms
opening the ve original volumes; quotation
from Ms. 3490, fol. 581, the ve colophons
varying slightly; Paris, Bibliothque nationale,
Mss. fr. 1917377, could be the minute, text
only, for Arsenal Mss. 5072 75 and Munich,
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, cod. gall. 7,
attributed to Aubert (Straub, David Aubert,
75 82, 120 27; for Auberts self-descriptions,
see 278 82).
42. L. M. J. Delaiss, James Marrow, and
John de Wit, The James A. de Rothschild
Collection at Waddesdon Manor: Illuminated
Manuscripts (Fribourg: Published for the
National Trust by Ofce du livre, 1977), 173.
43. De Schryver, Nicolas Spierinc (see note
5), pp. 456 57.
44. Waddesdon Manor, James A. de
Rothschild Collection, Ms. 8, three pages with
borders, completed for Philip of Cleves
(Delaiss et al., Rothschild Collection,
154 80). Cambridge, Newnham College
Library, Ms. 900 (5), of the early fteenth
century, has a similarly inspired but clearer
layout (Sandra L. Hindman, Christine de
Pizans Epistre dOtha: Painting and

Politics at the Court of Charles VI [Toronto:
Pontical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1986],
141, gs. 9193).
45. Brussels, Bibliothque royale, Ms. 9392
(Lyna and Van den Bergen-Pantens,
Principaux Manuscrits, no. 268; R. BrownGrant, Illumination as Reception: Jean
Milots Reworking of the Epistre dOthea,
in The City of Scholars: New Approaches to
Christine de Pizan, ed. Margarete
Zimmermann and Dina De Rentiis [Berlin:
W. de Gruyter, 1994], 260 71).
46. Brussels, Bibliothque royale, Ms. 9392,
fols. 104v 105.
Renaissance, no. 19, fol. 83v.
48. Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek, Thott
1090, 4o; Vienna, sterreichische
Nationalbibliothek, s.n. 2731, 1468 69;
Paris, Bibliothque nationale, Ms. fr. 17001,
1468; Brussels, Bibliothque royale, Ms. II
239, 1463; see Otto Pcht et al., Die illuminierten Handschriften und Inkunabeln der
sterreichischen Nationalbibliothek, vol. 6,
Flmische Schule I (Vienna: Verlag der sterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften,
1983), Abb. 134 37, gs. 90, 92; Cyriel
Stroo, Celebratie van de macht:
Presentatieminiaturen en aanverwante
voorstellingen in handschriften van Filips de
Goede (14191467) en Karel de Stoute,
Verhandelingen van de Koninklijke Vlaamse
Academie van Belgi voor Werenschappen en
Kunsten, nieuwe reeks, 7 (Brussels: Paleis der
Academin, 2002), pls. 46, 48 49, 59.
49. E.g., Princeton, University Library, Ms.
105, and Paris, Arsenal, Ms. 5199, late 1430s
(Stroo, Celebratie van de macht, pls. 8 10).
Renaissance, 24 30.
Renaissance, no. 16, fol. 43; see also no. 17,
fol.59v.
52. E.g., Kren and McKendrick, Illuminating
the Renaissance, nos. 166 67.
Renaissance, no. 138, also nos. 109, 124.
54. E.g., Kren and McKendrick, Illuminating
the Renaissance, nos. 20, 32, 93, etc.
chapter 3
A Very Burgundian Hero:

The Figure of Alexander the Great under the Rule of Philip the Good
Chrystle Blondeau
Ever since the groundbreaking book by Johan Huizinga,

it has become customary to include Alexander the Great among the gures of
reference for Philip the Good and Charles the Bold.1 The possession of several
works devoted to the Macedonian sovereign, including a number of major
pieces executed by commission; the overt exploitation of the historical gure in
the presentation of ducal power; and the parallels that were often pointed out
(by both partisans and detractors) between the last two dukes of Burgundy and
Alexander conrm that the latter played an important role in their politics of
representation and in their imaginations. I intend to examine more specically
the process of appropriation of which Alexander was the object under the rule
of Philip the Good by presenting the dukes major acquisitions of manuscripts
and tapestries, and then by attempting to determine, through an analysis of the
works themselves, as well as their reception and use, the issues and values with
which the gure of the Macedonian conqueror was associated at the time.
A l ex a n d e r i n t h e C o l l e c t i o n s o f P h i l i p t h e G o o d
The manuscripts and tapestries acquired by Philip the Good are concrete testimony of his interest in the gure of Alexander. While the Macedonian
sovereign held only a secondary place in the collections of Philip the Bold and
John the Fearless, he gained unquestionable favor during the rule of their successor. In the context of a considerable overall growth and, more specically, of
a spike in interest in materials concerning antiquities,2 the ducal library at the
time acquired nearly twenty-ve texts (contained in forty-ve copies) dealing,
in one manner or another, with the ancient conqueror.3 A number of these
grant him only modest consideration, and their acquisition was certainly not
motivated by the few anecdotes devoted to him therein. But the Macedonian
does nevertheless play a key role in a half-dozen works,4 four of which were
written or revised by authors active at the court of Burgundy roughly between
1420 and 1460. According to the inventory taken after the death of Philip the
Good, the latter works were divided among nine manuscripts, acquired for the
most part after 1448.
The duke of Burgundys interest in the genealogy of the great mythologized historical gures can be seen in his commissioning of manuscripts
such as LHistoire de Charles Martel et de ses successeurs,5 devoted to
Charlemagnes ancestors, or even Perceforest, a romance in prose aimed at
rooting the Arthurian legend in the Macedonian geste. Despite the brevity of
his appearance in the latter story, Alexander plays an essential role in it, since
28 blondeau
he incarnates the founding hero par excellence. The author of this vast composition, compiled in the second quarter of the fourteenth century and dedicated
to Guillaume de Hainaut, credits the hero with the restoration of the English
monarchy, the establishment of the practice of the tournament intended to
hone the skills and courage of knights and even the founding of the line of
King Arthur, by virtue of his union with Sebilla.6 Two copies of Perceforest
appear in the posthumous inventory of Philip the Goods library. Currently at
the Bibliothque de lArsenal in Paris,7 one of these corresponds to the minute 8
of a restored version of the text commissioned by the duke in 1459 from David
Aubert. The other copy, now lost, apparently contained an older version.9
Philip the Good also turned his attention to Alexanders dynastic origins, since he acquired a copy of the Roman de Florimont. Opening with the
marriage of Madien of Babylon with a Greek princess who brings him
Macedonia in her dowry, the text closes with the wedding feast of Philip II
of Macedon and Olympia, right before the birth of Alexander. Devoted for
the most part to the adventures of Florimont, Alexanders great-grandfather,
the work presents itself as a translation from a Latin original. In fact it is a
prose version derived from Aimon de Varenness Florimont, composed during
the winter of 1418 19 by a Picard author who remains anonymous.10 Philip
the Goods volume, copied onto paper and illustrated in the workshop of the
Master of Jean de Wavrin, was most likely executed in the second half of
the 1450s.11 It is the only known copy of this version.
Even if Alexander is physically absent from the prose version of
Florimont, his conception represents the very justication and purpose of the
story. The opening rubric of the text makes this perfectly clear: Cy commenche
listore de quelz gens et de quele nacion dessendy et party le tres hault empereur
Alixandre le Conquerant.12 Compiled in the 1440s by Jean Wauquelin, the
Faicts et conquestes dAlexandre le Grand is an obvious continuation of the
Roman de Florimont, since the book begins with a presentation of Alexanders
parents and the story of his birth. The product of a complex labor of compilation, translation, and revision of various romance sources, the work goes on to
retrace the Macedonian sovereigns biography and ends with the wars of succession that followed his poisoning and with his son Aliors revenge on his
fathers murderers.13 The romance, as Wauquelin himself asserts in his prologues, was composed not for Philip the Good, but for his cousin and sonin-law John of Burgundy, count of Etampes and lord of Dourdan.14 The duke
became interested enough in the text to commission, sometime before April
1448, a deluxe copy decorated with eighty miniatures,15 to recover the minute
from which it was transcribed,16 and ultimately to acquire another, even more
sumptuously illustrated copy.17 The rst deluxe copy whose commissioning is
documented, executed between 1447 and 1450, was copied under the direct
supervision of the author and illuminated by the workshop of the Master of
Wauquelins Alexander, who was certainly working at the time in Bruges.18
Certain of its features make it possible, moreover, to afrm that Wauquelin also
took part in the program of its illustration.19 The second copy Philip the Good
subsequently acquired is not at all documented. The 204 miniatures therein
attributed to Willem Vrelant (assisted by several collaborators), Lieven van
Lathem, and the Master of the Livre du Roy Modus 20 nonetheless indicate
that it was most likely originally intended for the ducal library. Certain features,
chapter 3: a very burgundian hero
as much stylistic as iconographic, further suggest that it was executed after

Vrelant settled in Bruges in the early 1450s.21
Breaking with the romance genre to which the above-cited works
belong, the Desbat dhonneur entre trois chevaleureux princes by Jean Milot
offers, in the form of a brief treatise in dialogue, a moral reection on the foundations of true nobility.22 Written in the 1440s, it constitutes a French translation of the Contentio de presidentia, which Giovanni Aurispa, an exponent of
civic humanism, had liberally adapted from Lucian of Samosatas twelfth
Dialogue of the Dead around 1425 27. In it, Alexander, Hannibal, and Scipio
debate their martial exploits in front of Minos, one of the judges of the underworld, so that the latter may determine lequel deulx trois estoit de plus grant
renom et le plus resplendissant en gloire.23 If in Lucians text Minos came
down in Alexanders favor, pleading his superior skill in the military and political spheres, in Aurispas version and therefore in Milots as well the preference goes to Scipio, whose temperance and concern for public welfare dene
vray honneur . . . acquis par vertu.24 Three copies of the Desbat dhonneur
entered the library of Philip the Good starting in 1449 50, the date of the execution of the rst of them. Copied onto parchment, then decorated and illustrated, the two volumes still in existence belong to the category of deluxe
manuscripts.25 Transcribed on paper, the third copy26 might contain the minute
of one of the other two codices.
Lastly, aside from the manuscripts, Philip the Good acquired at least
one series of hangings on the theme of Alexander. In August 1459 he ordered
the payment of ve thousand gold crowns to the Tournai merchant Pasquier
Grenier, who had delivered to him a chambre de tapysserie de listoire
dAlixandre ouvre or et argent, soye et lle de laynne, made up of six wall
hangings and a complete set of bed hangings.27 Two hangings now in the Doria
familys Palazzo del Principe in Genova,28 which are related to Arras-Tournai
productions of the years from 1450 to 1460,29 have often been considered fragments of this series. More certainly, however, they initially belonged to the
Sforza family rather than to Philip the Good. Documents now in the state
archives in Milan reveal that the Greniers delivered tapestries to the dukes of
Milan and, more explicitly, that a son and a nephew of Pasquier Grenier went
to Francesco Sforza in January 1459 (n. s.) to show him certum disegnum regis
Alexandri et certas alias tapezzerias.30 Even if the tapestries of the duke of
Burgundy have denitively disappeared, it is nevertheless quite likely that they
had strong thematic afnities with the Doria hangings. The two series were
almost contemporaneous, and their acquisition can be traced back to the commercial activity of the Grenier family.
What emerges here is that the authors and artists of the Burgundian
milieu, supported by the duke or members of his entourage, actively participated in perpetuating the myth of Alexander. The works thus produced, drawn
mostly from the traditions of romance and legend, paint a detailed and, on the
whole, largely laudatory portrait of the Macedonian sovereign. In developing
themes that resonated with the concerns of Philip the Good, some of these
works contributed more specically to inscribing Alexander into the pantheon
of ducal heroes. The attitude of the Valois prince also leads to the thought that,
not content simply to consent to this, he encouraged the process aimed at identifying him with the Macedonian king.
29
30 blondeau
Figure 3.1
Workshop of the Master of Wauquelins
Alexander. The Punishment of Pausanias,
in Jean Wauquelin, Faicts et conquestes
dAlexandre. Paris, Bibliothque nationale
de France, Ms. fr. 9342, fol. 94v.
Figure 3.2
Willem Vrelant. Alexander Helping
His Parents against Pausanias, in
Jean Wauquelin, Faicts et conquestes
dAlexandre. Paris, Muse du Petit-Palais,
Ms. Dutuit 456, fol. 135v.
a very burgundian hero
Figure 3.3
Anonymous. Alexander Helping His
Parents against Pausanias, The
Punishment of Pausanias, and The
Coronation of Alexander, from a suite
of tapestries (detail). Genova, Palazzo
del Principe.
A F i g u re i n t h e S e r v i c e o f B u r g u n d i a n I d e o l og y
The two illustrated copies of the Faicts et conquestes dAlexandre 31

serve as the best witnesses to the concerns associated with the gure of the
Macedonian. Serving as the unifying thread of the romance, the notion of family honor is by example broadly developed, and the punishment of parricide,
the literary and visual treatment of which broadens as the story progresses, constitutes a recurrent theme: the brief confrontation between Alexander and
Pausanias, killer of Philip II of Macedon and illegitimate pretender to the hand
of Olympia (gs. 3.1, 3.2),32 is covered in the last eleven chapters of the
romance, inspired by Jean le Nevelons Vengeance Alixandre, in which Alior,
son of the Macedonian and Queen Candace, avenges his fathers poisoning by
in turn exterminating Antipater, his line, and his allies.33 As the punishment of
Pausanias (g. 3.3) reappears in the rst of the Doria hangings in the Palazzo
del Principe in Genova, which is devoted to various episodes from Alexanders
youth, it is not impossible that the suite of tapestries acquired by Philip the
Good in 1459 also included this episode. It is easy to imagine, in fact, the echo
that these acts of lial piety, aimed at avenging the death and honor of the
father, must have awakened in the mind of Philip the Good, whose own father
had been assassinated in September 1419 by the partisans of the dauphin. That
the murder of John the Fearless was never truly redressed must have made it all
the more compelling.
Burgundian authors and artists also did their best to root Alexander
in Burgundian territories. Between the subjugation of Persia and the exploration of India, the second book of Wauquelins romance begins, without any
apparent logic, with an enumeration of Alexanders Western conquests. Four
chapters are more specically devoted to the gift he made to Liroppe of the
Fort Carbonnire, the forest in which sont maintenant constitus pluiseurs
pas comme Picardie, Artois et par especial Haynun, Flandre, Brabant, Liege,
Hasebain et plusieurs aultres pas adjacens ou voisins.34 The author avows
31
32 blondeau
that the episode is not of his own invention. Indeed Wauquelin borrowed it
from Jacques de Guises Annales Hannoniae, a text called to his attention by
Simon Nockart, clerk of the bailiffs court of Hainaut. In 1446 Philip the Good
commissioned Wauquelin to translate the Annales Hanoniae in full.35 Already
mentioned in Perceforest,36 of which the duke, as we have seen, possessed several copies, the anecdote can also be found in Jean Mansels Fleur des histoires,
represented by a deluxe copy in the ducal library.37
The makers of the ducal manuscripts of the Faicts et conquestes
dAlexandre sought to enhance the Macedonians brief sojourn in the West.
In the earlier copy, the scene of the gift of the Fort Carbonnire (g. 3.4) is
especially emphasized: situated on the recto of a leaf, above the prologue to the
second book, the image takes up three-quarters of the justied area and is
accompanied by an ornate frame, qualities that it shares only with the dedicatory miniature at the start of the text (g. 3.5). In the later copy, the illustration
opening the second book more simply recalls Alexanders presence in the West
by representing the battle between the Macedonians and the Albanians.38 In
contrast, the nonducal copies of Wauquelins romance, in which the break
between the rst and second books is barely indicated,39 provide no illustration
whatsoever of the conquerors Western detour. These few chapters therefore
Figure 3.4
Alexander. Alexander Offering the
Fort Carbonnire to Liroppe, in
de France, Ms. Fr. 9342, fol. 127.
33
Figure 3.5
Alexander. Presentation of the
Manuscript to Philip the Good, in
de France, Ms. fr. 9342, fol. 5.
clearly played an ideological role: they established a spiritual connection

between Alexander and Philip the Good by attributing the possession of the
same lands to both and, at the same time, legitimated the Burgundian states
annexation of a certain number of principalities.40 More broadly, they aimed at
glorifying the duke of Burgundys policy of territorial expansion by situating it
in the continuity of Alexanders own.
But it is above all the Macedonians Eastern conquests that, seen
through the prism of Philip the Goods unwavering desire for Crusade, were
exploited in favor of ducal power. In the Faicts et conquestes dAlexandre, the
subjugation of the East constitutes, of course, a political and military undertaking. It does, however, have a spiritual dimension as well, which the cycle
of illustrations in the earlier of Philips copies brings out quite clearly.
Concentrated in the second book, the many battles pitting the Macedonians
34 blondeau
Figure 3.6
Alexander. Battle between the
Macedonians and Monsters, in
Figure 3.7
Alexander. Imprisonment of Gog and
Magog, in Jean Wauquelin, Faicts et
conquestes dAlexandre. Paris,
Bibliothque nationale de France,
Ms. fr. 9342, fol. 131 v.
against monsters and wild beasts can thus be interpreted allegorically

(g. 3.6).41 Alexanders and his companions triumph over these creatures,
whose extraordinary size and generally hybrid nature underscore their ferocity,
symbolizes that of humanity over animalism. The subjugation of Eastern populations, described for the most part as primitive, likewise stands for the triumph
of culture and civilization, embodied by technical skill and morality, over the
natural state. Although merciful to people whose customs are inoffensive,
Alexander considers it his duty to punish those whose practices seem wicked
to him. When he learns of the existence of the people of Gog and Magog,42 biblical personications of the forces of evil, the Macedonian does not hesitate to
stray from his planned route to capture and imprison them behind two mountains situated at the northern connes of the earth. Wauquelin species that the
operation takes place with the help of Dieu, qui vit [la] pensee [dAlexandre]
estre bonne.43 Conforming closely to the text it illustrates, the miniature represents the conqueror kneeling in prayer as his men are busy closing up the narrow pass between the two mountains, while God looks down on the scene from
a cloud (g. 3.7).
The insistence on Alexanders gradual conversion to monotheism in
fact constitutes one of the major features of this manuscript. Initially he is as
pagan a character as one could imagine,44 and it is at Jerusalem, where he worships God in the presence of representatives of the Jewish clergy, that his spiritual change is effected.45 In the episode of the Val Prilleux,46 he even takes on
a quasi-Christlike dimension by deciding to sacrice himself in order to save his
men. Determined to remain in the valley so that his men may escape, he uses a
typically Christian language, telling them: Je ne seroie pas bon pasteur se mon
corps je ne mectoie en adventure pour garder mes brebisetes.47 The rst of the
two miniatures 48 accompanying the episode conveys in its own way the privileged bond that henceforth exists between Alexander and God. The text specically says that, once left alone in the valley, the conqueror kneels down in
prayer and witnesses throughout the night une treshideuse bataille de malins
esperis.49 In the illustration, the demonic vision disappears, giving way to a
divine apparition to which Wauquelins story makes no reference whatsoever.
The commissioning of this manuscript corresponds exactly to a turning point in Philip the Goods Mediterranean policy, inaugurating a period that,
according to Jacques Paviot, saw the imaginary realm begin to prevail over
concrete plans for Crusade.50 Aside from the fact that it attests to the fascination the East held for the court of Burgundy, the manuscript can be considered
a kind of plea for the holy journey. By extolling Alexanders qualities to the
point of transforming him into a pre-Christian knight, the volume was aimed
at making his Eastern exploit into a metaphor for the dukes plans to reconquer
the Holy Land. The presence in the dedicatory miniature (g. 3.5) of a statue of
Saint Andrew, patron saint of the Burgundian dynasty and supposed
Christianizer of Greece and the Balkans, situates the Faicts et conquestes
dAlexandre in a militant Christian perspective from the very start.51
The fall of Constantinople on May 29, 1453, again revived
Burgundian propaganda in favor of Crusade. At the Banquet of the Pheasant,
which took place in Lille on February 17, 1454 (n. s.), Philip the Good and his
courtiers made a vow to bring aid to a threatened Christendom. Without being
35
36 blondeau
Figure 3.8
Alexander. Porus Killing the Peacock,
Banquet of the Peacock, in Jean
Wauquelin, Faicts et conquestes
de France, Ms. fr. 9342, fol. 55v.
Figure 3.9
Associate of Willem Vrelant. Presentation
of the Peacock to the Guests, in Jean
Ms. Dutuit 456, fol. 84.
37
Figure 3.10
Lieven van Lathem. Leones Making a
Vow over the Peacock, in Jean
Ms. Dutuit 456, fol. 91.
an exact replica, this ceremony strongly recalls that over which Alexander presides in the Voeux du Paon, a text of which the duke had several copies in his
library52 and which also served as inspiration for Jean Wauquelin in the composition of his Faicts et conquestes dAlexandre.53 And while the earlier of the
two ducal copies of this text allocates only one miniature (g. 3.8) to the
Banquet of the Peacock,54 the later copy devotes thirteen to the episode,55 illustrating the presentation of the bird to the guests (g. 3.9), then the taking of the
twelve vows (g. 3.10). This amplication no doubt reects the considerable
breadth of the program developed in this lavishly illustrated book, but it may
well also contain an echo of the banquet held in Lille in 1454, since the manuscript certainly postdates that event.56
38 blondeau
Figure 3.11
Anonymous. Alexander Exploring the
Air, from a suite of tapestries (detail).
Genova, Palazzo del Principe.
Devoted to Alexanders Eastern adventures, the second Doria tapestry

in the Palazzo del Principe in Genova, like Wauquelins romance, actually goes
so far as to practically Christianize the hero. In the episode of the exploration
of the air (g. 3.11), which takes up the central part of the hanging, the emphasis is thus laid on the divine protection the Macedonian enjoys. In keeping with
the illustration pattern traditionally used for the Roman dAlexandre in prose,57
the composition recalls representations of the Ascension: enthroned in a basket
that is borne aloft by four grifns and whose upper part forms a canopy over
his head, Alexander rises up to the sky. Left behind on earth, his companions
watch him and show their astonishment by pointing their ngers at him.
Completely transformed from his representations in the miniatures of the
Roman dAlexandre in prose, God the Father, a benevolent gure represented
in half-length in a cloud, here intervenes, moreover, to protect the conqueror
on his return to earth.58
In a similar spirit, the battle taking up the left side of the tapestry
(g. 3.12) tends to liken the conqueror and his men to Christian knights and
the opposing troops to the Ottoman enemy. Endowed with military equipment directly borrowed from fteenth-century reality, the Macedonians are
indeed immediately distinguishable from their Eastern adversaries, whose
exotic attributes (scimitars; long, damasked tunics; turbaned headdresses) lead

to their identication as Saracens. The physiognomic contrast between the
two camps of combatants further reinforces this interpretation.
It is impossible to afrm that these themes appeared in absolutely
identical form in the tapestries of Philip the Good. Nevertheless, the perfect
correspondence of the Doria hangings to Burgundian concerns and the spirit of
the Faicts et conquestes dAlexandre makes it a more than plausible assumption. In 1461, on the occasion of the festivities for Louis XIs accession to
the throne, the tapestry room of the Histoire dAlexandre was exhibited in the
place of honor in the Parisian htel of the dukes of Burgundy, across from
the Gideon Room.59 This juxtaposition tends to demonstrate that if Philip the
Good invoked Gideon as the head of the Order of the Golden Fleece, he also
just as openly laid claim to the spiritual paternity of Alexander in order to
reconquer the East. No doubt overlapping here with the ideal of the Crusade
was the will, on the dukes part, to reafrm the legitimacy of his policy of territorial expansion and his autonomy with regard to the French crown.
This situation certainly explains why the inclusion in the Burgundian
library of Milots Desbat dhonneur, in which Alexanders excessive pride
was nevertheless severely criticized,60 did not succeed in tarnishing the eminently positive reputation of the Macedonian conqueror during the rule of
Philip the Good.
Figure 3.12
Anonymous. Taking of a City by the
Macedonians, from a suite of tapestries
(detail). Genova, Palazzo del Principe.
39
40
blondeau
Notes
1. Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle

Ages: A Study of the Forms of Life, Thought,
and Art in France and the Netherlands in the
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, trans.
F. Hopman (London: Penguin, 1955), 7172.
Among the many studies that echo this assertion, a few of the more important and recent
ones include Yvon Lacaze, Le Rle des traditions dans la gense dun sentiment national
au XV e sicle: La Bourgogne de Philippe le
Bon, Bibliothque de lEcole des Chartes 139
(1971): 358 59; Jeffrey C. Smith, The
Artistic Patronage of Philip the Good, Duke
of Burgundy (1419 1467) (Ph.D. diss.,
Columbia University, 1979), 9194; Scot
McKendrick, Classical Mythology and
Ancient History in Works of Art at the
Courts of France, Burgundy, and England
(1364 1500) (Ph.D. diss., Courtauld
Institute, 1988), 182 83, 19798; Olivier
Collet, Alexandre: Recherche dune identit,
in Splendeurs de la cour de Bourgogne: Rcits
et chroniques, ed. Danielle Rgnier-Bohler
(Paris: R. Laffont, 1995), 483 85; Birgit
Franke, Herrscher ber Himmel und Erde:
Alexander der Grosse und die Herzge von
Burgund, Marburger Jahrbuch fr
Kunstwissenschaft 27 (2000): 121 69; Marina
Belozerskaya, Rethinking the Renaissance:
Burgundian Arts across Europe (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002), 7172.
2. Georges Doutrepont, La Littrature
franaise la cour des ducs de Bourgogne
(Paris: Champion, 1909), esp. 125 30,
134 76.
3. For an exact breakdown of the texts relating
to Alexander under the rule of each of the
Valois dukes, see my doctoral thesis: Un
Conqurant pour quatre ducs: Prsence et
reprsentations dAlexandre le Grand la cour
de Bourgogne sous le principat des ducs Valois
(13631477) (Universit Paris X-Nanterre,
2003), vol. 1, 2331, vol. 2, 42 71.
4. Voeux du Paon, by Jacques de Longuyon
(before 1312); Roman dAlexandre, by
Alexandre de Bernay (twelfth century);
Perceforest, anonymous version (second quarter of the fourteenth century), and adaptation
by David Aubert (1459 1460); Faicts et conquestes dAlexandre le Grand, by Jean
Wauquelin (before 1448); Desbat dhonneur
entre trois chevaleureux princes, translated by
Jean Milot after Giovanni Aurispa (before
1449); Roman de Florimont, anonymous
adaptation of Florimont by Aimon de
Varennes (1418 19). Even though they have
not been identied, the titles of two works
cited in the posthumous inventory of Philip

the Goods collection (enseignements
dAristote a Alexandre, roman
dAlexandre) suggest that Alexander gured
prominently therein. See Jean-Baptiste-Joseph
Barrois, Bibliothque protypographique, ou
Librairies des ls du roi Jean, Charles V, Jean
de Berri, Philippe de Bourgogne et les siens
(Paris: Treuttel & Wrtz, 1830), nos. 955,
956, 957, 1475.
5. Anonymous compilation from the midfteenth century. The duke ordered a copy
from David Aubert in 1463 (Brussels,
Bibliothque royale de Belgique, Mss. 6 9).
6. Jane H. M. Taylor, ed., Le Roman de
Perceforest, pt. 1 (Geneva: Droz, 1979),
15 22.
7. Mss. 348394. See Barrois, Bibliothque
protypographique, nos. 125358.
8. A minute corresponds, according to the
term used by David Aubert at the beginning of
several volumes of the Arsenal Perceforest
(Mss. 3485 and 3487, fol. 5, for example), to
a preliminary copy of the text, transcribed on
paper and destined to serve as a model for the
denitive copy on parchment.
9. See Barrois, Bibliothque protypographique,
nos. 1248 52. On the complex history of this
text, see Gilles Roussineau, David Aubert,
copiste du roman de Perceforest, in Les
Manuscrits de David Aubert, escripvain
bourguignon: Actes du colloque, Paris, 1993,
ed. Danielle Quruel (Paris: Presses de
lUniversit de Paris-Sorbonne, 1999), 35 51.
10. Charity C. Willard, A Fifteenth-Century
Burgundian Version of the Roman de
Florimont, Medievalia et Humanistica, n.s.,
2 (1971): 2146. Hlne Bidaux is currently
preparing a critical edition of this text at the
University of Lille-III, under the direction of
Marie-Madeleine Castellani.
Ms. fr. 12566; see Barrois, Bibliothque protypographique, no. 1287. According to the
inventories of Charles Briquet, the type of
watermark visible in this volume appeared for
the rst time in Colmar in 1452 and was
found in Douai in 1456 57 (Les Filigranes:
Dictionnaire historique des marques du papier
ds leurs apparition vers 1282 jusquen 1600
[Paris: A. Picard & Son; Geneva: A. Jullian,
1907], no. 8591). On the dating and illustration of the manuscript, see Pascal Schandel,
Le Matre de Wavrin et les miniaturistes lillois lpoque de Philippe le Bon et de
Charles le Tmraire (Ph.D. diss., Universit
Strasbourg II, 1997), vol. 1, 176, 200 203,
240 42, vol. 2, 119 35.

Ms. fr. 12566, fol. 2.
13. Jean Wauquelin, Les Faicts et conquestes
dAlexandre le Grand, ed. Sandrine Hrich
(Geneva: Droz, 2000), passim.
14. Wauquelin, Les Faicts et conquestes,
3, 322.
Ms. fr. 9342; see Barrois, Bibliothque protypographique, no. 1478. On the commissioning
of the manuscript, see Pierre Cockshaw, Jean
Wauquelin documents darchives, in Les
Chroniques de Hainaut, ou Les Ambitions
dun prince bourguignon, exh. cat., ed.
Christiane Van den Bergen-Pantens (Brussels:
Bibliothque royale de Belgique; Turnhout:
Brepols, 2000), 45, no. 10.
Ms. fr. 1419. Manuscript not listed in the
inventory, but bearing the arms, the motto,
and the emblem of Philip the Good (fol. 1v).
See Wauquelin, Les Faicts et conquestes, ed.
Hrich, 99, 5156.
17. Paris, Muse du Petit-Palais, Ms. Dutuit
456; see Barrois, Bibliothque protypographique, no. 1479.
18. On the transcription of the volume and the
career of Wauquelin, see Cockshaw, Jean
Wauquelin, 3738, 45, no. 10. Lon Delaiss
was the rst to identify the author of the
miniatures under the name of Matre de la
Geste dAlexandre; Ms. fr. 9342 was at the
time considered the painters masterwork
(Les Chroniques de Hainaut et latelier de
Jean Wauquelin Mons dans lhistoire de la
miniature amande, Bulletin des Muses
Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles 4 [1955]:
2156, esp. 24 25, 34 36). See also Anne H.
van Buren, Jean Wauquelin de Mons et la
production du livre aux Pays-Bas,
Publications du Centre Europen dtudes
Burgundo-mdianes 23 (1983): 5374.
19. See Blondeau, Un conqurant pour quatre
ducs, vol. 1, 262 70, 285 86, and
Blondeau, Jean Wauquelin et lillustration de
ses textes, in Jehan Wauquelin: De Mons la
cour de Bourgogne (14281452): Actes du colloque, Tours, 2004, ed. Marie-Claude de
Crcy, Sandrine Hrich, and Gabriella
Parussa (Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming).
20. Bernard Bousmanne, Item Guillaume
Wyelant aussi enlumineur: Willem Vrelant,
un aspect de lenluminure dans les Pays-Bas
mridionaux sous le mcnat des ducs de
Bourgogne Philippe de Bon et Charles le
Tmraire (Brussels: Bibliothque royale de
Belgique; Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), 200 204,

29799.
21. Bousmanne, Item Guillaume Wyelant,
63 66. Based on Vrelants intervention in the
Book of Hours of Philip the Bold in 1451,
Bernard Bousmanne suggests that the painter
might have already been residing in Bruges at
this date. No document conrms his presence
before 1454, however, the date of his rst
mention in the archives of the guild of book
craftsmen in Bruges.
22. Arie J. Vanderjagt, Qui sa vertu anoblist:
The Concepts of Noblesse and Chose
Publicque in Burgundian Political Thought
(Groningen: J. Milot and Co., 1981), passim;
Vanderjagt, Expropriating the Past: Tradition
and Innovation in the Use of Texts in
Fifteenth-Century Burgundy, in Tradition and
Innovation in an Era of Change, ed. Rudolph
Suntrup and Jan R. Veenstra (Frankfurt: Peter
Lang, 2001), 177201, esp. 19397.
23. See Vanderjagt, Qui sa vertu anoblist, 167,
ll. 46 47, and 165, ll. 8 9.
24. Vanderjagt, Qui sa vertu anoblist, 171,
ll. 248 49.
25. See Barrois, Bibliothque protypographique, nos. 1006, 1010. These entries
correspond, respectively, to Mss. 9278 80
(created in 1449 50) and 1097779 of the
Bibliothque royale de Belgique in Brussels.
The volumes are described in Vanderjagt, Qui
sa vertu anoblist, 86 87, 110. See as well the
entries in La librarie des ducs de Bourgogne:
Manuscrits conservs la Bibliothque royale
de Belgique, vol. 2 (Testes didactiques), ed.
Bernard Bousmanne, Frdrique Johan, and
Cline Van Hoorebeck (Brussels: Bibliothque
royale de Belgique; Turnhout: Brepols, 2003).
26. See Barrois, Bibliothque protypographique, no. 1007. The manuscript is
currently not identied.
27. Lille, Archives dpartementales du Nord,
B 2034, fols. 208 208 v. Document published
in Franke, Herrscher ber Himmel und
Erde, 122 23.
28. The rst illustrates episodes from
Alexanders youth, and the second narrates
some of his adventures in the East. They are
both drawn from the anonymous Roman
dAlexandre in prose. For a recent analysis of
these tapestries, see Anna Rapp Buri and
Monica Stucky-Schrer, Alexandre le Grand
et lart de la tapisserie du XVme sicle, La
Revue de lart 119 (1998): 2132; Franke,
Herrscher ber Himmel und Erde, 124 29,
134 38.
29. Fabienne Joubert, La Tapisserie mdivale,
3rd ed. (Paris: ditions de la Runion des
muses nationaux, 2002), 25 31. Joubert

furthermore attributes the cartoons for the
two Doria tapestries to Jacques Daret and
Nicolas Froment; see Jacques Daret et
Nicolas Froment cartonniers de tapisseries,
La Revue de lart 88 (1990): 44 45; Fabienne
Joubert and Philippe Lorentz, Matre Jacques
Daret, paintre, pour lors demourant a
Arras . . . in Fragments dune splendeur: Arras
la n du moyen ge, exh. cat. (Arras: Muse
des Beaux-Arts, 2000), 75 76.
30. On the business transactions between the
Greniers and the dukes of Milan, see Jean
Lestocquoy, Deux Sicles de lhistoire de la
tapisserie (13001500): Paris, Arras, Lille,
Tournai, Bruxelles (Arras: Commission
dpartementale des monuments historiques du
Pas-de-Calais, 1978), 7374, and Ernesto
Sestan, ed., Carteggi diplomatici fra Milano
Sforzesca e la Borgogna (Rome: Istituto
storico italiano per let moderna e contemporanea, 1987), vol. 2, no. 351, 63 64.
31. Ms. fr. 9342 and Dutuit 456 (see notes 15
and 17 above).
32. See Wauquelin, Les Faicts et conquestes,
23136. The episode is illustrated on fols. 92v
(Alexander helping his parents), 94v in Ms.
fr. 9342, and fol. 135v in Dutuit 456.
55373. Ms. fr. 9342 devotes two miniatures
to the Siege of Rocheor (fols. 221, 223)
and one to the Torture of Antipater (fol.
226). In Ms. Dutuit 456, all eleven chapters of
the episode are illustrated, from Aliors raising
an army and heading off to war (fols. 316 v,
317 v) to the torture of the vanquished after
the fall of Rocheor (fol. 326 v), and they
include the vicissitudes of the siege of the city
(fols. 318v, 319 v, 320 v, 321 v, 322 v, 323 v,
324 v, and 325v).
32733 (quotation on 323).
322 23, 608. For an edition of the passage
from the Chroniques de Hainaut (Wauquelins
version) that concerns Alexander, see Sandrine
Hrich, dition critique et commentaire littraire des Faicts et conquestes dAlexandre le
Grant de Jehan Wauquelin (XVme sicle)
(Ph.D. diss., Universit Paris IV-Sorbonne,
1997), vol. 1, 81 83. For more details on this
text and the manuscripts that contain it, see as
well Brussels, Turnhout 2000 (see note 15).
36. Perceforest, pt. 4, ed. Gilles Roussineau
(Paris: Droz, 1987), 13338.
37. Brussels, Bibliothque royale de Belgique,
Mss. 923132. For an analysis of the text,
part of which remains unpublished, see Guy
de Poerck, Introduction la Fleur des
41
Histoires de Jean Mansel (XVme sicle)

(Ghent: E. Claeys-Verheughe, 1936), esp. 25.
38. Dutuit 456, fol. 185.
39. Gotha, Forschungsbibliothek, Ms. Membr.
I 117, fol. 136v; Paris, Bibliothque nationale
40. On the politics of territorial expansion of
Philip the Good, see, most recently, Bertrand
Schnerb, Ltat bourguignon, 13631477
(Paris: Perrin, 1999), 20127.
41. Six of these battles are illustrated in Ms. fr.
9342 (fols. 142, 149 v, 154 v, 175, 183, 184).
For the corresponding text, see Wauquelin,
Les Faicts et conquestes, 364 65, 382 84,
394 95, 442 43, 458, 459 60.
334 35. On the symbolic signicance of the
episode, see Andrew R. Anderson, Alexanders
Gate, Gog and Magog, and the Inclosed
Nations (Cambridge, Mass.: Medieval
Academy of America, 1932).
43. Wauquelin, Les Faicts et conquestes, 334.
44. See, for example, Wauquelin, Les Faicts et
conquestes, 104 5, 23739. These chapters
are illustrated in Ms. fr. 9342 (fols. 41v, 96).
244 48. The episode is illustrated in Ms. fr.
9342 (fol. 98).
396 405.
47. Wauquelin, Les Faicts et conquestes, 399.
On this episode and its interpretation, see
Emmanuelle Baumgartner, LOrient
dAlexandre, Bien dire et bien aprandre 6
(1988): 1315.
48. Ms. fr. 9342 (fols. 157 Alexander Praying
in the Val Prilleux) and 158 v (Alexander
Escapes from the Val Prilleux).
402 3.
50. Jacques Paviot, Les Ducs de Bourgogne,
la croisade et lOrient (n XIVme sicle
XVme sicle) (Paris: Presses de lUniversit de
Paris-Sorbonne, 2003), 1314; on Philip the
Good and the Crusades see also 11776
(quotation on 13).
51. The saints presence is all the more
signicant because he is absent from the dedicatory miniatures opening the rst volume of
the Chroniques de Hainaut (Brussels,
Bibliothque royale de Belgique, Ms. 9242),
and the copy of Girart de Roussillon (Vienna,
sterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Ms. 2549)
commissioned by Philip the Good at the same
time as Bibliothque nationale de France,
Ms. fr. 9342.
42
blondeau
52. See Barrois, Bibliothque protypographique, nos. 1351, 1352, 1375, 1476.
99 227, and Hrich, dition critique,
vol. 1, 61 64.
13754.
55. That is one miniature per chapter (fols. 84,
85 v, 86, 86 v, 87 v, 88, 89, 89 v, 90, 90 v, 91,
91 v, 92 v).
56. Although the volume cannot be precisely
dated, we recall that it was made after the
installation of Willem Vrelant in Bruges,
attested to after 1454 (see note 21).
57. Victor M. Schmidt, A Legend and Its
Image: The Aerial Flight of Alexander the
Great in Medieval Art, trans. Xandra Bardet
(Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1995), 105 7.
58. The gure of God is making an ambiguous
gesture that looks like a benediction but is
made with his left hand. As Chiara SettisFrugoni and Victor Schmidt have pointed out,
Gods attitude toward Alexander nevertheless
remains a benevolent one, in keeping with the
text of the Roman dAlexandre in prose,
which is the inspiration for this representation;
see Chiara Settis-Frugoni, Historia Alexandri
elevati per griphos ad aerem: Origine, iconograa e fortuna di un tema (Rome: Istituto
storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 1973),
239 40, and n. 95; Schmidt, A Legend and
Its Image, 12324.
59. Jacques Du Clercq has left us a description
of it, published in Jean-Alexandre Buchon, ed.,
Choix de chroniques et mmoires relatifs
lhistoire de France, avec notices biographiques
(Orlans: Herluison, 1875), 185.
60. See Vanderjagt, Qui sa vertu anoblist, 171,
l. 245, et seq.
chapter 4
The Role of Dress in the Image of Charles the Bold,

Duke of Burgundy
M a r g a re t S c o t t
He was very ostentatious in his clothing and in everything

else, a little too much so . . . he would indeed have liked to resemble those
princes of antiquity about whom so much has been said since their deaths.1
Thus wrote Philippe de Commynes toward the end of the fteenth century in
regard to Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy (r. 146777). De Commynes
spent eight years at the Burgundian court, defecting from the dukes service to
that of the king of France in 1472.
One of the greatest (and perhaps also most ostentatious) eras of
European fashion occurred during Charles the Bolds brief reign. Almost certainly the most conspicuous components of Charless self-presentation and the
presentation of his court lay in dress. This was the result not only of his great
wealth and the prosperity that his Flemish territories had enjoyed for more than
thirty years, but also of an economy at the center of international trade and
of a ruler determined to make political statements through his dress.2 A vivid
impression of the clothes-conscious duke is conveyed in the rich body of manuscripts that he and his courtiers commissioned, many of which depict the duke
and his court.3 I will endeavor to describe a selection of these images in terms
of their garments and fabrics, their political messages, and the relationship of
the clothing portrayed in the images to those described in contemporary
accounts and documents of payment (wardrobe accounts). Finally I will try to
elucidate the value of the illuminations themselves in allowing us to create an
accurate picture of the dress of Charles the Bold.
Wearing opulent attire seems to have been a way of life for Charles the
Bold, with each splendid outt perhaps making it more difcult to nd another to outdo it. Textiles could cost so much that the money spent on his clothing would be difcult to match, or even to comprehend, today.4 The reaction of
the Englishman John Paston III to the court in 1468 he herd neuer of none
lyek to it saue Kyng Artourys cort would presumably have pleased Charles,
who sought the rank of king assiduously, partly through messages inherent in
his clothing.5
In discussing manuscript illuminations as a source for understanding
the dress at the Burgundian court, we have to recognize that they may offer not
just representations of fashionable dress, but exaggerations of it, in response to
a fashionable ideal, such as very long, slender legs (see g. 4.7). There is, however, clear evidence, both visual and documentary, that the general level of
ostentation in dress increased dramatically under the dukedom of Charles the
Bold. An early hint of this tendency may come in a miniature by Willem Vrelant
44 scott
Figure 4.1
Willem Vrelant or workshop. Charles the
Bold and Isabella of Bourbon at Prayer,
detached miniature from a book of hours.
Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek,
Ms. Gl. Kgl. 1612, 40, fol. 1 v.
or his workshop (g. 4.1) that depicts Charles, while still count of Charolais,
with his second wife, Isabella of Bourbon. The image echoes a Vrelant portrayal of Charless parents yet differs in one signicant respect: the older generation
is content with plain fabrics, but Charles and Isabella wear patterned silks.6
In particular, the visual evidence suggests a marked increase in the
amount of gold used in the fabrics from which clothes were made, and not just
for Charles himself. Sometimes we have to ask whether the artist made aesthetic choices about the fabrics depicted, as opposed to the fabrics likely to
have been worn in life by the individuals portrayed. One of the problems we
encounter in the visual sources is the identication of some of those fabrics, as
the general love of gold means that in art even the most unlikely gures can be
chapter 4: the role of dress in the image of charles the bold
shown wearing fabrics shot through with gold. In Le Jardin de vertueuse consolation, me, dressed as a pilgrim, is presumably meant to be wearing humble, undyed, naturally brown wool, yet the fabric is highlighted in gold.7 Much
of this emphasis on gold-shot or even plain gold fabrics is to be found in illuminations from the circle of the Master of Margaret of York, in works made for
the court circle.8
At the court of Charles the Bold, cloths made almost entirely of gold
became quite usual for the ducal family, at least as shown in art, and they
remained so for the clothing of some of their more immediate successors (see
gs. 4.2, 4.3, 4.8, 4.10).9 The most commonly seen golden fabrics, used for
hangings or clothing, are those called cloths of gold, in which a gold-thread
background supports a meandering pomegranate pattern, which is to be understood as being woven as velvet.10 The Chroniques de Hainaut presentation
scene, with Philip the Good in damask or patterned velvet and Charles the Bold
in brocade (see g. 7.2), provided the compositional basis for a scene in the
Enseignements paternels, illuminated by Jean Hennecart between 1468 and
1470 for Charles the Bold (g. 4.4).11 In the latter scene both the princely father
and son wear such cloths of gold, presumably reecting the taste and the environment of the patron.
45
Figure 4.2
Lieven van Lathem. Charles the Bold
and Saint George, in the Prayer Book of
Charles the Bold. Los Angeles, J. Paul
Getty Museum, Ms. 37, fol. 1 v.
Figure 4.3
Follower of Dreux Jean. Margaret of York
and the Risen Christ, in Nicolas Finet,
Le Dialogue de la duchesse de Bourgogne
Jsus Christ. London, British Library,
Add. Ms. 7970, fol. 1 v.
46 scott
Figure 4.4
Jean Hennecart. A Prince before His
Father, in Guillebert de Lannoy,
Enseignements paternels. Paris,
Bibliothque de lArsenal, Ms. 5104,
fol. 66.
Figure 4.5
Vienna Master of Mary of Burgundy.
Mary of Burgundy(?) Reading Her
Devotions, in the Hours of Mary of
Burgundy. Vienna, sterreichische
Nationalbibliothek, Ms. 1857, fol. 14 v.
47
The girl seated in the border space of a miniature from the Hours of
Mary of Burgundy (g. 4.5), dressed almost completely in shades of gold, is
often identied as Charless daughter, Mary of Burgundy.12 Only the pinkish
red of her collar and the green of her book cover provide relief from this
golden coloring. But what is the main gold-colored fabric? Is it to be understood as velvet? Compared with the black velvet cloth of gold lying near her,
it certainly has in its areas in shadow the more smudged quality that artists
used to suggest velvet. (Representations of the robes of the Order of the Golden
Fleece can be used as a control for checking the depiction of velvet, as in
1473 Charles the Bold changed the fabric from vermilion scarlet, a woolen
cloth, to crimson velvet, a silk cloth [for the latter, see g. 4.6].)13 Perhaps the
color of Marys gown is not gold, but is rather to be equated with that occasionally referred to in the accounts as tann (a yellowish brown), and the fabric is velvet.14
Figure 4.6
Master of the Golden Fleece. Chapter of
the Golden Fleece, in Guillaume Fillastre,
Histoire de la Toison dOr, book 2.
Vienna, sterreichisches Haus-, Hof- und
Staatsarchiv, Ordensarchiv vom Goldenen
Vlies, Ms. 2, fol. i.
48 scott
In keeping with de Commyness observation about Charles and the

princes of antiquity, artists often showed Charles and Alexander the Great in
fabrics that use a great deal of gold.15 Probably in 1470 Charles the Bold
received a copy of a translation of Quintus Curtius Rufuss Livre des fais
dAlexandre le grant (g. 4.7).16 In the presentation scene Loyset Lidet shows
us the ideal of the fashionable appearance for men around 1470: very short
gowns, very wide shoulders, and impossibly long and slender legs, which are
extended even further by shoes with sharply pointed toes. At the other end of
the body, tall bonnets perch on the gures heads. Gown sleeves, and even
doublet sleeves, are slit to reveal shirtsleeves beneath. Taken together, the men
exemplify the elements recorded, rather sourly, as the latest fashions in 1467 in
the memoirs of the Burgundian ofcial Jacques du Clercq.17 On the right, one
courtier (a knight of the Golden Fleece) wears his short black cloak slung to one
side, revealing a puffed upper sleeve on his doublet. This shows how at least a
part of the wide-shouldered look was achieved.
Other elements of the dress of the courtiers are more unusual, but not
completely without parallel. They perhaps reect short-lived fashions for such
things as striped doublet collars as well as cloth-of-gold hems (or else cloth of
gold was used here as an alternative to the more usual fur lining and fur trimming, which are seen on several other gures).18 Embroidered lettering is worn
by no fewer than three of the courtiers, at a time when embroidery was almost
nonexistent in northwestern European dress.19 On the left a man wears a long
blue velvet open-sided gown Charles the Bold seems to have worn something
of a similar cut in 1473, at a banquet in Trier (see below). Charles wears a modestly sized hat and a loose gown, which at rst glance appears to be made from
a plain red fabric. Closer examination, however, reveals that the fabric seems
to be a red velvet shot through with gold.
Let us compare the presentation scene with the scene of Charles the
Bold and his military commanders in 1475 (g. 4.8). Much of the 1475 scene
can be equated with reality: Olivier de La Marche described the ceremony as
involving Charles sitting on a decorated chair, like a princes, in the presence of
the lords of the blood, his council, and nobles of the household. Richard
Vaughan has noted that Charles militarized the court. This is reected even in
the civilian-looking dress of his commanders, who wear on their sleeves laces
(points), which were needed to tie on armor to doublets. The doublets here,
however, are fashionable and not the more serviceable doublets worn with
armor.20 The attendants at the doorway wear very short gowns, made in the
dark colors that they usually wore: Charless household servants wore black
and violet in the procession of Margaret of York into Bruges in July 1468; in
October, November, and December of that year, pages and some of the stablemen were dressed in black velvet and black cloth; and in April 1469 they wore
black velvet and violet cloth gowns (robes) and black satin doublets (pourpoints).21 The same two colors were worn by sixty court servants in the ducal
procession at Trier in 1473.22 At the front of the scene, one courtier wears a slit
gown sleeve, wrapped up onto his shoulder (compare g. 4.7). Many of the
other gures wear long gowns, which show the hallmark smudginess that indicates velvet.
49
Figure 4.7
Loyset Lidet. Presentation of the Book
to Charles the Bold by Vasco da Lucena,
in Quintus Curtius Rufus, Livre des fais
dAlexandre le grant, translated by Vasco
da Lucena. Paris, Bibliothque nationale
Figure 4.8
Master of Fitzwilliam 268. Charles the
Bold Receives His Military Captains, in
Military Ordinance of Charles the Bold.
London, British Library, Add. Ms. 36619,
fol. 5.
50 scott
Figure 4.9
Master of Girart de Roussillon. The
Wedding of Girart de Roussillon and
Berthe, in Jean Wauquelin, Girart de
Roussillon. Vienna, sterreichische
Nationalbibliothek, Ms. 2549, fol. 9 v.
Charless unbelted gown lacks the smudginess of velvet, and it appears

to be entirely golden. But what is it made of? The published wardrobe accounts
of Charles refer to many cloths of gold, but always with another color involved;
in 1468 they were crimson, black, blue, green, and even tann.23 Perhaps crucially for the question of fabrics, the artist who painted the scene of Charles
with his military commanders, the Master of Fitzwilliam 268, was an associate
of the Master of Margaret of York, in whose circle gold-shot fabrics were common, as seen in Le Jardin de vertueuse consolation, discussed above.24 It has
to be recognized that in this instance art did not imitate life.
Clothing featured directly or indirectly as part of several of the twelve
magnicences attributed to Charles the Bold by the ofcial historiographers
Georges Chastellain and Jean Molinet.25 On the whole, however, manuscripts
fail to convey the full splendor, not to say ostentation, of Charless clothing, and
they give very few signs of the games that he played through clothing in order
to manipulate his status. In large measure, this failure has to be attributed to

the limited repertoire of scenes in which he is depicted: as devout man at prayer
(g. 4.2), as head of the Order of the Golden Fleece (g. 4.6), as recipient of
a book (g. 4.7). The image size also may have made it difcult to include the
jewels he loved sewn all over his clothes and even applied to his armor.26
The festivities surrounding Charless wedding to Margaret of York in
1468 (the third magnicence), only a year after his elevation to the dukedom,
provide the rst major sign in the documentary sources of an increase in splendor. The result was the greatest extravaganza of the century, with at least
56,000 livres being spent on textiles bought from the Florentine Tommaso
Portinari alone.27 The standard price for the cloths of gold was 16 livres 16 sols
an ell, almost a years wages for a master mason (and between twenty-two and
twenty-four ells were required for a mans long gown).28 At the celebrations, the
color scheme for the ducal family seems to have been dominated by gold, paired
with crimson. The most expensive of the crimson cloth-of-gold gowns must
have been that worn by Charles himself at the rst tournament after the wedding banquet. The dukes gown was described in the wardrobe account as being
made of a very rich cloth of gold, which, at 48 livres an ell, cost nearly three
times as much as standard cloth of gold.29 An account in Flemish allows us to
identify the fabric as the most elaborate type of cloth of gold, with the gold
appearing not only in the background but also as loops at two heights on the
surface (goud vp goud, or gold on gold) and with the pattern in velvet of two
heights (vlu vp vlu, or velvet on velvet).30 It was, because of its cost, often
made to order.31 In her discussion of court etiquette (written 148491), Alinor
de Poitiers, daughter of one of Charless mothers ladies-in-waiting, was quite
adamant that cloth of this type, which she called drap dor fris (curly
cloth of gold), and very rich cloths of gold should be worn only by kings and
other great persons (who, from her list, must include dukes), in order to maintain the distinctions of rank.32 This is a vital clue to understanding the prominence of gold in the wardrobe of Charles the Bold.
Apart from its abnormal expense (the fabric alone cost 1,488 livres),
Charless gown for the tournament must have been an exceptional garment, as
it required thirty-one ells of fabric, about a third more than his long gowns usually did.33 Although the wedding took place in July, the gown was lined with
sable. The nal result was a garment that trailed on the ground and had large,
open sleeves and sleeves of this type certainly offered the maximum opportunity for display of fabric and of fur lining.34 It was judged by Olivier de La
Marche to be most princely and rich; its peculiar richness is hinted at in his
description of it as goldsmiths work.35 The sleeves are described repeatedly,
which suggests that they were not like those in everyday use, and indeed large,
open sleeves (grandes manches ouvertes) were not common in fashionable
dress at this time. They belonged to the houppelande (gown) of the late fourteenth century and the rst thirty years of the fteenth century, which was
revived in the late 1440s, at least in art, for the Vienna Girart (g. 4.9).36
Finally, it is enlightening to compare the cost of this extraordinary gown against
the cost of Charles the Bolds copy of Quintus Curtius, which is said to have
cost 5,382 Flemish groats, the equivalent of nearly 450 days wages for a master mason.37 The cost of only one ell of the fabric represents the wages of this
master mason for 960 days.
51
52 scott
What, therefore, are we looking at as Charles the Bolds dress in

some manuscript illuminations? Sometimes he wears normal cloth of gold
(compare g. 4.2), but we have to consider whether the plain golden fabrics
seen in illuminations may be an artistic conceit, designed to appeal to Charless
love of gold but not necessarily reecting the realities of his wardrobe, or
whether some fabrics could have been almost entirely of metal. The latter suggestion is not as unlikely as it may sound: there are extant fabrics that seem to
be almost entirely of gold thread, and Charles did occasionally wear fabrics
with a very high metal content.38 At the banquet in Trier in 1473, ostensibly to
honor the emperor Frederick III (part of the seventh magnicence), Charles
appeared in a costly gown of gold and silver, glittering with jewels, and open at
the sides to allow him to display the Garter (of the Order of the Garter), which
he wore at his knee.39 This gold and silver fabric may be the one described by
the Milanese ambassador Johanne Pietro Panigarola in April 1475, on the occasion of the publication of an alliance among Burgundy, Savoy, and Milan. On
the latter occasion Charles wore an extremely sumptuous long gown lined with
sable and made of a fabric that it is difcult to imagine: it was made of gold
thread, in loops, and with the silk threads (presumably those that would normally have formed the pattern around the gold threads) replaced by silver
threads.40 It was thus of Alinor de Poitierss curly variety and reected
Charless sense of his extraordinarily high rank. It must have looked like pure
metal, as does the clothing in some images of Charles.
In those images, however, it may simply be the case that artists shied
away from the potential aesthetic mess of setting the duke, clad in a patterned
cloth of gold, in front of a patterned hanging, and therefore developed an alternative, using a single strong color in the dress to help Charles stand out from
his immediate surroundings. The dependence of the composition of the scene
from the military ordinance, in which there are two patterned hangings behind
Charles, on images of him as head of the Order of the Golden Fleece (compare
gs. 4.8 and 4.6), in which he would have worn a strong, plain red, might also
have helped the development of this strategy.41
Much of what we read of what Charles the Bold wore on really special occasions, as opposed to what we see him wearing as everyday dress in
manuscripts, would seem to corroborate Philippe de Commyness view of his
ostentation. Charles was part of a world that regarded magnicence as a
princely duty, as public displays of princely splendor would reassure the people
that their prince was rich and powerful and, in Charless case, t to become a
king. Manuscripts rarely show this side of Charless use of dress, except perhaps
for the strange hat in the scene of the duke with his military commanders (see
g. 4.8). Lavishly jeweled hats, whose implications of rank (ducal or regal?)
bewildered contemporary observers, played an important role in Charless
quest for the title of king.42 With these hats he wore gowns or armor encrusted
with jewels and was liable to make speeches about reviving the ancient kingdom of Burgundy, absorbed by the ancestors of the French nine hundred
years before.43
At Charless meeting with the Emperor Frederick III in 1473 (the seventh magnicence, for which Charles spent almost 39,000 livres on clothing
for about one thousand people), the papal ambassador believed that Charles
was declaring his rank(s) through three types of clothing: the rst was a mantelina, showing that he was rst of the twelve peers of France (decanus XII
53
Figure 4.10
Ghent Associates. Mary of Burgundy
and Maximilian(?), in the Hours of Mary
of Burgundy and Maximilian. Berlin,
Staatliche Museen, Kupferstichkabinett,
Ms. 78 B 12, fol. 220 v.
Parum Franciae); the second was a mantle of gold, as in a ducal outt (in
habito ducale); and the third outt was in regal style (ad modo regale).44
The ambiguity was continued at the eleventh magnicence, his parliament at
Malines in July 1474, when he entered the city in ducal attire, with a hat that
many observers thought was a crown. The lost argentier accounts for that event
seem to have referred to a rich ducal bonnet with the circlet of an archduke.45
Charles the Bold seems, in life, regularly to have outdone the dress in
which he is depicted in manuscripts. He wore straightforwardly lavish
clothes, as any great prince might have done, but he also played, as an actor
would, on how they would be interpreted by observers. In this game, cloth rich
with gold, on its own in manuscript illuminations and with added jewels in life,
was his main prop, with the help of lavishly decorated hats of a marked hierarchical ambiguity. Yet of the splendors of his jewels and more amazing textiles
and hats, we see very little in detail in illuminated manuscripts. Charless political legacy was the absorption of his state into the Hapsburg Empire. It is
arguable that his sartorial legacy meant that, for the next generation of manuscript illuminators, the great and the good, to be convincing, simply had to be
shown dressed in cloth of gold (g. 4.10).
54
scott
Notes
This paper is based on work undertaken for

lectures delivered at the J. Paul Getty Museum,
Los Angeles, August 7, 2003, and the Royal
Academy of Arts, London, January 19, 2004.
I am grateful for the help and encouragement
of Thomas Kren, Elizabeth Morrison, and
Jeff Avery.
1. Il estoit fort pompeux en habillemens et en
toutes autres choses, et ung peu trop . . . eust
bien voulu resembler ces anciens princes
dont il a tant est parl aprs leur mort
(Philippe de Commynes, Mmoires, ed. Joseph
Calmette and Georges Durville [Paris: H.
Champion, 1924 25], vol. 2, 154 55). Some
of the excesses are hinted at in the account
of the new fashions of 1467 written by
Jacques du Clercq, a Burgundian ofcial and
native of Arras; see Mmoires de Jacques du
Clercq (14481467), ed. Jean-Alexandre
Buchon, Collection des chroniques nationales
franaises, vol. 40 (Paris, 1826 28), 139 40.
2. On prosperity, see David Nicholas,
Medieval Flanders (London: Longman,
1992), 376.
3. On the magnicence of the Burgundian
dukes, and on the prohibitive costs of keeping
up ones appearance at court, see Marina
Belozerskaya, Rethinking the Renaissance:
Burgundian Arts across Europe (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002), 48 58,
64, 65. Richard Vaughan, Valois Burgundy
(London: Allen Lane, 1975), 38, summarizes
the problems of estimating the total annual
expenditure on clothes.
4. See Belozerskaya, Rethinking the
Renaissance, 225, on the hierarchy of
expenditure.
5. Norman Davis, ed., Paston Letters and
Papers of the Fifteenth Century, pt. 1 (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1971), 539. On Charless
ambitions, see Thomas Kren and Scot
Getty Museum, 2003), 3.
6. The comparison is possible via Jeffrey
Chipps Smith, Margaret of York and the
Burgundian Portrait Tradition, in Margaret
of York, Simon Marmion, and the Visions
of Tondal, ed. Thomas Kren (Malibu, Calif.:
J. Paul Getty Museum, 1992), 49.
Ms. fr. 1026, fol. 9 v, illustrated in Maurits
Smeyers, Flemish Miniatures from the Eighth
to the Mid-Sixteenth Century: The Medieval
World on Parchment (Leuven: Davidsfonds,
1999), 412, no. 83; for fol. 28 v, see Kren and

248, no. 62.
8. On this group, see Kren and McKendrick,
Illuminating the Renaissance, 21718 and
nos. 61 63.
9. Charles is shown in cloth of gold or fabrics
shot through with gold in other images, such
as the Master of the Ghent Life of Saint
Colettes Charles the Bold and Margaret of
York with Saints Francis and Colette, in Pierre
de Vaux, Vie de Sainte Colette (Ghent,
Convent of the Poor Clares, Ms. 8, fol. 40 v),
illustrated in Smeyers, Flemish Miniatures,
381, no. 36; Lieven van Lathems miniature in
Ordonnance touchant la conduite du premier
cuyer dcuyerie de monseigneur le duc de
Bourgoigne (Vienna, sterreichische
Nationalbibliothek, Ms. s.n. 2616, fol. 1 v),
illustrated ibid., 372, no. 25; and posthumously by the Master of Edward IV in
Quintus Curtius Rufuss Histoire dAlexandre
(Geneva, Bibliothque publique et universitaire, Ms. fr. 76, fol. 1), illustrated ibid., 449,
no. 50, and see Kren and McKendrick,
Illuminating the Renaissance, 295, for dating.
10. On the making of gold thread, and on this
type of fabric, see Lisa Monnas, Italian Silks
(1300 1500), in Five Thousand Years of
Textiles, ed. Jennifer Harris (London: British
Museum Press, 1993), 168, 169. Extant examples can be seen in Rosamond E. Mack,
Bazaar to Piazza: Islamic Trade and Italian
Art, 13001600 (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2002), g. 39; Richard
Marks and Paul Williamson, eds., Gothic: Art
for England, 14001547, exh. cat. (London:
V & A Publications, 2003), no. 201, ill. 328.
11. Damask is a fabric in which the pattern is
most commonly created by altering the structure of the weave, and hence the play of light,
on threads of one color. Brocading involves
the use of contrasting threads, often of metal,
which are present in only the limited areas in
which they contribute to the pattern of the
textile. See Harris, ed., Five Thousand Years
of Textiles, 20 21. For the Chroniques, see
Renaissance, no. 3. For the Enseignements,
see Kren and McKendrick, Illuminating the
Renaissance, no. 56; Smeyers, Flemish
Miniatures, 364, no. 15; and Meesterlijke
Middeleuwen: Miniaturen van Karel de Grote
tot Karel de Stoute, 8001475, exh. cat.
(Zwolle: Waanders; Leuven: Davidsfonds,
2002), 312.
12. On womens clothing of this type in 1467,
see du Clercq, Mmoires, 139, and Margaret
Scott, Late Gothic Europe, 14001500
(London: Mills & Boon, 1980), 176.
13. See Henri Beaune and J. dArbaumont,

eds., Mmoires dOlivier de La Marche, matre
dhtel et capitaine des gardes de Charles le
Tmraire (Paris, 1883 88), vol. 1, 134 (il
st chambier les robbes et manteaux des
chevaliers de lordre, qui estoient descarlate
vermeilz, velours cramoisy), and vol. 3, 203
n. 5. The 1473 statutes and armorial
of the order in The Hague (Koninklijke
Bibliotheek, Ms. 76 E 10, fol. 5v) show
scarlet; see Smeyers, Flemish Miniatures,
366, no. 18.
14. In 1468 Charles bought tann cloth of gold
at 16 livres 16 sols an ell for himself. Tann
velvet for Mary of Burgundys dwarf cost 72
sols an ell: see Anke Greve, Emilie Lebailly,
and Werner Paravicini, Comptes de largentier
de Charles le Tmraire, duc de Bourgogne,
vol. 1, Anne 1468 (Paris: Boccard, 2001),
nos. 2285, 2284. One ell of Bruges is equivalent to 27 3 4 English inches; see Jill Dunkerton
et al., Giotto to Drer: Early Renaissance
Painting in the National Gallery (New Haven:
Yale University Press; London: National
Gallery Publications, 1991), 390.
15. See Kren and McKendrick, Illuminating
the Renaissance, no. 54, 229. Vaughan, Valois
Burgundy, 81, notes that despite his passion
for military matters, Charles (unlike
Alexander) conquered far less territory than
his father (another Philip) had done. See also
Richard Vaughan, Charles the Bold: The
Last Valois Duke of Burgundy, new ed.
(Woodbridge, Suffolk, U.K.: Boydell Press,
2002), 181, on how everyone, including
Charles himself, likened him to Alexander
(and other ancient heroes). For depictions of
Alexander in gold in Quintus Curtius Rufus
manuscripts from the Master of Margaret of
York group, see, for instance, the Master of
Margaret of Yorks miniature in Vienna,
sterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Ms. 2566,
fol. 49, 1468 81, in Smeyers, Flemish
Miniatures, 380, no. 34; and Master of the
Jardin de vertueuse consolation, Los Angeles,
J. Paul Getty Museum, Ms. Ludwig XV 8, in
17. See du Clercq, Mmoires, 139 40, and
Scott, Late Gothic Europe, 176. For an extant
example of the long-toed shoes, see Andr
Vandewalle, Les marchands de la Hanse et la
banque des Mdicis: Bruges, march
dchanges culturels en Europe (Oostkamp:
Stichting Kunstboek, 2002), 81.
18. Patterned fabric is used to edge the gown
worn by the lady beside Jean de Montferrant
in Les Douze Dames de rhtorique

(Cambridge University Library, Ms. Nn.3.2),
illustrated in Kren and McKendrick,
Illuminating the Renaissance, 267.
19. Embroidery seems to have been retained on
a regular basis only for the outts of members
of the ducal bodyguard and for outts worn
for the 1468 jousts. See Greve et al., Comptes
de largentier, vol. 1, nos. 466, 1256, 1513:
the paletoz of the archers were decorated
with silver, and attendants at the jousts had
sanguine satin mantelines (short cloaks?)
embroidered with the letters C and M and
with ames. (Paletoz seem to have been semimilitary garments; see de La Marche,
Mmoires, vol. 1, 272 n. 2.) Charles had a
vermilion velvet gown embroidered on one
side with a gold letter and on its folds with
drops of gold, with large pearls and balas
rubies added to the embroidery (cyphre dor
et sur les ploix gouttes dor, sur laquelle
broudure et autour de ladicte robe furent
mises pluseurs grosses perles et baillaizes), as
well as a long black satin gown, embroidered
as richly as could be (si richement que faire
se povoit).
Renaissance, no. 64. See de La Marche,
Mmoires, vol. 4, 85 86: siet en chayere
pare, comme a prince appartient. On military elements, see Vaughan, Charles the Bold,
193, and Claude Blair, European Armour,
circa 1066 to circa 1700 (London: Batsford,
1958), 78.
21. De La Marche, Mmoires, vol. 3, 108ff.;
and compare Greve et al., Comptes de largentier, vol. 1, nos. 2070 72. See also Anke
Greve, Emilie Lebailly, and Werner Paravicini,
Comptes de largentier de Charles le
Tmraire, duc de Bourgogne, vol. 2, Anne
1469 (Paris: Boccard, 2002), nos. 1183 84.
22. Vaughan, Charles the Bold, 143.
nos. 2284 85.
Renaissance, 218.
25. Chroniques de Jean Molinet, ed. JeanAlexandre Buchon, Collection des chroniques
nationales franaises, vol. 43 (Paris,
1826 28), 240 42.
26. In 1471 Grard Loyet was paid for making
for Charles a hat of steel, covered with a ducal
hat in gold and decorated with an elaborate
jewel in the shape of three guns (cf. Vaughan,
Charles the Bold, 169). It sounds like a dualpurpose item a helmet tricked out to look
like a crown, if only, at this stage, a ducal
crown.
27. On the wedding as the wedding of the

century, see Belozerskaya, Rethinking the
Renaissance, 58. Vaughan, Charles the Bold,
48 53, summarizes contemporary accounts
of the event. See Greve et al., Comptes de
largentier, vol. 1, nos. 2283, 2284, for the
payments.
nos. 2284, 2285.
no. 2284.
30. A. J. Ensched, Huwelijksplechtigheden
van Karel van Bourgondi en Margaretha
van York, Kronijk van het historisch
Genootschap te Utrecht, 5th ser., 2 (1866): 39.
31. Monnas, Italian Silks, 170.
32. Alinor de Poitiers, Les honneurs de la
cour, in Mmoires sur lancienne chevalerie,
ed. Jean Baptiste de La Curne de Sainte-Palaye
(Paris: Girard, 1826): vol. 2, 214. The more
usual term for this curly fabric seems to
have been drap dor tixu; it was known more
informatively in Italian as riccio sopra riccio
(loop over loop). On the use of the word tissue
in England to denote fabrics of this type, see
Lisa Monnas, Tissues in England during the
Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, Centre
International dEtude des Textiles Anciens
(CIETA) Bulletin 75 (1998): 62 80.
Consistent with Alinors view would be an
English law of 1509/10, which was to prohibit
the use of clothe of golde tyssue by anyone
under the rank of duke (Monnas, Tissues in
England, 76). Possibly the nest surviving
example of this type of textile is the crimson
velvet riccio sopra riccio altar frontal given by
Pope Sixtus IV (1471 84) to the Basilica of
Saint Francis in Assisi (see Lisa Monnas, The
Artists and the Weavers: The Design of Woven
Silks in Italy, 1350 1550, Apollo 125 [1987]:
416 24, gs. 10, 11,
pls. v, vi).
33. Charless long gowns made of silks, including cloths of gold, usually required between
twenty-two and twenty-four ells of fabric. Two
of those made for the wedding followed this
pattern: a long robe of very rich gray velvet on
a satin ground (twenty-two ells), and a robe of
unspecied size (but presumably long), of
twenty-four ells of very rich crimson velvet on
velvet (Greve et al., Comptes de largentier,
vol. 1, no. 2285).
34. The accounts describe it in terms such as
a grant manch ouverte, longue robe traynant, and traynant a terre (see Greve et al.,
Comptes de largentier, vol. 1, nos. 1105,
1107, 2285). The Traicti des nopces de
Monseigneur le duc de Bourgoingne et de
Brabant, in de La Marche, Mmoires, vol. 4,
55
108, describes it as a robe longues manches

jusques en terre, de drap dor fourre de trs
nes martres sabelines.
35. De La Marche, Mmoires, vol. 3, 122 23:
robe dorfavrerie grandes manches ouvertes
. . . moult princial et riche. He is alone in
describing it as goldsmiths work.
36. See Margaret Scott, A Visual History of
Costume: The Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Centuries (London: Batsford, 1986), pls. 38,
42, 45, 55, 63 65. For reproductions of the
Girart illuminations, see Dagmar Thoss,
Das Epos der Burgunderreiches Girart de
Roussillon: Mit der Wiedergabe aller 53
Miniaturseiten des Widmungsexemplars fr
Philipp den Guten, Herzog von Burgund,
Codex 2549 der sterreichischen Nationalbibliothek in Wien (Graz: Akademische
Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1989).
Renaissance, 63, no. 16.
38. Among the extant fabrics is that designed
by Antonio Pollaiuolo for Matthias Corvinus,
king of Hungary (1458 90), now in the
Hungarian National Museum, Budapest; illustrated in color in Ronald G. Asch and Adolf
M. Birke, eds., Princes, Patronage, and the
Nobility: The Court at the Beginning of the
Modern Age, c. 14501650 (London: German
Historical Institute; Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1991), 12, pl. 4. Compare the mostly
gold-thread fabric of the vestments woven in
Florence to the order of Henry VII of England
(Stonyhurst College, Lancashire; on loan to
the Victoria and Albert Museum, London).
See Marks and Williamson, eds., Gothic,
no. 31, 169, pl. 11.
39. In Libellus de magnicentia ducis
Burgundiae, in Basler Chroniken 3 (1887):
361: gehehabitueert ende ghecleet wesende
met een wtermaten ende costelicken tabbaert
van goude ende van siluer, met also vele wttermaten precieuse ghesteenten, die als sterren
stonden ende blincten . . . desen tabbaert was
aen beyden zijden open, dat men daer sien
mocht die costelickheyt ende cierhyet zijner
hosen, opten welcken hy draghende was die
ordene des conincx Eduwaert van Enghelant.
Vaughan, Charles the Bold, 146, mistakenly
translates tabbaert as tabard (the opensided garment still worn by heralds); had the
garment actually been a tabard, there would
have been no need to explain, for a fteenthcentury audience, that it was open on both
sides. That tabbaert meant a gown at this
period (and is often wrongly translated today)
is shown in Marieke de Winkel, Fashion and
Meaning in Rembrandts Paintings (Ph.D.
diss., University of Amsterdam, 2003), 6 n. 1.
56
scott
40. Elia Colombo, Iolanda Duchessa di

Savoia (1465 1478): Studio storico corredato
di documenti inediti, Miscellanea di storia
italiana 31 (1894): 279 80: vestito di una
roba longa di drapo doro rizo richissimo: nel
quale per scontro di setta era argento relevato
fodrato [sic] de sebelline. Rizo may be a
combination of dialect and careless laymans
terminology, which would mean that the
fabric was of the looped riccio sopra riccio
type (see note 32 above). On the interchangeability of c, g, and z in Italian dialects, see
Jacqueline Herald, Renaissance Dress in
Italy, 14001500 (London: Bell & Hyman;
Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press,
1981), 209.
41. The dependence is noted in Kren and
252.
42. Discussed in Vaughan, Valois Burgundy,
175, 183, and Vaughan, Charles the Bold,
168 70. The jeweled hat that Charles lost at
the Battle of Grandson is illustrated in
Belozerskaya, Rethinking the Renaissance, 97.
43. See Joseph Calmette, The Golden Age of
Burgundy: The Magnicent Dukes and Their
Courts, trans. Doreen Weightman (London:
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1962), 172, on
Charless readiness to see a Burgundian kingdom established on the ruins of France.
44. Belozerskaya, Rethinking the Renaissance,
123; Alo Rosario Natale, Il diario di Cicco
Simonetta, Archivio storico lombardo 77
(1950): 171.
45. Chroniques de Jean Molinet, 242: en
habit ducal . . . le chapel en teste, que multitude de gens jugeoient estre couronne. On
the argentier reference (un riche bonnet ducal
avec un cercle darchiduc), see Werner
Paravicini, Die zwlf Magnicences Karls
des Khnen, in Formen und Funktionen
ffentlicher Kommunikation im Mittelalter,
ed. Gerd Althoff (Stuttgart: J. Thorbeke,
2001), 269. In this discussion I ignore the
bimorph image of a ruler, sometimes identied
as Charles the Bold, in Montpellier,
Bibliothque municipale, Fonds C. Cavalier,
no. 216. Its appearance has nothing to do
with the recorded appearances of Charles the
Bold; indeed it, and the female personications
with it, seems to me to be theatrical. See
Chipps Smith, Margaret of York, 49 50.
Illustrated in color in Smeyers, Flemish
Miniatures, 368.
Part 2: techniques, media, and the organization of production

chapter 5
The Suggestive Brush: Painting Techniques in Flemish Manuscripts

from the Collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum
and the Huntington Library
N a n c y K . Tu r n e r
From the earliest art-historical inquiries into the

Flemish primitives, the subjects of paint media (oil versus tempera) and the
visual effects achieved in oil have been central to the study of Flemish panel
painting.1 By contrast, for those investigating Flemish manuscript painting of
the same period, identication of materials and methods of painting have
received considerably less attention; only in the last few years have Flemish
manuscript-painting materials been the subject of scientic inquiry.2 The relationships between Flemish panel painting and manuscript illumination have
been explored by art historians, mainly from an iconographic or stylistic point
of view,3 and the recent exhibition and catalogue Illuminating the Renaissance:
The Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe revealed even further
specic links between media.4 As that exhibition and publication made clear,
illuminators and panel painters working in Flanders between 1440 and 1540
inuenced each other in signicant ways. Panel painters clearly took inspiration
from their book-painting contemporaries, while visual effects being achieved by
panel painters in oil undoubtedly inspired book painters to make innovative use
of their traditional medium.
While this essay cannot add to the formidable scholarship that draws
on archival or historical evidence to shed light on these relationships, I will
attempt to offer an in-depth examination of manuscript-painting techniques as
observed through the microscope. Looking at manuscripts from the collections
of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and the Huntington Library, San
Marino, California, that include miniatures by ve of the most compelling illuminators or workshops featured in Illuminating the Renaissance, I will explore
manuscript illuminations technical relationship to paintings on panel. The
attributions of the illuminations discussed here follow those given in the exhibition catalogue, namely, Jan van Eycks workshop, Simon Marmion, Gerard
David, the Master of James IV of Scotland, and Simon Bening. The close visual
and technical analysis of Flemish illumination, along with the study of Flemish
painting treatises of the fteenth and early sixteenth centuries, can further augment our understanding of surviving works by these artists. Although space
does not allow for a discussion of Flemish painting treatises here,5 what I hope
to demonstrate in this essay is what I perceive as an apparent shift in
the handling of manuscript-painting materials by these ve artists or workshops
across the period from around 1440 to 1540. While exploring the technical
connections between manuscript illumination and panel painting over the
course of this roughly one-hundred-year period, I will describe how painting
58 turner
materials were employed by each artist, how each artists work deviates from
traditional practices, and how our understanding of the relationships between
book and panel painting during this period might be rened by these technical
observations.6
A n E y c k i a n I l l u m i n a t i o n f ro m t h e Tu r i n - M i l a n H o u r s
Media have long been a central concern of researchers investigating

the paintings of Jan van Eyck and his workshop.7 In studying the Gettys leaf
by the workshop of Jan van Eyck, Christ Blessing (ca. 1440 45) from the
Turin-Milan Hours,8 no sample of the paint layer could be taken for analysis
due to the miniatures nearly pristine condition. Thus, we cannot say precisely
which painting medium was used to bind the pigments for this miniature, other
than that it was most likely a water-soluble medium. Observations of Christ
Blessing at high magnication, however, combined with X-ray uorescence
analysis, begin to reveal a subtle layering of closely related hues (g. 5.1) that
is more typical of painting on panel. For instance, in the red robe of Christ, the
illuminator interwove four different red pigments to paint the drapery: vermilion, red lead, red ocher, and an organic red glaze (g. 5.2).9 Starting with
an underlayer of the orange-hued lead red mixed or layered with red ocher,
the artist then modeled the drapery with the more brilliant true red of vermilion, dened highlights with a thinly applied lead white, and rendered deep shadows in a rich organic red glaze. The use of deep, rich glazes throughout the
image and the highly rened painting technique of thin, parallel strokes create a
blended effect and impart an enamel-like, reective quality to the surface, evocative of oil painting on panel. Interestingly, a similar layering and combination of
these specic pigments within passages of red appears to be fairly common in
panel paintings from the workshops of Van Eyck and his contemporaries.10
Although the painter of Christ Blessing generally followed the traditional manuscript-painting technique of raising and shading for the rendering of drapery,11 the end result is quite different from what is typically found
in book painting. The painter started with a preliminary paint layer of a middle tone, which was subsequently shaded or deepened with a darker tone in
areas of shadow and then raised or highlighted with white or a paler value
of the same hue or a contrasting pale color. In this instance, however, the illuminator worked with tremendous renement, employing four reds of differing
value and saturation and contrasting warm against cool reds. Although an
unblended technique was used, the ne strokes are so subtle in their gradation
of tones that they visually blend together when the miniature is viewed from the
distance at which the reader would hold the manuscript. This visual blending along with the use of deep, rich organic glazes and the reective surface
they create emulates in water-based medium on parchment the blended aesthetic of the oil medium seen in Van Eycks panels.
The unblended technique found in the drapery of Christ Blessing can
also be seen in the brown robes in the Eyckian Saint Francis Receiving the
Stigmata, dating to the 1430s, in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which was
rendered in oil on parchment and mounted on wood panel.12 Although there
remains some disagreement over the attribution of the Philadelphia painting, it
is noteworthy that it was painted at a similar scale to Christ Blessing and that
it exhibits a comparable painting technique. Very ne strokes can be seen in the
chapter 5: the suggestive brush
Figure 5.1
Master of the Berlin Crucixion or circle.
Christ Blessing. Leaf from the MilanTurin Hours. J. Paul Getty Museum,
Ms. 67 (detail).
Figure 5.2
Photomicrograph (detail, g. 5.1),
showing red robe.
Figure 5.3
Jan van Eyck. Saint Francis Receiving
the Stigmata. Oil on parchment
mounted on panel, 12.4 14.6 cm
(47 8 53 4 in.). Philadelphia Museum
of Art, John G. Johnson Collection,
cat. 314 (detail).
unblended highlights in white over the brown of the robe (g.

5.3), akin to the blue and red drapery in the Getty leaf. Marigene
Butler described the technique: The form of the robes and rocks
is modeled using very ne strokes of a shadow or highlight tone
laid upon the surface of a base layer of paint. The use of this particular technique for modeling form may have been dictated by
the small scale. . . . Only when one examines the . . . painting using
magnication can the individual, minute, delicate strokes of paint
be distinguished and fully appreciated.13 Moreover, as with the
Philadelphia Saint Francis,14 a thin priming of lead white may
have been used to prepare the parchment on which the Christ
Blessing was painted: X-ray uorescence analysis identied the
presence of lead in all areas tested, including areas where leadbased pigments were presumably not used.15 Thus, due to their
similarly small scale and intended viewing distance and their
unblended technique, presumably on a lead white ground, we see
some correspondence in the painting techniques, particularly in
the drapery, in both oil and tempera on parchment.
59
60 turner
Figure 5.4
Jan van Eyck. Saint Francis Receiving the
Stigmata (detail, g. 5.3).
Figure 5.5
Photomicrograph (detail, g. 5.1), showing Christs face.
A further type of visual blending can also be observed in the face

of Christ (g. 5.5). Modeling with multicolored daubs and strokes, the painter
of Christ Blessing employed translucent glazes of pink and opaque touches of
dilute white, with applications of reddish brown; gray-black; purplish gray for
the nose, eyebrows, and beard; and touches of pale pink and red for the cheeks
and lips. Even touches of yellow ocher were added to the beard and moustache
to give texture to the facial hair. The loose, spontaneous handling of paint
visible under magnication creates a sympathetic and enlivened description of
Christs countenance. A comparison of Christs features in the Gettys TurinMilan Hours leaf with those of Saint Francis in the Philadelphia painting
(g. 5.4) reveals a greater blending in the way Saint Franciss visage is painted.
By contrast, the illuminator of Christ Blessing employed a wider color palette of
opaque pigments and ne glazes to build up the face than his cohort working in
oil, relying upon a comfortable viewing distance to achieve a visual blending
that affects the three-dimensionality so characteristic of Eyckian illusionism.
A digital image taken in the infrared range (g. 5.6) affords an opportunity to observe the underdrawing in the gure and compare it with surviving
Eyckian workshop drawings as well as with the underdrawings discovered in
the other surviving Eyckian miniatures from the Turin-Milan Hours.16 In the
infrared image of Christ Blessing, we recognize some of the stylistic characteristics of Eyckian workshop drawings: strong rectilinear lines delineating the
drapery folds, scant use of parallel hatching along fold lines, and small terminus hooks to suggest the ends of two folds. These features are also typical of
drawings attributed to Van Eycks followers. For instance, a drawing of Saint
Paul by a follower of Van Eyck (ca. 1430 40; g. 5.7) from a series of twelve
apostles now in the Albertina, Vienna, shares the use of abbreviated key strokes
and strong vertical lines used to delineate the drapery folds, with parallel hatching and very few terminus hooks at the ends of the folds.17 Taken to be model
sheets or copies after Eyckian models, these drawings have a clear descriptive
nish without internal modications or hesitation with the pen, very like the
underdrawing in Christ Blessing. Comparing the Christ Blessing infrared with
underdrawings revealed in other Eyckian miniatures from the Turin-Milan
Hours, similar strong, unbroken lines indicate the shadows and describe the
folds.18 Hatchings parallel to the linear fold lines are visible in the infrared of
the Getty leaf, but no perpendicular hatchings in the deep shadows can be
detected, nor can any pentimenti or corrections, suggesting the use of a pattern.
The underdrawings directness and clarity generally correspond to surviving
drawings attributed to Van Eycks followers dating to the third and fourth
decades of the century, like the Albertina apostles. Thus, aspects of the painting technique and underdrawing found in the miniature Christ Blessing
including the highly rened additive strokes, the use of glazes, the even visual
blending, and the bold underdrawing share qualities with surviving Eyckian
paintings in oil and with surviving Eyckian pattern drawings.19
S i m o n M a r m i o n : P a n e l Pa i n t e r a n d I l l u m i n a t o r
Simon Marmion was well known both as an illuminator and as a

panel painter, and his work in both media is documented and can be directly
compared.20 His style in manuscripts is characterized by a highly economical
painting technique as well as by a distinctive palette that includes a brilliant
spring green, salmon pink, chartreuse, gray-blue, red, blue, and white. These
Figure 5.6
Digital infrared scan of Christ Blessing
(detail, g. 5.1).
Figure 5.7
After Jan van Eyck. Saint Paul. Ink on
paper. Vienna, Albertina, inv. 3032
(detail).
61
62 turner
Figure 5.8
Simon Marmion. The Knight Tondal
with Angel, in Les Visions du chevalier
Tondal. Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty
Museum, Ms. 30, fol. 37 (detail).
Figure 5.9
Simon Marmion. The Lamentation,
oil on panel, 51.8 32.7 cm (20 7 16
12 7 8 in.). New York, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, Robert Lehman
Collection, inv. 1975.i.125.
features can be found in one of Marmions most original commissions, Les

Visions du chevalier Tondal (1475), now in the Gettys collection.21 Working
with great economy on a small scale, Marmion painted drapery with a middle
tone, applying quick, linear strokes in a dark organic glaze to dene the folds,
followed by ne hatching in gold or white to render highlights (g. 5.8). In the
faces, he employed a few linear parallel strokes in pale pink, white, and red,
with daubs of gray in the shadow of the jaw, followed by dashes of brown to
dene the eyes, nose, and lips.
Marmions work as a painter on panel has been described by Maryan
Ainsworth, who has studied his oil paintings closely, as consisting of disengaged brushstrokes with a relatively matte nish, not blended modeling as
is typical for panel painting in oil. She argues that these qualities are evidence
of his training rst as a manuscript illuminator before he turned to painting on
panel.22 Yet Marmion did not just bring manuscript-painting techniques to oil
on panel, he also brought panel-painting techniques to the page, as is evident
in the Gettys Tondal. Comparing a detail from the Tondal (g. 5.8) with the
Metropolitan Museum of Arts Lamentation panel of around 1470 (g. 5.10)23
reveals that Marmion used the same technique for the esh tones in both formats: starting with a broadly applied tan underpaint, he modeled with ne,
additive strokes of reddish pink. But, more interestingly, he also employed
scumbles of white paint over the tan underpaint. For instance, the nude gure
of Tondal was rendered with the tan undertone, then modeled with a dry scumble of white paint dragged across the surface and shaded with slightly curved,
additive strokes of brown ink. This use of a lighter-toned, opaque pigment that
appears to have been dragged with the brush over a darker ground is similar to
what we see in Marmions technique in oil. Scumbles of white over a darker
underpaint were used in his Lamentation panel, particularly in the esh tones
of the gures, as in Christs arms, shoulders, and torso. Scumbling is a panel
painters technique, not one that was generally used by manuscript illuminators
before this date; thus, its use in book painting is noteworthy.24
This combination of modeling techniques was done especially effectively in the body of Christ from Marmions Crucixion miniature in the
Berlaymont Hours (ca. 1470 75; g. 5.11) in the Huntington Library.25 Again,
the artists repertoire of a white scumble over a brownish esh tone underlayer, with additive parallel strokes and hatches in brownish gray ink to render
shadow can be plainly seen (g. 5.12). He made great use of translucent organic inks or colored glazes to render deep shadows, as in the brown glaze along
the right edge of Christs body and legs. Glazes are typically associated with oilpainting technique, although certain manuscript illuminators made use of them
to great effect.26 Like the Eyckian miniaturist, Marmion employed rich glazes
throughout the Berlaymont Hours for linear details for instance, to create
deep shadows and a glossy surface within hair or beards, to delineate drapery,
and to add depth to the esh tones and facial details. Although Simon Marmion
may be best known for his innovative Purgatory imagery, as found in Tondal,
and for his effective use of half-length compositions later in his career, I nd his
economical painting style equally innovative for its combination of traditional
rendering techniques, such as the additive parallel hatching strokes typical of
the illuminator, with methods more closely associated with oil, such as scumbled highlights and glazed shadows.
63
Figure 5.10
Simon Marmion, The Lamentation
(detail, g. 5.9).
Figure 5.11
Simon Marmion. The Crucixion, in
the Berlaymont Hours. San Marino,
The Huntington Library, Ms. HM 1173,
fol. 24 (detail).
Figure 5.12
Photomicrograph (detail, g. 5.11), showing Christs torso.
64 turner
Figure 5.13
Gerard David. The Virgin and Child, in
the Hours of Margaretha van Bergen.
San Marino, The Huntington Library,
Ms. HM 1131, fol. 93.
G e r a rd D av i d a s I l l u m i n a t o r
One of the greatest Flemish panel painters of the late fteenth and
early sixteenth centuries was Gerard David. In contrast to Simon Marmion,
David is best known for his works on panel, while his book-painting techniques
have not yet been fully analyzed.27 Recently attributed to David, The Virgin
and Child from the Hours of Margaretha van Bergen in the collection of the
Huntington Library is notable for its poignant and breathtakingly beautiful
depiction of the subject (g. 5.13).28 In the draperies of the gures, the conventional illumination technique discussed earlier of raising and shading using
hatched and crosshatched strokes to model form into relief and shadow was
fully utilized. In the esh tones, the gures were modeled with painstakingly
ne, additive, disengaged strokes and stipples in light brown and gray over a
pale pink esh tone, with further shading in strokes of red and pink.
But signicantly and, I believe, rather atypically given the date of
this miniature (said to be done shortly before 1500) David also used a thin
glaze of gray like a veil over the esh-colored ground to add subtlety to the
shadows and to give a blended, sfumato effect. For instance, the painter
employed a delicate wash across the childs neck and hand (gs. 5.14, 5.15) and
across the Virgins neck and forehead (g. 5.16). These deft and restrained
dilute gray glazes give a rich, luminous quality to the areas of shadow, creating
a remarkable three-dimensionality that is comparable only to effects achieved
in Davids oils. The small devotional image in oil of the Virgin and Child
Figure 5.14
showing childs neck.
Figure 5.15
showing childs hands.
Figure 5.16
showing Virgins forehead.
65
attributed to Gerard David (ca. 1490; g. 5.17), from a

Spanish private collection, offers a direct comparison to the
Huntingtons David miniature.29 In the oil painting, David
glazed the same areas where the thin gray wash was used in
the Huntington Virgin and Child, notably in the childs neck
and hand and in the Virgins neck and forehead.
Perhaps because David came to manuscript illumination after his training and success as a panel painter, he
emulated in the water-based medium of the illuminator the
effects he was so renowned for achieving in oil. The use of a
more dilute medium became increasingly prevalent among
manuscript illuminators as they moved into the sixteenth
century: this development might be credited in part to David
and his inuence upon illuminators with whom he collaborated in the following decades.30
The Master of James IV of Scotland:
A N ew A p p ro a c h
The painting technique of the Master of James IV of

Scotland heralds a strikingly new use of color and the brush,
techniques that may betray inuences from his associates
and collaborators, such as Gerard David. Close examination
Figure 5.17
Gerard David. Virgin and Child. Oil on
panel, 9 7 cm (31 2 23 4 in.). Valencia,
Spain, Serra Algaza collection.
66 turner
Figure 5.18
Master of James IV of Scotland.
Abraham and the Three Angels, in the
Spinola Hours. J. Paul Getty Museum,
Ms. Ludwig IX 18, fol. 11 v (detail).
Figure 5.19
Photomicrograph (detail, g. 5.18), showing Abrahams face.
Figure 5.20
Master of James IV of Scotland.
Abraham and the Three Angels (detail,
g. 5.18, with Abraham).
of illuminations from the Spinola Hours (ca. 1510 20) in the Gettys collection31 reveals the Master of James IV of Scotlands fresh approach to the page
(g. 5.18). For instance, in the face of Abraham (fol. 11 v), a tan esh-tone
underlayer was modeled with brown, pale pink, carmine red, pale yellow, and
even pale green in the shadows and through the hair (g. 5.19). These hues
were applied as thin, dilute layers, which were painted quickly and dried rapidly on the page. His use of the brush is noteworthy, for it appears that he used
a brush with a larger belly, giving a more pronounced thick-to-thin stroke in
comparison with the even, parallel strokes we saw in the work of earlier illuminators. Moreover, the Master of James IVs pastel palette and predilection for
secondary hues are particularly striking: for instance, in Abrahams hat an
organic pink outline was overlaid with a lavender (an admixture of organic
pink and mineral blue) and modeled with a thin wash of opaque pale green on
top. In Abrahams drapery the traditional raising and shading method of
hatched and crosshatched strokes was employed along with an innovative use
of a coarsely ground mineral blue scumbled over orange (its complement) for a
changeant lining to Abrahams robe (g. 5.20). Notably, the dilution of the
mineral blue was varied, depending upon the value desired for the shadow, not
lightened by adding white. This practice of varying the grind of the pigment
might be something one nds in painting on panel, but as far as I am aware, it
is a technique not typically found in manuscript paintings before this date.
In landscape details, broad applications of thin washes were used to

render rocky outcroppings and the water, for instance, in a border depiction of
The Rest on the Flight into Egypt (g. 5.21). What I nd particularly remarkable is the reection in the water, where I believe the artist rst painted in the
reected colors in pink and orange, then intentionally removed color by blotting away a portion of these pigments, leaving just a trace of reected color to
capture the translucency of the reection and suggest movement in the waters
surface as the donkey takes its drink (gs. 5.22 23). As Thomas Kren has
pointed out, the Master of James IV was especially interested in water and lighting effects,32 and this is one of his most effective passages. In a panel painting
in oil attributed to him, Portrait of Livina de Steelant (ca. 1500 1510; g. 5.24),
one again nds these interests in water effects and reection within the background landscape of this group portrait.33 Lorne Campbell has described how
Jan van Eyck used his ngers to soften contours in the Arnolni Portrait.34 But
this example from the Spinola Hours appears to be a rare instance of direct
manipulation of the surface to achieve a specic effect the moving reection
67
Figures 5.21 22
Master of James IV of Scotland. Border
with The Rest on the Flight into Egypt,
in the Spinola Hours. J. Paul Getty
Museum, Ms. Ludwig IX 18, fol. 140 v
(full page and detail).
Figure 5.23
Photomicrograph (detail, g. 5.21), showing reflection in water.
68 turner
Figure 5.24
Master of James IV of Scotland. Portrait
of Livina de Steelant. Oil on panel,
43 33.5 cm (1615 16 133 16 in.).
Ghent, Museum voor Schone Kunsten,
inv. 1937-a.
on the waters surface in a manuscript painting. Thus, the application of pigments in a highly diluted medium; a predilection for pastel and secondary hues;
the building up of facial features with strokes of pure color in a quickly applied,
even abstracted, way; the direct manipulation of the paint surface; the effective
use of a variety of brush types; and an interest in ephemeral qualities of light
and reection are some of the innovations brought to book painting by the
Master of James IV of Scotland in the rst decades of the sixteenth century.
S i m o n B e n i n g : A Te c h n i c a l S y n t h e s i s
Simon Bening, often considered the last great Flemish illuminator, synthesized in his work many of the traditional techniques of manuscript painting
with techniques of oil painting and with a number of innovations introduced
by such associates as Gerard David and the Master of James IV of Scotland. By
the date of the Prayer Book of Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg (ca. 152530)
in the collection of the Getty Museum, Bening was working at the height of
his powers.35 Even in the dramatically lit night scenes, which were his specialty, Bening proved himself a vivid colorist. For instance, in The Betrayal of
Christ (g. 5.25), he employed a varied and rich palette, playing upon striking
color contrasts, such as the complementary orange and blue modeling on the
garment of the soldier at Christs right and the chartreuse-colored tunic at far
right that is modeled in the folds with broad, downward strokes of a complementary purple glaze.36 On this folio, Bening also made use of a variety of brush
sizes, from a very ne brush point for shading in orange on blue in the soldiers
garment with tiny additive strokes, to a broader brush for describing the purple drapery folds in the chartreuse tunic.
Benings techniques share similarities with those of the Master of
James IV of Scotland and Gerard David in a number of ways. In one instance,
Bening directly manipulated the paint surface: in the Arrest of Christ (fol. 107 v)
from the Brandenburg Prayer Book, what rst looked to me like damage to the
paint surface (an offset loss within the hair of Christ) in fact was done intentionally. To depict the spittle ung by one of Christs tormentors, Bening apparently painted the hair in brown, then applied water (or perhaps his own saliva)
to the dried paint and subsequently blotted up the brown pigment to create an
oval-shaped loss, which effectively describes the insult (g. 5.26).37
69
Figure 5.25
Simon Bening. The Betrayal of Christ, in
the Prayer Book of Cardinal Albrecht of
Brandenburg. Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty
Museum, Ms. Ludwig IX 19, fol. 102 v
(detail).
Figure 5.26
Simon Bening. Arrest of Christ, in the
Prayer Book of Cardinal Albrecht of
Brandenburg. Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty
Museum, Ms. Ludwig IX 19, fol. 107v
(photomicrograph, showing Christs face).
70 turner
Figure 5.27
Simon Bening. The Martyrdom of Saint
Sebastian, leaf from the MunichMontserrat Hours. J. Paul Getty
Museum, Ms. 3.
Figure 5.28
Sebastian (detail, g. 5.27, with archers).
Figure 5.29
Sebastian (detail, g. 5.27, with Saint
Sebastian).
Figure 5.30
Sebastian (detail, g. 5.27, background).
71
By a decade after the Brandenburg Prayer Book, Benings techniques

had completely synthesized the methods of his fellow painters. For instance, in
the Gettys Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian (g. 5.27), a detached miniature from
the Munich-Montserrat Hours (ca. 1535 40),38 Bening used a coarsely ground
mineral blue of varying dilution to throw the archers sash into relief and
shadow (see g. 5.28), a technique similar to that used by the Master of James
IV in the Spinola Hours. Faces like the archers were built up with quick, simplied strokes and dilute daubs of color to enliven the esh tones. There is a
loose, animated quality to Benings gures that reveals inspiration from the
facial types of the Master of James IV of Scotland, a quality not seen again until
the work of Pieter Bruegel decades later.39 Furthermore, like Gerard David,
Simon Bening employed a gray glaze over a tan esh tone combined with additive hatching strokes. We see this technique quite clearly in Sebastians torso,
neck, and face, which were modeled with a gray wash over the esh tone in
areas of shadow and further rendered with ne, curved, additive strokes in two
dilutions of brown (g. 5.29). Finally, Bening employed the brush in a variety
of ways. For instance, in the foliage of the trees, he applied a variety of strokes
and stipples with both stiff and soft bristle brushes. By contrast, in the misty
background behind the saint, thick applications of pigment were built up in
rapid succession to create a wet-into-wet impasto (g. 5.30). The variety of
strokes and surprisingly loose and quick handling of the brush are similar to
some of the landscape details in the only recognized painting in oil on panel
attributed to Bening, the Metropolitan Museums Virgin and Child (g. 5.31).40
Figure 5.31
Attributed to Simon Bening. The Virgin
and Child. Oil on panel, 25.4 21.5 cm
(10 8 1 2 in.). Metropolitan Museum
of Art, Friedsam Collection, Bequest of
Michael Friedsam, 1931, 32.100.53.
72 turner
Thus, by the second and third decades of the sixteenth century, we

nd in the work of the Master of James IV of Scotland and Simon Bening the
techniques that might have been inspired by the effects they observed and even
practiced in painting on panel. We nd passages of enamel-like thickness alongside passages rendered in a dilute medium and even, in rare instances, the purposeful variation in the degree of grind of pigment. We suspect the use of a
wider variety of brush types and, in a few examples, direct manipulation of the
painted surface with the artists ngers. Images were rendered using a much
greater range of hues, intermediate tones, and values in an unblended fashion,
sometimes in a surprisingly loose or abstract way. As in the work of the Eyckian
miniaturist, visual blending was achieved by working at a small scale and
relying upon the distance at which the reader would hold and view the painting on the page. But unlike the Eyckian illuminator, book painters of the rst
three decades of the sixteenth century Gerard David, the Master of James IV
of Scotland, and Simon Bening specically used a wider range of hues, dilutions, glazes, even blottings and daubs, from thick impasto to thin wash. They
employed a more dilute medium than their predecessors and relied upon its
quick-drying characteristics to work up the surface with a remarkable uidity
to achieve vivid yet ephemeral visual effects.
From the work of the Eyckian miniaturist to that of Simon Bening, transformations in painting techniques occurred in the art of manuscript illumination
across the time period from about 1440 to 1540 due to the associations and
inuences among illuminators and panel painters. Particularly since illuminators were often themselves panel painters, it is not surprising to see book
painters incorporate and emulate effects they achieved in oil. The conclusions
that have been drawn regarding Flemish painting techniques by the ve illuminators discussed here have been based upon only a small group of manuscripts
from the Getty Museum and the Huntington Library. These conclusions can be
added to and rened by a consideration of other works by Simon Marmion,
Gerard David, the Master of James IV of Scotland, Simon Bening, and Van
Eycks followers to enlarge further our understanding of these connections,
inuences, and apparent changes in techniques.
While scientic analysis of illuminated manuscripts has made tremendous progress over the past twenty years, the analytical study of Flemish manuscripts in particular still lags behind the considerable technical work accomplished on contemporaneous Flemish panel paintings. The analytical study of
Flemish painting on panel can be a model for the study of manuscripts. Only as
this type of work continues to be done on manuscripts from collections all
across the globe will a more fully realized understanding of the materials and
techniques of Flemish illumination emerge and greater insight be brought to
exploring relationships between Flemish panel painting and manuscript illumination. Pigment analysis alone can take us only so far. The study of surviving
northern painting treatises of the fteenth and early sixteenth centuries will further augment our understanding of these works as well. It is the need for close
examination and precise observation of technique and handling by each
artist along with careful, in-depth pigment analysis that will lead to a
greater appreciation and understanding of the subtle and breathtaking achievements of the Flemish illuminators suggestive brush.
73
Notes
I would like to thank Thomas Kren for the

opportunity to contribute to the Getty symposium in September 2003 and Scot McKendrick
and John Lowden for inviting me to deliver
this paper at a special session convened at
the Courtauld Institute in November 2003.
I am grateful to Mary Robertson, who kindly
allowed me to study the Huntington Librarys
illuminations, and to David Scott, Michael
Schilling, Herant Khanjian, and Anna
Schoenemann of the Getty Conservation
Institute for help with pigment and media
analysis. I am also indebted to Anthony Perez
for making digital infrared scans; to Lee
Hendrix and Stephanie Schraeder for translating treatise passages from Dutch; to Yvonne
Szafran, Mark Leonard, Maryan Ainsworth,
Lorne Campbell, Rachel Billinge, and Teresa
Lignelli for discussing aspects of oil painting
technique on panel with me; and to my colleagues Elizabeth Morrison, Kurt Barstow,
Kristen Collins, Marc Harnly, and Nancy
Yocco for their help, encouragement, and
support.
1. See Lorne Campbell et al., Methods and
Materials of Northern European Painting, in
Early Northern European Painting, ed. Lorne
Campbell, Susan Foister, and Ashok Roy,
National Gallery Technical Bulletin 18 (1997):
6 55. See also listings under technique in
E. James Mundy, Painting in Bruges,
14701550: An Annotated Bibliography
(Boston: G. K. Hall, 1985); Micheline
Comblen-Sonkes, Bibliographic Guide for
Early Netherlandish Painting (Brussels: Centre
National de Recherches Primitifs Flamands,
1984); Hlne Mund and Cyriel Stroo, Early
Netherlandish Painting (14001500): A
Bibliography (19841998) (Brussels: Centre
International dtude de la Peinture Mdivale
des Bassins de lEscaut et de la Meuse, 1998).
2. Recent technical studies of Flemish manuscripts from the fteenth and sixteenth centuries include: Sophie Denol et al., NonDestructive Analysis of a Sixteenth-Century
Manuscript from the Gospel Book of Robert
Quercentius, in Conservation Science 2002:
Papers from the Conference Held in
Edinburgh, Scotland, 2224 May 2002, ed.
Joyce H. Townsend, Katherine Eremin, and
Annemie Adriaens (London: Archetype,
2003), 208 14; Lieve Watteeuw and Martina
van Bos, Chroniques de Hainaut: Observaties
en resultaten van de analyses op zes miniaturen, in Les Chroniques de Hainaut; ou,
Les Ambitions dun prince bourguignon, ed.
Christiane van den Bergen-Pantens (Turnhout:
Brepols, 2000), 157 66; Brigitte Dekeyzer
et al., The Mayer van den Bergh Breviary

(Ghent-Bruges, Early Sixteenth Century):
Hands and Pigments, in Le Dessin sousjacent et la technologie dans la peinture:
Colloque XII, ed. Hlne Verougstraete and
Roger van Schoute (Louvain: Peeters, 1999),
30316; for additional references, see Mark
Clarke, The Analysis of Medieval European
Manuscripts, Reviews in Conservation 2
(20 01): 317.
3. See, for instance, Maurits Smeyers and
Bert Cardon, Campin and Illumination,
in Robert Campin: New Directions in
Scholarship, ed. Susan Foister and Susie Nash
(Belgium: Brepols, 1996), 159 69, esp.
bibliography in 167 n. 1. Also see Maryan W.
Ainsworth, Was Simon Bening a Panel
Painter? in Als ich can: Liber Amicorum
in Memory of Professor Dr. Maurits Smeyers,
ed. Bert Cardon, Jan Van der Stock, and
Dominique Vanwijnsberghe (Louvain: Peeters,
2002), 125; and Ainsworth, Diverse
Patterns Pertaining to the Crafts of Painters
or Illuminators: Gerard David and the Bening
Workshop, Master Drawings 41, no. 3
(2003): 241 65.
4. Thomas Kren and Maryan W. Ainsworth,
Illuminators and Painters: Artistic Exchanges
and Interrelationships, in Illuminating the
Renaissance: The Triumph of Flemish
Manuscript Painting in Europe, exh. cat., by
Thomas Kren and Scot McKendrick (Los
Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003), 81 82.
5. Surviving Netherlandish technical manuals
include London, British Library, Sloane Ms.
345 (see M. M. Van Dantzig, Een vijftiende
eeuwsch receptenboek, Oud Holland 53,
no. 5 [1936]: 20718); Ghent University
Library, Ms. 2141, by Christian van
Varenbraken (see W. L. Braekman,
Middelnederlandse verfrecepten voor miniaturen en alderhand substancien [Brussels:
Omirel, ufsal, 1986]); Cologne, Historisches
Archiv, Ms. w 80 (see Arie Wallert,
Instructions for Manuscript Illumination in
a Fifteenth-Century Netherlandish Technical
Treatise, in Masters and Miniatures:
Proceedings of the Congress on Medieval
Manuscript Illumination in the Northern
Netherlands (Utrecht, 1013 December 1989),
ed. Koert van der Horst and Johann-Christian
Klamt [Doornspijk: Davaco, 1991], 44756).
For a survey of other relevant technical
sources, see Campbell et al., Methods and
Materials, 14 16. Discussion of these technical sources in relation to painting techniques
found in Flemish manuscripts will be the subject of a subsequent study.
6. Examination with the aid of a microscope

was performed on the manuscripts discussed,
and where opportunity allowed digital
infrared photography, pigment analysis using
X-ray uorescence spectroscopy (xrf), and in
one instance, media analysis using Fourier
transform infrared reectance (ftir) and gas
chromatography/mass spectroscopy (gc /ms)
were performed.
7. See Ashok Roy and Raymond White, Van
Eycks Technique: The Myth and the Reality,
i, ii, in Investigating Jan van Eyck, ed. Susan
Foister, Sue Jones, and Delphine Cool
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), 97106.
Renaissance, 85 87, no. 1.
9. The presence of lead, iron, and mercury
detected by X-ray uorescence led to the
deduction that lead red, red ocher, and vermilion were present. The organic colorant has not
as yet been identied with the analytical techniques available. A Kevex 0750a X-ray
uorescence spectroscopy system was used
with a barium /strontium secondary target.
10. Campbell et al., Methods and Materials, 38.
11. Wallert, Instructions for Manuscript
Illumination, 448. See also Braekman,
Middelnederlandse Verfrecepten, 115 16.
12. For a full-scale color reproduction, see
J. R. J. van Asperen de Boer et al., Jan van
Eyck: Two Paintings of Saint Francis Receiving
the Stigmata (Philadelphia: Philadelphia
Museum of Art, 1997), pl. 1.
13. Marigene Butler, An Investigation of the
Philadelphia Saint Francis Receiving the
Stigmata, in Van Asperen de Boer et al., 40,
g. 38. See also Kren and McKendrick,
14. Butler concludes, based on the presence
of a lead white priming, that the Philadelphia
picture is not painted by the conventions of
manuscript illumination (Investigation, 42).
15. This nding must be conrmed by other
scientic methods before being considered
anything more than a preliminary hypothesis.
16. A PhaseOne fx scanning back with Sony
Trilinear ccd 10500 (effective pixels) was
used, capturing ir wavelengths between 850
and 1100 nanometers, using a Kodak Wratten
87c lter.
17. The full series of drawings is illustrated in
Otto Benesch, Die Zeichnungen der niederlndischen Schulen des XV und XVI
Jahrhunderts (Vienna: A. Schroll, 1928), pls.
13. For a recent discussion of two of the
drawings from the series, see Fritz Koreny, ed.,
Early Netherlandish Drawings: From Van
Eyck to Hieronymus Bosch, exh. cat.
74
turner
(Antwerp: Rubenshuis, 2002), 3338, nos. 3,

4. See also a drawing in the Muse Bonnat
(Bayonne, France) that James Marrow has
likened to the Gettys Christ Blessing leaf:
James H. Marrow, Une Page inconnue des
Heures de Turin, Revue de lart, no. 135
(2002): 67 76, g. 10.
18. For a detailed discussion of the infrareds
from the Turin-Milan Hours, see Anne H.
Van Buren, Problems and Possibilities of the
Reectography of Manuscripts: The Case of
the Turin-Milan Hours, in Le Dessin sousjacent et la technologie dans la peinture:
Colloque XI, 1416 September 1995, ed.
Roger van Schoute and Hlne Verougstraete
(Louvain: Collge Erasme, 1997), 19 28;
Marigene H. Butler and J. R. J. van Asperen
de Boer, The Examination of the Milan-Turin
Hours with Infrared Reectography: A
Preliminary Report, in Le Dessin sous-jacent
dans la peinture: Colloque VII, 1719
September 1987 (Louvain: Collge Erasme,
1989), 74 75.
19. For an additional comparison, see
Stephanie Buck, Petrus Christuss Berlin
Wings and the Metropolitan Museums
Eyckian Diptych, in Petrus Christus in
Renaissance Bruges: An Interdisciplinary
Approach, ed. Maryan W. Ainsworth (New
York: Metropolitan Museum of Art;
Turnhout: Brepols, 1995), 67.
Renaissance, 98 99.
22. Ainsworth, in Kren and McKendrick,
Illuminating the Renaissance, 108, no. 11. See
also Maryan W. Ainsworth, New
Observations on the Working Technique in
Simon Marmions Panel Paintings, in
Margaret of York, Simon Marmion, and the
Visions of Tondal, ed. Thomas Kren
(Malibu, Calif.: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1992),
24355.
Renaissance, 107 8, no. 11. See also Maryan
W. Ainsworth and Keith Christiansen, eds.,
From Van Eyck to Bruegel: Early Netherlandish Painting in the Metropolitan Museum
of Art, exh. cat. (New York: Metropolitan
Museum of Art, 1998), 109.
24. See denition given in Dawson W. Carr
and Mark Leonard, Looking at Paintings:
A Guide to Technical Terms (Malibu, Calif.:
J. Paul Getty Museum in association with
British Museum Press, 1992), 60.
Renaissance, 108 10, no. 12; see g. 12b.
26. The use of translucent glazes in manuscript

illumination has not been fully explored or
documented. An example of an earlier use of
glazes is found in the illuminations of the
Boucicaut Master, working in the early
decades of the fteenth century in France.
See Nancy Turner, The Recipe Collection
of Johannes Alcherius and the Painting
Materials Used in Manuscript Illumination in
France and Northern Italy, c. 1380 1420,
and Bernard Guineau et al., Painting
Techniques in the Boucicaut Hours and in
Jacques Coenes Colour Recipes as Found in
Jean LeBgues Libri Colorum, both in
Painting Techniques: History, Materials, and
Studio Practice: Contributions to the Dublin
Congress, ed. Ashok Roy and Perry Smith
(London: International Institute for
Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works,
1998), 46, 48, 53.
27. Cf. Kren and McKendrick, Illuminating
the Renaissance, 344 65; see 345 n. 3 for
additional bibliography discussing Gerard
Davids illuminations. A full technical analysis
of Davids illuminations remains to be done.
For this study, no pigment analysis was performed on the Huntington miniature; hence
all remarks on Davids manuscript-painting
technique are based upon visual examination
under binocular magnication only. The Virgin
and Child was investigated with infrared
reectography by Yvonne Szafran and Maryan
Ainsworth with the kind permission of Mary
Robertson at the Huntington Library in May
2002, but no underdrawing could be detected
at that time.
Renaissance, 354, no. 102.
30. On Davids collaborations with illuminators, see Ainsworth, Diverse Patterns,
241 65, and Ainsworth, Was Simon Bening
a Panel Painter?
Renaissance, 414 17, no. 124. At the time of
this essay, pigment analysis had not been performed on the Spinola Hours. Thus, this discussion is based upon visual examination only,
and a more complete technical analysis of
palette and medium will be forthcoming.
Renaissance, 42.
33. Discussed and reproduced Kren and
42, g. 14.
34. Lorne Campbell, The Fifteenth-Century
Netherlandish Paintings (London: National
Gallery, 1998), 31.

36. Analysis using X-ray uorescence provisionally identied the following pigments in
folio 102v: high concentration of copper suggesting azurite blue, though not fully eliminating ultramarine; high levels of lead, mercury,
and tin in the orange, suggesting lead tin yellow, vermilion, and possibly red lead; copper,
lead, and tin in the chartreuse tunic, suggesting an admixture of lead tin yellow and copper green.
37. This method would be possible with a
water-soluble medium such as gum arabic.
Gum arabic was identied as a medium in the
Brandenburg Prayer Book from one sample
taken from an offset loss (inner margin of
fol. 77v) using ftir and gc /ms analyses.
Renaissance, 474 476, no. 154c.
39. For instance, see caricature faces of
onlookers in the background of The Adoration
of the Kings (1564) by Pieter Bruegel (London,
National Gallery); reproduced in color in
Bomford, ed., Art in the Making, 177.
Renaissance, 45354, no. 142; see also
Ainsworth, Was Simon Bening a Panel
Painter?
chapter 6
Flemish Manuscript Production, Care, and Repair:

Fifteenth-Century Sources
L i ev e W a t t e e u w
The history of medieval manuscript conservation is a

young science. Our knowledge of the state of preservation of manuscripts today
will inevitably be enriched by an understanding of the history of the conservation of these works. The primary materials for illuminations are often listed in
museum catalogues, rather tersely, as tempera on parchment. Such a description, however, does not fully reect the complex use of raw materials by
fteenth-century Flemish painters of miniatures, an art that became increasingly
complicated and ever more demanding of skill and craftsmanship in the course
of that century. The imported raw materials like pigments and dyes were
expensive, and the subtle colors took a lot of time and labor to prepare. By
examining the evidence for the creation and historical preservation of Flemish
manuscripts in the fteenth and early sixteenth centuries considering the primary materials used in producing an illuminated manuscript, parchment and
paints, as well as the physical evidence and archival sources regarding the early
restoration of parchment, illuminations, and bindings we may gain a fuller
understanding of these complex works.
M a t e r i a l s fo r F l e m i s h I l l u m i n a t o r s
Well-prepared and extremely ne parchment was in great demand by

the Flemish artists workshops of the late Middle Ages, and this need kept
growing.1 The production in the workshops around and in the urban centers
was left mainly to expert parchment makers and, as far as the luxury breviaries
and books of hours are concerned, denitely also to the polishers and nishers
of the parchment. At rst, the quality of vellum depended strongly on the condition of the thousands of skins the parchment maker received regularly from
the large rural areas around the cities or through the international trade in
Bruges. In Flanders, parchment for manuscript production was made mainly
from skins of sheep, goat, and lamb, the most prevalent livestock in the Low
Countries, reared primarily for their wool and meat.2 Cows were reared too,
but their large skins were more suitable for thick leather, produced by the
zwarte leertouwers (black tanners), using vegetal tannins such as oak bark.3
Raw skins of all kinds of animals were also brought in by ship from Navarre,
Castile, Aragon, and Russia, along with parchment, probably from England
and other northern countries. Untreated animal skins could be preserved by
salting for several months and were sold to tanners, skinners, fur skinners,
tawyers, white tawyers, and parchment makers. The trade in skins and hides
in Bruges was organized by the guild of the huidevetters and the warandeurs
(who controlled the quality of the skins), housed at the Huidevetters-plaats
in Bruges.4
76 watteeuw
The hides used for the ne vellum leaves in Flemish breviaries and
books of hours came from young male lambs, calves, or goats, only a few weeks
old, as the female animals were used for breeding. The quality of these skins
depended greatly on the season and climate, as well as on the health and eating
habits of the young animals.5 By an extensive treatment involving emulsions of
chalk; crescent-shaped knives; pumice stones; pumice powder (a ne powdered
mix of pumice, glass, and seashells); or pumice bread baked from wheat, chalk,
and ground seashells, the small wet animal skins were made thin and smooth
on the stretching frame.6 It is clear that different grades of parchment were produced by the francijnmaeckere (or pergamentmaeckere), members of the guild
of the librariers in Bruges, the corporation representing, from 1454 on, all book
crafts within the city walls.7 For example, the thickness of the vellum of the
more than two hundred folios of the Hennessy Hours is consistently around
0.08 mm.8 The vellum folios of the Mayer van den Bergh Breviary have the
same thickness.9 The full-page miniatures in these manuscripts, painted on single folios, are executed on slightly thicker material of about 0.10 mm and
inserted by a glued hinge. Thus the parchment selected for folios that were to
be illuminated in both these luxury manuscripts was intentionally thicker and
more robust than the parchment used for text pages, providing a more stable
support for painting.
After the parchment makers, a second group of craftsmen or apprentices in the illuminators workshops carefully nished the material needed for
luxury book production. These craftsmen worked in close collaboration with
the miniaturists. In a process similar to the application of a ground for painting on a wooden support, the nisher would prepare the surface of the highly
water-sensitive material under tension with a thin layer of gum arabic, egg
white, gypsum, chalk, or lead white to ll the pores and to smooth the irregular structures. The surface was nished, polished, and prepared to obtain a
smooth ground and nally degreased it so that the absorption of different paint
preparations could be controlled.10
During recent conservation research on two Flemish manuscripts
the Chroniques de Hainaut 11 and the Hennessy Hours analytical methods
such as X-ray uorescence did not allow identication of the added materials.
The reasons are multiple: the added emulsions are partly absorbed by the
porous structure of the parchment bers on the esh side, the same raw materials used in the sizing are used in the parchment-making process (notably chalk
and lime), and in some cases, the added surface layers have a proteinous composition similar to that of parchment, like egg white.12 The nishing and preparation of the parchment was denitely done in the illuminators workshop itself,
because the layout and underdrawing of the miniature were ultimately highly
dependent on the sheet of parchment used.13 Like painters working on wooden
panels, illuminators used subtle techniques to rene the detailed composition of
the successive brush strokes, which included letting the dominant pale opacity
of the parchment itself come into play from the beginning.14 The achievement
of Simon Bening in the representations of the Evangelists in the Hennessy
Hours, which are on extremely thin and smooth nished parchment, is illustrative for the mastering of the painting technique on vellum.15 The skin, hair,
and beard of Saint Luke were created by a succession of seven subtle layers
on the thin parchment, the paint composed of white lead, mixed with a little
chapter 6: flemish manuscript production, care, and repair
Figure 6.1
Simon Bening. Saint Luke, in the
Hennessy Hours. Brussels, Bibliothque
royale de Belgique, Ms. II 158, fol. 17 v.
vermilion, and further brightened with larger areas in paint composed of transparent brown and ocher, added to a base of vermilion and lead white. On top
of this, three types of brush strokes were added, going from lighter to darker
shades, again in a different concentration of the two pigments, vermilion and
lead white. A subsequent layer was done in one shade of gray, on top of which
the nishing touch was painted in an almost pure white lead mixed with a
thicker gloss (gs. 6.1, 6.2).
The quality of the materials, pigments, and colors that miniature
painters such as Bening bought on the Bruges market at the dawn of the sixteenth century such as azurite, ocher, alum, minium, indigo, ultramarine, and
orpiment16 depended on the ingredients that were available at the chemists,
who was, in Flemish cities, a member of the meerseniers (traders guild).17 A
wide range of mineral and organic ingredients were imported mainly to Bruges
77
78 watteeuw
Figure 6.2
Simon Bening. Saint Luke (detail, g. 6.1).
and Antwerp via the trade routes that crossed Europe, though before application they were further prepared by the chemist and by the apprentice illuminator.18 In Bruges, one of the main trading cities in northern Europe for luxury
goods, illuminators could readily nd all kinds of spices, colors, and dye materials, brought by ship from the East via Venice, Genoa, and Lisbon.19
By carefully mixing the powdered pigments and colors with size, gum
water, egg white, chalk, wine, honey, sugar, or lead white, the paints were
rendered opaque, liquid, transparent, or lighter in shade. Recipe books for
miniature painting for example, the late fteenth-century treatise from
the southern Netherlands known as Miscellanea Alchemica XII tell us that
the preparation of the tempera paints was a very elaborate and complex affair.
The exact hours of preparation time are mentioned, but only approximate
measurements are given for quantities of liquids (for example, the thickness of
a nger).20
Surviving fteenth-century references to the manufacturing and preparation methods for parchment and to the trade and making of painting materials used in illuminated manuscripts provide a deeper appreciation for the efforts
artists made to obtain the highest-quality materials. These labors had a direct
bearing upon a manuscripts state of preservation and how quickly an object
might be in need of repair or restoration.
E v i d e n c e o f R e s t o r a t i o n o f F l e m i s h M a nu s c r i p t s
in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
The outcome was always uncertain to some extent. Every painterartist knows that the hardening of glues, gums, or egg white can diminish the
quality of the color in a matter of hours. They had to reckon with the fact that
pigment dissolved in egg white or gum remains liquid for only a short while.
The knowledge of their materials, the method of instruction, the division of
tasks, and time were very important from the organizational point of view
in the illuminators workshops and in the joint operations coordinated by
the librarier.21
Although it is obvious that models, copies, and serial production were
used for the images in breviaries and books of hours, the material condition of
the pictorial layer of closely related miniatures is not necessarily as similar as
their appearance would suggest. Even if we assume that the recipes that were
passed on orally from one generation to the next were carefully followed, this
still did not guarantee a similar state of preservation, not even in the early years
after creation. Structural aking problems in paint layers are obvious, for
example, in The Birth of the Virgin (fol. 536v) and Saint Michael (fol. 552v),
two miniatures attributed to a master active in the illustration of the Mayer van
den Bergh Breviary.22 Analysis of the paint composition conrmed the attribution to a single artist, and when one compares the condition of these two miniatures to that of the other full-page illuminations in the manuscript, created by
a number of other artists, the instability in large zones of these specic grayblue, deep blue, green, and purple paint layers is striking (gs. 6.3, 6.4).23
Although it may be assumed that all miniaturists endeavored to produce awless works of art after all, if their work was below par, they risked
not being paid for it they were also very familiar with the vulnerability of
miniatures, manuscripts, and book covers and the consequences of the ravages
of use and time. Indeed, miniaturists and librariers who organized the work of
manuscript production at the end of the fteenth century were also asked by
wealthy owners to repair older damaged miniatures and manuscripts. Regilding
or rebinding, which was what most of this work entailed, can denitely be seen
as the main activity, but it was also common practice to bring valuable objects
up to date using then-common techniques and materials, to modernize them
and make them more attractive, to replace them in case of loss, and to repair
them. These concepts of restoration are similar to those for the other crafts:
silversmiths and goldsmiths, for example, were asked frequently by their
patrons to repair precious-metal objects damaged by use.24
Based on the payments from the treasurer of the Burgundian court and
the accounts of Church of Our Lady in Antwerp, one can say that restoration,
in addition to painting and gilding, was an important task in the illuminators
workshops.25 Among the documents concerning restoration of fourteenth- and
early-fteenth-century manuscripts in the Librije of the duke of Burgundy are
records of payments made to Antoine de Gavere, a well-known bookbinder and
librarier from Bruges.26 He is mentioned in the accounts of the ducal court from
1495 until 1504. The titles of the most important manuscripts were mentioned
in this administrative archive, which indicates that the work of de Gavere, at
least in those cases, was more than just binding. Indeed, around the turn of
the century he bound and repaired some of the most valuable illuminated
79
80 watteeuw
Figure 6.3
Anonymous. Saint Michael, in the Mayer
van den Bergh Breviary. Antwerp,
Museum Mayer van den Bergh, inv. 946,
fol. 552 v.
manuscripts from the collection. Most probably, de Gavere accepted these jobs
as librarier and left their execution to several craftsmen, illuminators as well as
gilders and bookbinders. An invoice dating from 1498 refers to seven manuscripts that were rebound (rely), regilded (redor), and repaired (remis
point), and of which several pages were reilluminated (en plusieurs lieux
renlumin).27 According to the same invoice, this was done because the manuscripts were badly damaged (fort gaster), broken (rompuz), and damp
(soilliez). For this job, de Gavere received as much as twenty-four pounds.
This means that substantial amounts were paid for manuscript restoration in
1495 and 1498.28 Traces of restoration interventions on the illuminations and
binding by de Gavere could be detected during the conservation in 2003 of
Guillaume de Deguilevilles Plerinage de la vie humaine, a late fourteenthcentury manuscript from the Burgundian library mentioned in the ducal
accounts.29 In this case the damaged areas in the miniatures were not truly
regilded with gold leaf, but were instead painted over with a gold-colored paint
composed of iron and lead, with smaller traces of silver, gold, and copper. This
could have been done by de Gavere for both economic and practical reasons.30
The archival sources are relevant because they refer to the damage caused by
intensive use and transportation of valuable manuscripts in the late fteenth
century.31 In 1501 Philippe Cotteron, the assistant of the ducal treasurer, was
paid for cleaning, rebinding, and regilding the edges and the lead bosses of a
rich missal.32 In 1516 he is mentioned again in connection with the restoration
of ve manuscripts, all broken (rompuz), and with the covering in satin of a
Chroniques de Jrusalem.33 Payments for restoration of a Bible are found in the
accounts of the Church of Saint James in Ghent. They were made to the bookbinder Lievin Stuyvaert in 1446.34 On July 13 of that year, he was paid to clean
(schoon te maken), to glue (lymene) and to restore (te repareren) the
book, wel and lovelic (well and creditably), in one months time.35 The same
close link between binding and repairing manuscripts is found in the registers
of the archives of the Chapter of Our Lady in Antwerp.36 The name of bookbinder Cornelis de costere is mentioned several times in 1433 and 1434 concerning the repair of manuscripts after re damage,37 and between 1472 and
1483, we nd payments to Peter Pots38 and Henric Vanden Steene39 for
boeken te byndene ende te reparerene.
81
Figure 6.4
Anonymous. Saint Michael (detail, g. 6.3).
82 watteeuw
Technical, analytical, and archival sources illustrate the fragility of the

painted media and the manuscripts produced in the Low Counties in the late
Middle Ages and the early Renaissance. Prayer and devotional books were both
functional and fashionable objects and required care and restoration. The
painting, the gilding, the parchment and gatherings, and the sewing supports,
as well as the metal ttings and the precious bindings, all tended to wear out
and needed repairing. Close examination during conservation and comparison
of damage, imperfections, and repairs can reveal information about techniques
and about the historical preservation of Flemish manuscripts in the fteenth
and early sixteenth centuries. This information plays an important role in the
history, especially the secret history, of every famous manuscript.
83
Notes
I would like to thank my colleague Nancy

Turner of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los
Angeles, for sharing her observations on the
Flemish illuminations in the museums collection. My gratitude also to Thomas Kren,
Scot McKendrick, Lorne Campbell, Elizabeth
Morrison, Bernard Bousmanne, and Jan Van
der Stock, all of whom supported this conservation research on Flemish manuscripts before
and during the exhibition Illuminating the
Renaissance.
1. In the late fteenth century and the rst part
of the sixteenth century, economic life in
Flanders was boosted by the revival of trade
with south German merchants and the ourishing intercontinental trade with merchants
from Genoa and the Iberian peninsula.
Hugo Soly, Economische en social-culturele
structuren: Continuiteit en verandering,
in Stad in Vlaanderen: Cultuur en maatschappij, 14771787, exh. cat., ed. Jan Van der
Stock (Brussels: Gemeentekrediet, 1991), 33.
For the social, economic, and guild context
of manuscript illuminators in urban areas in
Flanders, see P. Valvekens, Het ambachtswezen en de socio-economische aspecten
van de boekverluchting in de Nederlanden,
hoofdzakelijk tijdens de tweede helft der
vijftiende eeuw, in Ontsluiting van middeleeuwse handschriften in de Nederlanden:
Verslag van studiedagen gehouden te
Nijmegen, 3031 maart 1984, ed. A. J.
Guerts (Nijmegen: Alfa, 1987), 207, and
Catherine Reynolds, Illuminators and the
Painters Guild, in Illuminating the Renaissance: The Triumph of Flemish Manuscript
Painting in Europe, exh. cat., by Thomas Kren
and Scot McKendrick (Los Angeles: J. Paul
Getty Museum, 2003), 15 34.
2. The words vellum and parchment are used
interchangeably in this paper.
3. Thick parchment was needed for window
and book covers.
4. Ronald Reed, Ancient Skins, Parchments,
and Leathers (New York: Seminar Press,
1972); Roy Thomson, The Leather Working
Process, in Leather and Fur: Aspects of Early
Medieval Trade and Technology, ed. Esther
Cameron (London: Archetype Publications,
1988), 4; and J. Gaillard, Ambachten en neringen van Brugge (Bruges: Gaillard, 1854),
134 36.
5. In the fteenth century the Ghent skinners
guild acted to prevent the spread of infectious
diseases (such as foot-and-mouth disease and
plague) among the animals whose skins were
used. The prohibition on selling hides originating from sick animals was specied by an
ordinance: Ghent, Stadsarchief, Bouck van

Ordonnancien (1506), series 192, no.1.1.7.:
dat niemandt gheen huudt coepen en sal op
beesten die moort ghesteken sal hebben, op
boete van V scell(ingen) parise (that nobody
should buy a skin from an animal that has
died from a natural cause, on pain of a ne
of V Paris shillings). Bacteria and viruses could
survive for a long time in the salted skins.
They could detract from the quality of the
material and posed a risk of epidemics.
6. The preparation of the surface of the parchment with pumice and water (pouncing) is
described in London, British Library, Harley
Ms. 3915, Theophili Monarchi, de Chemia,
Medicis praeparationibus, Mineralibus, &
plurimis raris inventionibus, libri. 3. Pumice
breads were baked with bread dough, glass
splinters, and chalk. In the literature on parchment making, the recipe for pumice bread is
not mentioned in any continental source. Its
only occurrence in writing is in a fourteenthcentury English treatise (London, British
Library, Ms. Sloane 2584, fols. 5v 6): Take
glas and braie it in a mortar ryght small, the
smaller the better. Then take that poudre of
glas and quicke lyme and faire our of whete,
of the iche ofhem iliche muche and menge hem
to gidre with the white ofheyrin and all oche
e1iche muche and Jete it stonde al a day and
than temper hem to gidre as thou make past
and put hem in an oven as thou dost brede
and then drawe hem oute and late hem
stonde. The addition of chalk to the pumice
bread was intended to degrease the surface
area and facilitate the adherence of the paint
and ink. After the pumice treatment, the
parchment was cleaned with damp tissue
paper to smooth the surface again. Traces of
the use of pumice stone or pumice bread can
often be observed on the parchment surface as
bundles of very thin parallel scraping lines, on
one folio in different directions, each area
between 20 and 50 millimeters. The transcription of the fourteenth-century recipe for
pumice bread from Ms. Sloane 2584 is also
mentioned in Hedwig Saxl, An Investigation
of the Qualities, the Methods of Manufacture,
and the Preservation of Historic Parchment
and Vellum with a View to Identifying the
Species of Animal Used (M.Sc. thesis, Leeds
University, 1954), 55 57.
7. The guild of the librarier or bookverkoper
was ordered in Bruges in 1454 by Philip the
Good and founded in the Eeckhout
Monastery. All the activities concerning book
production were represented in this neering, or
guild. See also note 21.

Ms. II 158, Bruges, c. 1520; see Illuminating
the Renaissance, cat. no. 150, pp. 46770.
9. Antwerp, Museum Mayer van den Bergh,
inv. no. 946, Bruges and Ghent, around 1500;
see Illuminating the Renaissance, cat. no. 92,
pp. 324 29.
10. In my experience as a conservator-restorer,
given the wide variation and repetition in
forms and patterns of degradation of paint in
illuminated manuscripts, the source of degradation must be the decomposition of the
ground rather than slow abrasion, over centuries, of the surface layer. From the conservation point of view, negligent nishing of the
surface can be the cause of problems with
aking ink and paint layers.
Ms. 9242; see Illuminating the Renaissance,
cat. no. 3, pp. 9192.
12. In X-ray uorescence (xrf) the uorescence signals remain uncalibrated, so that
no real quantitative data can be obtained.
Measurements by xrf done in 1999 at
the Institut royal du Patrimoine artistique
(kikirpa), Brussels, revealed on the blank
parchment areas beside the miniature on the
rst folio of the Chroniques de Hainaut the
presence of calcium, but also minimal signals
for the elements iron and lead (ref. fol.
1r.1140 and fol. 1v. 26 165). Possibly the
parchment was treated with an emulsion of
chalk and lead white to prepare and whiten
the surface. The research data are recorded in:
Brussels, Bibliothque royale de Belgique,
Manuscript Department, Archive,
Conservation Records, Lieve Watteeuw,
Onderzoeks- en conservatieverslag kbr
9242, 1995 2003.
13. For this aspect, see the research on the
Chroniques de Hainaut cited in note 12.
14. Thanks to mutual inuence and close collaboration between painters and illuminators,
the methods of preparing parchment and the
techniques for miniature painting reached a
high degree of artistic and technical achievement in the late fteenth century. The white
parchment support in contrast to the white
ground preparation on the wooden panels
had some difcult properties: it stayed exible,
could slightly expand in dimensions, and was
extremely hygroscopic, a feature that had to
be controlled during application of the paint
layers. For the artistic exchange between
illuminators and painters, see Thomas Kren
and Maryan Ainsworth, Illuminators and
Painters: Artistic Exchanges and Interrelationships, in Kren and McKendrick,
84
watteeuw
15. The thickness of a parchment leaf painted

on one side from the Hennessy Hours is
0.08 mm. The dimension of each illumination
is approximately 80 11 mm, with each folio
weighing 2 grams. Main data and conservation treatment are described in: Bibliothque
royale de Belgique, Manuscript Department,
Conservation Records, Archive, Lieve
Watteeuw, Onderzoek- en conservatieverslag
2001, Heures de Notre Dame, dites de
Hennessy, started in 2001 (work in progress).
With gratitude to Bernard Bousmanne, curator
of the Manuscript Department, Bibliothque
royale, for his support in the archival and
conservation research concerning the codices
from the library discussed here.
16. The pigments mentioned here are found
in the illuminations of the Hennessy Hours.
Analysis was executed by raman spectrometry
in collaboration with Bernard Gilbert and
Sophie Denol at the University of Lige in
2003. Analytical data concerning the
nineteenth-century restorations are recorded
in Brussels, kikirpa, dossier 2000.07179.
17. The meerseniers or merceniers were responsible for a large share of the retail sector in the
Flemish cities. They sold spices, fabrics, textiles, and cord. After 1515 the kruideniers, or
grocers, sold all kind of spices for consumption in the Saint-Amands Chapel in Bruges;
see Gaillard, Ambachten en neringen, 181,
188 89.
18. See Peter Spufford, Power and Prot: The
Merchant in Medieval Europe (London:
Thames & Hudson, 2003), 309 16.
19. European Trade in Painters Materials to
1700, conference at the Courtauld Institute
of Art and the National Gallery, London,
February 1112, 2005. Conference papers will
be published in 2006.
20. London, Wellcome Library for the History
and Understanding of Medicine, Ms. 517. The
treatise gives a recipe for the preparation of
tempera paint: Wilt u water maken alrehande
verwe te temperen. Recipe gomme arabien .i.
loet, ende anderhalf loet cerusa, ende gommi
diagantum dat viiftendeel van .i. loet: stoet
dese te samen, ende lect in een scoen scotel,
ende ghiet dair water op so dat dit poeder .ij.
vingher bedect is. Dan laet staen .24.uren: des
morghens roert mitten vingher dat die gommen wel menghen . . . ende stopt al dicht dat
niet wasemen en mach (fol. 44 v). A small
part of the text refers to oreren of manuscripts and further to the preparations of dyes,
paints, waxes, and gold and silver inks. See W.
L. Braekman, Middelnederlandse verfrecepten
voor miniaturen en alderhand substancien
(Brussels: Omirel, ufsal, 1986); Braeckman,

Medische en technische Middennederlandse
recepten: Een tweede bijdrage tot de
geschiedenis van de vakliteratuur in de
Nederlanden (Ghent: Secretariaat van de
Koninklijke Academie voor Nederlandse
Taal- en Letterkunde, 1975).
21. In the guild of the librarier or bookverkoper all the activities concerning book
production were represented: booksellers
(librariers), ne painters (vinghettemakers),
scribes and book scribes (scrivers,
boucscrivere), teachers (scolemeestere), print
dealers (verlichters), printers (printere), bookbinders (boucbindere), makers of belts (riemmakers), parchment makers (fransijnmakere),
letter cutters (lettersnydere), painters (scildere),
and printmakers (beeldekemakers). The
librariers had a function similar to that of the
librarii in the medieval University of Paris,
acting as commissioners and intermediaries
for craftspersons. For the organization of
librariers in Paris, see Richard H. Rouse and
Mary A. Rouse, Manuscripts and Their
Makers: Commercial Book Producers in
Medieval Paris, 12001500, 2 vols. (Turnhout:
H. Miller, 2000), and Jonathan J. G.
Alexander, Medieval Illuminators and Their
Methods of Work (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1992), 52. In Bruges, members of the book trade belonged to the Guild
of Saint John the Evangelist; for organization
of guilds in fteenth-century Bruges, see
Gaillard, Ambachten en neringen, 134 36,
C. Van den Haute, Documents indits concernant les libraeres et matres dcole de
Bruges, Handelingen van het genootschap
voor geschiedenis te Brugge 59 (1909): 18 21;
Andr Vandewalle, Het librariersgild te
Brugge in zijn vroege periode, in Vlaamse
kunst op perkament: Handschriften en miniaturen te Brugge van de 12de tot de 16de eeuw,
exh. cat. (Bruges: Gruuthusemuseum; Stad
Brugge, 1981), 41; Bernard Bousmanne, Item
a Guillaume Wyelant aussi enlumineur:
Willem Vrelant, un aspect de lenluminure
dans les Pays-Bas mridionaux, sous le mcnat des ducs de Bourgogne Philippe le Bon et
Charles le Tmraire (Brussels: Bibliothque
royale de Belgique, 1997), 49.
22. Brigitte Dekeyzer, Layers of Illusion: The
Mayer van den Bergh Breviary (Ghent:
Ludion, 2004), 101103. In 1957 Friedrich
Winkler attributed the illuminations to Jan
Provoost (Buchmalereien von Jan Provost,
in Miscellanea, Prof. Dr. D. Roggen [Antwerp:
De Sikkel, 1957], 285, 289). In her study of
the manuscript, Dekeyzer ascribed the miniatures to Gerard Horenbout. See also
Illuminating the Renaissance, cat. no. 92,

pp. 324 29.
23. Micro-raman spectroscopy and X-ray
uorescence (txrf) were done on paint samples by Peter Vandenabeele (rug, University of
Ghent) and Brigitte Dekeyzer (Katholieke
Universiteit, Louvain). The results are mentioned in Brigitte Dekeyzer, Vorstelijke luxe
en devotie: Het Breviarium Mayer van den
Bergh in artistiek, religious en historisch perspectief (Ph.D. diss., Katholieke Universiteit,
Louvain, 2002), chap. 1, 134 37, and
Dekeyzer et al., The Mayer van den Bergh
Breviary (Ghent-Bruges, Early Sixteenth
Century): Hands and Pigments, in Le Dessin
sous-jacent et la technologie dans la peinture:
Colloque XII, ed. Hlne Verougstraete and
Roger van Schoute (Louvain: Peeters, 1999),
30316.
24. In the Antwerp cathedral archives from
1526, payments are mentioned to a silversmith
to repair numerous objects belonging to the
treasury: silver jewels, crucixes, a precious
binding for a gospel book, and relics: Item
betaelt Karolen Van Direndonck goudsmit van
diversen reparacien gedaen inde garucamere
van den hooren aen de silveren juweelen,
cruyzen, ampullen, ewangelieboeck ende aen
de reliquien stamen . . . viii pond x s[ous]
(Antwerp, Cathedral Archives, Archieven van
het Onze-Lieve-Vrouw Kapittel te Antwerpen
[1124 1801], Rekeningen van de
Kerkfabriek, 1525 26, no. 13, accounts for
Christmas 1525 Christmas 1526, fol. 21).
25. The library of Philip the Good included a
number of manuscripts dating from the fourteenth century. In 1405, 235 manuscripts are
mentioned in the inventory. The restoration or
replacement of the bindings can be followed
through the six inventories of the fteenth
century. The inventories describe the material
properties of the bindings and the manuscripts
in detail. The rst two inventories were made
in 1404 and 1405; the third in 1420, after the
death of John the Fearless (1371 1420); the
fourth in 1467/69, after the death of Philip the
Good (1396 1467); the fth in Ghent in
1485, after the death of Charles the Bold
(14331477); and the sixth in Brussels in
1487. The descriptions conrm the changes in
material and color of the bindings, also mentioned in the payments. On the early inventories of the library, see Georges Doutrepont,
Inventaire de la librairie de Philip le Bon
(1420) (Brussels: Kiesling, 1906; reprint,
Geneva, 1977); Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Barrois,
Bibliothque protypographique; ou, Librairies
des ls du roi Jean, Charles V, Jean de Berri,
Philippe de Bourgogne et les siens (Paris:

Treuttel & Wrtz, 1830); Claudine Lemaire,
Correspondances des inventaires, in La
Librairie des ducs de Bourgogne: Manuscrits
conservs la Bibliothque royale de Belgique,
vol. 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000) 1719;
Hanno Wijsman, Gebonden weelde:
Productie van geillustreerde handschriften en
adelijk boekenbezit in de Bourgondische
Nederlanden (140 0 1550) (Ph.D. diss.,
University of Leiden, 2003), 12125.
26. Antoine de Gavere was a Bruges bookbinder (1359 1505), son of the bookbinder
Guillaume (Willem) de Gavere (1450 1471).
W. H. James Weale identied three members
of the van Gavere (or de Gavere) binders family by means of their signed panel stamps with
inscriptions (Bookbindings and Rubbings of
Bindings in the National Art Library, South
Kensington Museum [London: Printed for
H. M. Stationery Off., by Eyre and
Spottiswoode, 1898], vol. 1, iii; the bindings,
signed by Antoine [or Antoon] van Gavere,
are mentioned in vol. 2, nos. 310 13). Further
references concerning Antoine de Gavere can
be found in Lon Gruel, Manuel historique et
bibliographique de lamateur de reliures (Paris:
Gruel & Engelmann, 1885 1905), vol. 1,
85 87; Tentoonstelling van Oud-Vlaamse
Kunst, pt. 5, Boekbanden, exh. cat. (Antwerp,
1930), 11112; Prosper Verheyden, De
boerendans op de Vlaamse boekbanden, De
Gulden Passer 20 (1942): 221 22; Staffan
Fogelmark, Flemish and Related PanelStamped Bindings: Evidence and Principles
(New York: Bibliographic Society of America,
1990), 243; James R. Tanis, ed., Leaves of
Gold: Manuscript Illumination from
Philadelphia Collections, exh. cat.
(Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art,
2000), 106 8; The History of Bookbinding,
5251950 A.D., exh. cat. (Baltimore: Walters
Art Gallery, 1957), 54 55.
27. The gilding of initials and the production
of gilded book edges were activities that are
explicitly mentioned in the payments of the
ducal court and in the account books of
Antwerp chapters. Besides bookbinding, both
the production of clasps and metal ttings and
regilding were mentioned separately. For
example, Joos van Lee and Jan Gast, both
Bruges natives who had moved to Antwerp,
were mentioned in 1505 as boeckbynd(er)
(bookbinders) as well as boeckverguldere
(gilders of books) in the registers of the
Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke (Antwerp,
Stadsarchief, SR 141, fol. 320, and SR 147,
fol. 405). See Jan van der Stock, Printing
Images in Antwerp: The Introduction of

Printmaking in a City, Fifteenth Century to
1485, trans. Beverley Jackson (Antwerp:
Sound & Vision Interactive, 1998), 258. For
the work of Joos van Lee, see Weale,
Bookbindings and Rubbings, vol. 1, lxii.
28. For references concerning monetary value
in the fteenth century in Flanders and
Brabant, see Antoon Wyfels, Maten en
gewichten, in Dokumenten voor de
geschiedenis van prijzen en lonen in
Vlaanderen en Brabant (XV eXVIII e eeuw), ed.
Charles Verlinden, vol. 1 (Bruges: De Tempel,
1959), 115.
Ms. 10176 78, Artois, ca. 1380 1400.
30. The interventions of Antoine de Gavere as
a bookbinder and restorer of manuscripts for
the dukes of Burgundy and the analyses (by
X-ray uorescence) of ve illuminations in
Guillaume de Deguilevilles Plerinage de la
vie humaine are described in detail in Lieve
Watteeuw, . . . Pour avoir nettoy et rely ij
grans livres appartenant Monseigneur . . . :
Documentation Concerning the FifteenthCentury Care of Manuscripts in the
Burgundian Library, in Manuscripts in
Transition: Recycling Manuscripts, Texts, and
Images, ed. Brigitte Dekeyzer and Jan Van der
Stock (Louvain: Peeters, 2005), 24151.
31. For instance, the uncompleted (imparfait) books were transported by boat to the
different ducal residences. The accounts mention the cost of the workers engaged to carry
the book chests from land to the ship: Item,
ung charton et plusieurs compaignons qui
ont tir hors de ladite chambre de joyaux
Lille, plusieurs autre coffres plains de livres et
autre choses et les mener au rivage dudit Lille
et les mettre au batteau, en tous 27 s
(Brussels, Algemeen Rijksarchief, cc, no.
1923, fols. 171 v 173 v, 24). Mentioned in
Antoine de Schryver, Jacques de Brgille,
responsable de la librairie des ducs de
Bourgogne sous Charles le Tmeraire, in Les
Chroniques de Hainaut; ou, Les Ambitions
dun prince bourguignon, ed. Christiane van
den Bergen-Pantens (Turnhout: Brepols,
2000), 83 89.
32. In November 1501, A Philippe Cotteron,
aide du garde de joyaux, pour avoir fait nettoier et relier ung riche missal et le fait tout
dor tout autour, comme pour la garniturs de
laitton dudit missal: iiij livres iij s[ous], and
a luy, pour avoir fait couvrir deux missaux,
ung evangilaire et ung pistolaire de velours
noirs et doubl de satin, comme pour deux
autres riches missauls. Lun de velours noir
85
doubl de satin, lautre de velours cramoisi de

damast (Lille, Archives du Dpartement de
Nord, Chambre de Comptes, Register no. F,
190). Mentioned in Alexandre Pinchart,
Archives des arts, sciences et lettres:
Documents indits et annots (Ghent, 1860),
pt. 1, 62. The gilding or regilding of the (cut)
edges of the book is described as dor tout
autour (gilding all around). The punching
with metal tools of the gilded edge, a luxurious feature of books of hours, is never explicitly mentioned in any payment recorded in the
ducal accounts. In February 1470 Loyset
Lidet, an illuminator working in Bruges for
Charles the Bold, received payments for illumination, binding, and gilding edges, the last
mentioned as dorer les listes (gilding the
edges) (Brussels, Algemeen Rijksarchief,
Rekenkamer, nr. 1925, Uitreksel van
rekeningen van de schatbewaarder van de
Hertogen van Bourgondi voor het jaar 1470,
fols. 188 89). This account is also mentioned
in Antoine De Schryver, Prix de lenluminure
et codicologie, in Miscellanea Codicologica F.
Masai dicata MCMLXXIX, ed. Pierre Cockshaw,
Monique-Cecile Garand, and Pierre Jodogne
(Ghent: E. Story-Scientia, 1979), 478.
33. A luy, pour avoir fait relier cinq livres,
lesquels estoient tous rompuz, couvrir ung brvaire de velours, les chroniques de Jrusalem
abrrigs, de satin lxviij s (Lille, Archives du
Dpartement de Nord, Chambre de Comptes,
Register no. F, 201 [1516]). Mentioned in
Pinchart, Archives, pt. 1, 62.
34. Lievin (Livinus, Lyvin) Stuyvaert (d.
1477) was a bookbinder in Ghent and Bruges
who worked for the municipal and clerical
ofcials of Ghent and for the library of Philip
the Good. About Stuyvaert, see Weale,
Bookbindings and Rubbings, lix, v; Victor
Vander Haegen, in Inventaire archologique
de Gand (Ghent, 1898), 93; Luc Indesteghe,
Der Genter Buchbinder Livinus Stuyvaert,
Gutenberg Jahrbuch (1966): 336 39; Albert
Derolez, Lievin Stuyvaert, in Gent: Duizend
jaar kunst en kultuur, exh. cat. (Ghent, 1975),
vol. 2, 136 38.
35. Schepenen wysenden Lieven Stuyvaert
naer de kenisse die hy dede, te reparerene,
schoon te makene, lymene ende bindene wel
ende lovelic, al sulc een bouc gheeten de
bibele. . . . . Als hem heer Micheel van de
Hecke, presbyter, prochie-pape van Sente
Jacobskerke te Ghent ghelevert heeft ter presentie van Schepene, ende dit te volcommene
binnen de maand . . . 13 April 1446 (cited in
P. De Keyser, Het Renteboek van den helegehen gheest van St-Jacobskerk te Gent [1436],
Het Boek 17 [1928]: 259 60 , n. 4).
86
watteeuw
36. I would like to thank Jan Van der Stock,

head of Illuminare, Study Centre for
Illuminated Manuscripts, Katholieke
Universiteit, Louvain, for sharing his enthusiasm and notes concerning bookbinders,
recorded during his extensive research on
fteenth-century print production in Antwerp.
37. Item Corneliis de costere van eenen
zouter te binden ende van boeken te riemen,
ende op de librie van boeken inden brand die
ontreect waren. Coemt alte gadere xi
sc(elling) 1 d(enier) 1 ing (Antwerp,
Cathedral Archives, Archieven van het
Onze-Lieve-Vrouw Kapittel te Antwerpen
[1124 1801], Rekeningen van de
Kerkfabriek, 1430 68, no. 7, accounts for
Christmas 1433 Christmas 1434, fol. 28 v).
38. Item tot Peter Pots hebben zij verdient aen
boeken te verbynden ende te repereren
tsamen xxxvi sc[elling] vi d[enieren] (ibid.,
Rekeningen van de Kerkfabriek, 1430 68,
no. 8, accounts for Christmas
1472 Christmas 1474, fol. 14 v).
39. Item betaelt h[eer] Henric Vanden Steene
van boeken te byndene ende te reparerene
xxxiiii sc[elling] ii d[enieren] (ibid.,
Rekeningen van de Kerkfabriek, 1430 68,
no. 9, accounts for Christmas
1473Christmas 1474, fol. 41).
chapter 7
Rogier van der Weyden and Manuscript Illumination
Lorne Campbell
Cardinal Jean Jouffroy, an important bibliophile, described

Rogier van der Weyden as one of his greatest friends,1 and it seems very evident
from Rogiers work that he too was profoundly fascinated by books, scripts,
and alphabets. Inscriptions, always beautifully lettered and spaced, are of great
aesthetic as well as literary signicance in many of his paintingsfor example,
the Beaune Last Judgment and the Braque Triptych.2 Books occur frequently,
for instance, in the lost composition from which the London Magdalene
Reading has been cut (gs. 7.19, 7.20). The Magdalenes book, which looks
rather like a thirteenth-century French Bible, is lovingly observed. The stitches
in its white cloth chemise are carefully recorded, and at its spine is a golden
pipe, to which are tied four colored cords: two green, one red, and one blue.
The page is ruled in red (although the ruling lines are now discernible only
under magnication) and is lettered in red and black. The initials D and A,
illuminated in blue and red, are legible; the rest of the text is ctive. Here, as in
his other representations of manuscripts, Rogier has indicated writing by painting horizontals crossed at irregular intervals by short verticals and has then
dragged the wet oil paint with a dry brush to achieve a deceptively convincing
imitation of script.3 As far as I know, Rogier never depicted a manuscript page
illustrated with miniatures.
There can be no doubt, however, that Rogier knew how to paint
miniatures. He worked in both Tournai and Brussels, where illuminators and
painters were members of the same guilds.4 Robert Campin, by whom he may
have been trained and with whom he certainly collaborated, was paid in
1430 31 for having painted a Crucixion in a missal for the Church of Sainte
Marguerite in Tournai.5 Jacques Daret, who worked with Rogier in Campins
studio, was to train an illuminator: Eleuthre du Pret, apprenticed to Daret in
1436 and a master illuminator in 1438. Similarly, at Tournai in about 1460,
Rogiers nephew the painter Louis Le Duc, who had almost certainly been
trained by his uncle, took an apprentice illuminator named Jean de le Rue.6
Rogier must certainly have known the Parisian illuminator Dreux
Jean, who was employed by Philip the Good from 1448 and who was Rogiers
neighbor in Brussels (see g. 7.26).7 In 1443 44 Rogier bought two adjoining
properties near the Cantersteen.8 By 1456 Dreux seems to have been installed
in or near the Stuiverstraat, just around the corner, and to have remained there
until 1466 67.9 (The court painters Hue and Jean de Boulogne lived further up
the hill in the Inghelantstraat, while many of the local painters had premises
along the Steenweg.)10 By 1462 Rogier and his wife and Dreux Jean were members of the Confraternity of the Holy Cross in the Church of Saint James on the
88 campbell
Figure 7.1
Rogier van der Weyden. Presentation
of the Manuscript to Philip the Good,
in the Chroniques de Hainaut, vol. 1.
Brussels, Bibliothque royale de Belgique,
Ms. 9242, fol. 1.
Coudenberg. In the register of the confraternity, the members are listed in

alphabetical order of Christian name. Both Dreux and Rogier, however, are
under M for Master: Meester Roeger van der Weyen, der stad scilder (the
town painter) and Meester Drosys, verlichtere (illuminator).11
If, as many have argued, Dreux Jean was indeed the Girart Master,
that could explain the ready access that the Girart Master and his assistants evidently had to the archive of patterns in Rogiers workshop.12 Two examples:
in the miniature on folio 167 of the Girart de Roussillon, where, watched by
Girart, Berthe and her companion build the Abbey of Vzlay, the two gures
are based on the two Marys on our right of the center panel of Rogiers Seven
Sacraments,13 and in the miniature Joscelin, Count of Edessa, on folio 15 of the
Chroniques de Jrusalem abrges, the gure is taken from one of the weepers
on the tomb of Louis of Male, count of Flanders, which were very probably
designed by Rogier, while the interior corresponds rather closely to that in the
Rogierian Annunciation in the Louvre.14 I suppose that it would be possible to
chapter 7: rogier van der weyden and manuscript illumination
propose an alternative theory: that the Girart and the Chroniques de Jrusalem
were illustrated in Rogiers workshop by assistants who specialized in manuscript illumination.
Only one miniature has been attributed to Rogier himself, and that
is of course the remarkable presentation miniature of the rst volume of the
Chroniques de Hainaut (g. 7.1).15 The attribution to Rogier, rst proposed
by Gustav Friedrich Waagen in 1847, has gained much support, and there is
fairly general agreement that the miniature was at least designed by van der
Weyden.16 I will argue that it was both designed and painted by the great Rogier.
The miniature (g. 7.2) measures, within the frame, 148 by 197 millimeters. It shows Philip the Good standing in front of a throne draped with
gured cloth of gold and beneath a canopy of green satin(?) lined with the same
cloth of gold and fringed with gold. Beside Philip stands his son Charles the
Bold; on our left are an unidentied old man; Jean Chevrot, bishop of Tournai;
and Nicolas Rolin, chancellor of Burgundy; on our right are eight knights of the
Golden Fleece. A kneeling man offers to Philip a large book bound in brown
leather (g. 7.4): this cannot be a literal representation of the Chroniques, the
original binding of which was of black gured satin.17
Figure 7.2
Rogier van der Weyden. Presentation
of the Manuscript to Philip the Good
(detail, g. 7.1).
89
90 campbell
Figure 7.3
X-radiograph of Presentation of the
Manuscript to Philip the Good (g. 7.1).
Figure 7.4
showing the book.
According to the text that begins below the miniature, Jean Wauquelin
undertook in 1446, at the command of Philip the Good, to translate the text
from Latin into French. Work on the translation and copying of the text continued in 1447 and was completed in 1448. It is not known when the book was
illuminated or when it was delivered to Philip.18 It is normally assumed that the
miniatures were added while the text was being copied, but the presentation
miniature could perhaps be earlier. The young Charles the Bold, who stands in
the center of the composition and whose titles, count of Charolais and count of
Boulogne, are referred to in two of the shields in the right border, was clearly a
protagonist of great importance.19 Born on November 11, 1433, he was fourteen or fteen in 1448, but in the miniature he is much smaller than his father
and could be younger than fourteen. If this miniature was painted in 1446,
when the project was rst undertaken, and if it was used to promote or sustain
Philips interest, then Charles would be shown at the age of twelve or thirteen,
which is perhaps more plausible.
The miniature differs dramatically from all the others in the book not
only because of its superlative quality but also because of its format. Only the
presentation miniature fails to t the justication of the text the outer edge
of its frame being aligned on the left but the inner edge being aligned on the
right. Only the presentation miniature has a broad and carefully modeled
frame, and it is also the only miniature with an asymmetrical frame the lower
part is considerably narrower than the other three sides because it lacks the
recessed part of the molding. Obviously this folio neither set nor followed a layout for the rest of the book. The text nevertheless preceded the miniature,
91
Figure 7.5
Photomicrograph (detail, g. 7.1), showing the heads of the knights on the left.
Figure 7.6
Photomicrograph (detail, g. 7.1), showing the head of the white-haired knight.
Figure 7.7
showing the head of the knight on left.
Figure 7.8
showing the head of the knight second
from right.
92 campbell
Figure 7.9
X-radiograph (detail, g. 7.3),
showing leg of knight at the far right.
although the frame was painted after the miniature, and the text is laid out in
sixteen lines, as is the text of folio 20 v, the rst folio of the rst book.20 The
painter of the miniature has chosen very deliberately to ignore the layout with
which he was provided. As Claudine Lemaire has pointed out, the dimensions
of the miniature that he painted are in the Pythagorean ratio of 3:4.21
The miniature, though relatively well preserved, does not look exactly
as it did when this folio left the artists workshop.22 There are many small flake
losses: the head of the knight of the Golden Fleece second from our left (g. 7.5)
is so damaged that it may not be immediately apparent that he is facing right;
the head of the white-haired knight is also much injured (g. 7.6). Some of the
colors have darkened. The patterns on the gray and black damasks worn by
Philip the Good and the knight on our left are barely visible. The shape of the
windowpanes, covered in metal foil that has oxidized and darkened, was originally more assertive (see g. 7.16).23 Most seriously, the areas that now appear
pink the cloth of honor, Charles the Bolds robe, the scarf of the knight in
blue, the long robe of the white-haired knight, and the collar and hose of the
knight on our right were probably once crimsons of deeper and richer tones.
The pigments look like deteriorated red lakes, which can fade badly.24 This
lightening of tone affects very adversely the sense of recession in the group of
knights. If the white-haired knights robe were a deep crimson instead of a light
pink, the artist could not be criticized for failing to control the recession of
this group (see g. 7.11). The knight in gray may be wearing a cloth of silver
robe; the effects of texture may be obscured by the damage. Finally, it seems to
me that the heads of the knights on our left (g. 7.7) and second from our right
(see g. 7.8) differ slightly in color and in drawing from the others and that they
could conceivably be late additions, possibly by an assistant of the master who
painted the other heads.25
Many of the other alterations that have been noted the slight thinning of Philips and Charless legs, the minuscule shifts in the placing of the toe
of Charless right shoe and patten (see g. 7.17) are indications that the
painter was an exacting perfectionist.26 A larger change involved the man presenting the book, whose robe was at rst slit up the side to reveal his leg
(g. 7.9).27 He would have looked a little like the Emperor Augustus in the left
wing of Rogiers Bladelin Triptych.28
The fact that the dimensions of the miniature accord with the
Pythagorean ratio of 3:4 is interesting in view of Rogiers interest in basic geometrical shapes and angles. Clearly a close friend of the architect Gillis Joes or
van den Bossche,29 Rogier may have known a great deal about the science of
geometry as well as the art of design. Philip the Good stands in the center of the
square on the left edge and at the side of the square on the right edge. The composition works against a grid of horizontals and verticals. The horizontals are
provided by the canopy, the transoms of the windows, and the pattern of the
floor; the verticals by the fold in Chevrots robe, the cloth of honor and the
throne, Philips and Charless right legs, the mullions of the windows, the left
leg of the knight in silver, and the right leg of the knight in green. Rogiers taste
for plotting compositions on grids is best demonstrated by the magnicent ruin
that is the Escorial Crucixion (g. 7.18).30
The interior in the presentation miniature is very like that in Rogiers
lost composition of the Virgin and Child with Six Saints (see g. 7.25).31 Indeed
the same drawing might almost have been used for the window and shutters
behind the knights and the window behind Saint Joseph. Like Rogier in the
Prado Descent from the Cross, the painter of the presentation miniature was
fascinated by the relationships between frame and image: here Chevrot and the
knight in green are behind the frame, and the foot of the man presenting the
book projects across the frame (see g. 7.15), while the canopy appears to be
suspended from the frame but in fact is not.
The portraits of Chevrot and Rolin (g. 7.10) and Philip (g. 7.12)
may all be compared with portraits of the same subjects by or after Rogier.32
The knight in green (g. 7.13) adopts a pose that fascinated Rogier, who nally
brought it to perfection in the youngest king of the Columba Triptych.33 In the
damask textiles the miniaturist employed the same system of counterpoint
modeling used by Rogier, for example, in the Prado Descent.34 The slight cast
shadows, and even the fact that the principal light source is on our right, are in
keeping with, say, the Seven Sacraments, the Prado Descent, and the Escorial
Crucixion.
93
Figure 7.10
showing the gures of Chevrot and Rolin.
Figure 7.11
showing the skirts of the robe of the
white-haired knight.
94 campbell
Figure 7.12
showing the head of Philip.
Figure 7.13
showing the gure of the knight on
the right.
Figure 7.14
Photomicrograph (detail, g. 7.1)
showing a dog.
Figure 7.15
showing the foot of the man presenting
the book.
Like Rogier, the miniaturist has been criticized for the inaccuracy of
his perspective, the instability of some of his gures, and his crowding of some
groups.35 It is a mistake, however, to judge Rogier, or any northern artist of
genius, by the prosaic standards of literal realism. There is no unied vanishing
point here; the squares in the patterned floor are very different in shape; it may
not be possible to pose eight men exactly as the knights are placed. That is of
no great importance. As in Rogiers paintings, and given the alterations in tone
and color, the result looks absolutely and immutably correct.
All these are arguments in favor of attributing the design of the presentation miniature to Rogier himself. In order to justify attributing its execution to him, it is necessary to deal with the vexed question of media. No one
knows for sure which medium or media the miniaturist employed, but I would
hazard that he may have been using both gums and egg white or glair. The ways
in which he was trying to work these quick-drying media may indicate that
he was more accustomed to slow-drying oils since, in order to achieve similar
effects, he must have had to work with amazing speed and dexterity before his
paint dried. For example, in the velvet skirt of the white-haired knight, he seems
to have succeeded in dragging the wet paint with a dry brush to suggest the
ways in which the textile catches the light (g. 7.11). The result may be compared with the dragged and feathered oil paint of the London Magdalene
(g. 7.21).36 The illuminator also layered his paint in a glazing technique similar to an oil painters. In the green surround of the cloth of honor, damage
reveals that he laid in an opaque layer of green mixed with white, perhaps in a
glair medium; over that he applied a transparent green, possibly in a gum medium, and this glaze has in places flaked away from the underlayer (g. 7.12).
This is basically the same technique used in the shadowed areas of green drapery in the London Magdalene.37 The illuminator put impasto to good effect in
the white highlight on the dogs left ear (g. 7.14), as in the cloth of gold in the
London Magdalene (g. 7.22), and used a sgrafto technique in the foot projecting from the frame, once covered by the gilding and then scraped to reveal
again the point of the toe and patten (g. 7.15).38 There are similar passages in
the London Exhumation of Saint Hubert.39
Again like Rogier, the illuminator lightly indented lines into his painted underlayers, for instance, in the cloth of honor and in Charless robe, where
the indented lines indicate the dispositions and shapes of the repeated motifs of
the patterns.40 Similar indented lines, this time ruled, mark the positions of the
floorboards and the rows of nail heads in the London Magdalene.41
In fteenth-century Netherlandish oil paintings, especially where heatbodied oils have been used, the brush strokes tend to disappear.42 Under the
stereomicroscope, however, the brushwork can be admired. In manuscript illuminations, the brush strokes are more easily detected, and in the presentation
miniature of the Chroniques, the brushwork is superb. Under strong
magnication, which can reveal traces left by every individual hair of the brush,
it is astonishing. The delicate but severely disciplined brush strokes create lines
of hatching and cross-hatching; patterns of dots are applied with the points of
very ne brushes. In gum and glair media, tonal transitions have to be abrupt,
although they can be moderated by delicate hatching. These techniques are
most easily observed in the heads and robes of Chevrot and Rolin (g. 7.10).
Some of the details, for example, the nails in the pattens or the hinges of the
95
96 campbell
Figure 7.16
showing shutters and windows.
Figure 7.17
showing Charles the Bolds right foot.
shutters, are virtually invisible to the naked eye (g. 7.16). This is an artist who
was so in love with his work that he lavished effort on details that few people
would or could ever see.
We can once more make parallels with the London Magdalene
Reading. I have already mentioned her book. In the landscape seen through the
window, the woman walking by the river is about 15 millimeters (3 5 in.) high.
In her reflection, the red and white brush strokes can be seen (g. 7.23). The
artists skill is no less astounding than his constant attention, even on this
minute scale, to the patterns that he created.43 Another instance is the mouth in
the Washington Portrait of a Lady, where the beautiful patterns of disciplined
lines in various hues and tones of red suggest both the form and the texture
of the lips.44
If we compare the dog in the foreground of the presentation miniature
(g. 7.14) with some of the beads on the string behind the Magdalene
(g. 7.24), we can see similarities in the ways that hatching indicates shadow
and that highlights are suggested by the impastoed touches of white on the
dogs ear already described and on each of the beads.45 In the miniature,
marks left by single hairs in the painters brush can be detected, even counted,
in the shadows, and as we have seen, the artist worried over minute shifts in the
outlines of Charles the Bolds shoe and patten. Similarly, in the painting of the
97
amber beads behind the Magdalene, the stronger highlights are circles of leadtin yellow with points of lead white at their centers, whereas the secondary
lights are orange with points of a weaker white. Even on this tiny scale, there
is always an unfailing attention and sensitivity to the beauties of line and shape.
I hope that you will agree that we may see this miniature as the creation of both the mind and the hand of a great genius and that this genius must
have been Rogier van der Weyden. At the Getty exhibition, a banner was displayed beside the Chroniques in which the gure of Philip the Good was
hugely enlarged. I cannot think of any other artist who was capable of depicting commanding dignity both on the majestic scale of the life-size Escorial
Crucixion and on the very small scale of the Chroniques.
Figure 7.18
Rogier van der Weyden. Crucixion,
oil on panel, 325 192 cm (128
75 5 8 in.). San Lorenzo de El Escorial.
Madrid, Patrimonio Nacional, inv. no.
10014602.
98 campbell
Figure 7.19
Rogier van der Weyden. The Magdalene
Reading (fragment from an altarpiece),
oil on panel, 62.2 54.4 cm (241 2
21 3 8 in.). London, National Gallery.
Figure 7.20
showing part of the book.
Figure 7.21
showing an area of fur.
Figure 7.22
showing an area of cloth of gold.
Figure 7.23
showing a reflection in the river.
Figure 7.24
showing beads.
99
100 campbell
Figure 7.25
Reconstruction of Rogier van der
Weydens lost Virgin and Child with
Six Saints Jennifer Campbell.
Figure 7.26
Martin de Tailly. Plan of Brussels
(engraving, 1640), map of the area
around the Coudenberg; 1 marks the
palace, 64 (center) the Cantersteen.
64
101
Notes
This article could not have been written or

illustrated without the help of Rachel Billinge,
Jo Kirby, Thomas Kren, Elizabeth Morrison,
Hlne Verougstraete, and Lieve Watteeuw, to
all of whom I am exceedingly grateful.
1. In his treatise De dignitate cardinalatus,
written in 1468, Jouffroy mentioned amicissimum mihi Brucellensem Rogerium cuius picturae omnium regum aulam collustrant: see
Massimo Miglio, Storiograa pontica del
quattrocento (Bologna: Patron, 1975), 141 n.
31. On Jouffroys library, see Ch. Kohler and
L. Delisle, A propos dune lettre de Ferdinand
Ier dAragon, roi de Naples, Jean Jouffroi,
Bibliothque de lEcole des Chartes 57 (1896):
699 708; Giovanni Mercati, Una lettera di
Vespasiano da Bisticci a Jean Jouffroi, in
Mlanges ddis la mmoire de Flix Grat
(Paris: Pecqueur-Grat, 1946 49), vol. 1,
357 66; Antonio Manfredi and Maria Elena
Bertoldi, San Lorenzo in Lucina, Jean Le
Jeune, Jean Jouffroy and the Search for
Manuscripts in France during the Papacy of
Nicholas V (14471451), Opuscula Romana:
Annual of the Swedish Institute in Rome 28
(2003): 9 34.
2. For the Beaune inscriptions, see Nicole
Verone-Verhaegen, LHtel-Dieu de Beaune
(Brussels: Centre national de recherches
Primitifs flamands, 1973), 59 60; for the
Braque inscriptions, see Philippe Lorentz and
Micheline Comblen-Sonkes, Muse du Louvre
Paris III (Brussels: Centre international dtude
de la peinture medivale des bassins de
lEscaut et de la Meuse, 2001), 145-47.
3. Lorne Campbell, The Fifteenth-Century
Netherlandish Schools (London: National
Gallery Publications, 1998), 392 406, esp.
397, g. 6.
4. For Tournai, see Dominique
Vanwijnsberghe, De n or et dazur: Les
Commanditaires de livres et le mtier de
lenluminure Tournai la n du Moyen ge
(XIV e XV e sicles) (Louvain: Peeters, 2001);
for Brussels, see the regulations of June 20,
1453, summarized by G. des Marez,
LOrganisation du travail Bruxelles au XV e
sicle (Brussels: H. Lamertin, 1904), 50 51;
and Claire Dickstein-Bernard, Roger van der
Weyden, la ville de Bruxelles, et son mtier des
peintres, in Rogier van der Weyden, exh. cat.
(Brussels: Muse Communal, 1979), 36 40.
5. Jean Dumoulin and Jacques Pycke,
Comptes de la paroisse Sainte-Marguerite de
Tournai au 15e sicle, in Les grands sicles de
Tournai (12 e 15 e sicles) (Tournai: Fabrique
de lglise Cathdrale de Tournai, 1993),
279 320, esp. 301.
6. Vanwijnsberghe, De n or et dazur, 131,

132, 298.
7. Anne Van Buren-Hagopian, Dreux Jehan
and the Grandes Heures of Philip the Bold, in
Als ich can: Liber amicorum Professor
Doctor Maurits Smeyers, ed. Bert Cardon,
Jan Van der Stock, and Dominique
Vanwijnsberghe (Louvain: Peeters, 2002),
1377 1414. See also McKendricks biography
of Dreux in Thomas Kren and Scot
Getty Museum, 2003), 212 13.
8. For Rogiers house, see Alexandre Pinchart,
Roger de le Pasture dit Van der Weyden,
Bulletin des Commissions Royales dart et
darchologie 6 (1867): 408 94, esp. 472 74.
9. The documents concerning Dreux Jeans
house, never fully published, are best summarized by Van Buren-Hagopian, Dreux Jehan,
1380 81. For its situation, see Alexandre
Pinchart, Archives des arts, sciences et lettres
(Ghent, 1860 81), vol. 2, 191: aux environs
de la rue Cantersteen et de la rue Terarcken.
The rue des Sols or Stuiverstraat runs between
the rue Terarken and the Cantersteen. For the
topography of the area, see G. des Marez,
Le Quartier Isabelle et Terarken (Brussels,
1927), 47 48.
10. For Hue de Boulognes house, see Jozef
Duverger, Brussel als kunstcentrum in de 14e
en 15 e eeuw (Antwerp: De Sikkel; Ghent:
Vyncke, 1935), 62. For the Steenweg premises,
see Colette Mathieu, Le mtier des peintres
Bruxelles aux xiv me et xv me sicles, in
Bruxelles au XV e sicle (Brussels: Librairie
encyclopdique, 1953), 219 35, esp. 235.
11. Brussels, Bibliothque Royale, Ms. 21779,
fols. 23, 24; Pinchart, Archives, vol. 2, 156.
12. See Van Buren-Hagopian, Dreux Jehan,
for the fullest consideration of the evidence.
13. Dagmar Thoss, Das Epos des
Burgunderreiches, Girart de Roussillon
(Graz, Austria: Akademische Druck- und
Verlagsanstalt, 1989), 38, gs. 16, 18.
14. Campbell, Netherlandish Schools, 26 27;
for an engraved copy of the pleurant, see
Elisabeth Dhanens, Hubert and Jan van Eyck
(Antwerp: Mercatorfonds, 1980), 129; on the
tomb, see Lorne Campbell, The Tomb of
Joanna, Duchess of Brabant, Renaissance
Studies 2 (1988): 16372.
15. Christiane Van den Bergen-Pantens, ed.,
Les Chroniques de Hainaut ou les Ambitions
dun prince bourguignon (Turnhout: Brepols,
2000). On the presentation miniature, see also
Cyriel Stroo, De celebratie van de macht:
Presentatieminiaturen en aanverwante
voorstellingen in handschriften van Philips de

Goede (14191467) (Brussels: Paleis der
Academin, 2002).
16. Gustav F. Waagen, Nachtrge zur
Kenntniss der altniederlndischen
Malerschulen des 15ten und 16ten
Jahrhunderts (Forsetzung), Kunstblatt,
September 16, 1847, 177 78. His attribution
was accepted by Johann D. Passavant, Die
Maler Rogier van der Weyden, Zeitschrift fr
christliche Archologie und Kunst 2 (1858):
120, 120 30, 178 80, esp. 19; Max J.
Friedlnder, Die altniederlndische Malerei,
vol. 2, Rogier van der Weyden und der Meister
von Flmalle (Berlin: P. Cassirer, 1924), 39n;
Friedrich Winkler, Die mische Buchmalerei
des XV. und XVI. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig: E. A.
Seemann, 1925), 24; Georges Hulin, Weyden
(Rogier de le Pasture, alias Van der), in
Biographie nationale, vol. 27 (Brussels: H.
Thiry-van Buggenhoudt, 1938), cols. 222 45,
esp. col. 235; Albert Chtelet, Rogier van der
Weyden: Problmes de la vie et de loeuvre
(Strasbourg: Presses universitaires de
Strasbourg, 1999), 154 55; Stephan
Kemperdick, Rogier van der Weyden,
1399/14001464 (Cologne: Knemann,
1999), 58; Dirk De Vos, Rogier van der
Weyden: The Complete Works (Antwerp:
Mercatorfonds, 1999), 249 51. Waagens
attribution was rejected by Charles Ruelens,
La miniature initiale des Chroniques de
Hainaut la Bibliothque de Bourgogne de
Bruxelles, Gazette archologique 8 (1883):
317 27; Paul Durrieu, La Miniature amande
au temps de la cour de Bourgogne,
14151530, 2nd ed. (Brussels: G. van Oest,
1927), 28, 64, cited Ruelenss article with
evident approval. Erwin Panofsky, Early
Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and
Character (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1953), 268 and 466 n. 3, thought that
Rogier might have left the manual execution
of the page . . . to a professional illuminator.
L. M. J. Delaiss, Les Chroniques de
Hainaut et latelier de Jean Wauquelin
Mons dans lhistoire de la miniature flamande, in Miscellanea Erwin Panofsky
(Brussels: Patrimoine des Muses Royaux des
Beaux-Arts, 1955), 2156, quoted Panofskys
opinion with polite approval (21). Anne Van
Buren-Hagopian, Artists of Volume I, in
Van den Bergen-Pantens, Chroniques de
Hainaut, 65 74, considered that Rogier made
a preliminary drawing but left it to one of his
close associates to transfer the design to the
manuscript (66). She did not mention the
fairly radical alterations revealed in the
X-radiograph (g. 7.3), which were among
102
campbell
the reasons leading Kren to favor the attribution to Rogier; see Kren, in Kren and
91 93. Other authorities have not committed
themselves to denite opinions, for example,
Hlne Verougstraete and Roger Van Schoute,
Le Frontispice des Chroniques de Hainaut:
Examen en laboratoire, in Van den BergenPantens, Chroniques de Hainaut, 149 56.
17. Claudine Lemaire, Les Prgrinations des
trois volumes des Chroniques de Hainaut, in
Van den Bergen-Pantens, Chroniques de
Hainaut, 29 32, esp. 30.
18. Ibid.; Pierre Cockshaw, Jean Wauquelin
documents darchives, in Van den BergenPantens, Chroniques de Hainaut, 37 49;
Anne Van Buren-Hagopian, The Date of the
Miniatures, in Van den Bergen-Pantens,
Chroniques de Hainaut, 61 64.
19. Christiane Van den Bergen-Pantens,
Hraldique et symbolique dans la miniature
de prsentation, in Van den Bergen-Pantens,
Chroniques de Hainaut, 125 31.
20. Verougstraete and Van Schoute,
Frontispice, 149, 15152; for a reproduction of folio 20v, see Van den Bergen-Pantens,
Chroniques de Hainaut, 259.
21. Lemaire, Prgrinations, 29.
22. On the condition of the miniature, see
Lieve Watteeuw and Ann Peckstadt, kbr,
Hs 9242: Een conservatie in functie van het
ontstaan, gebruik en de beschadiging van
het manuscript, in Van den Bergen-Pantens,
Chroniques de Hainaut, 13339;
Verougstraete and Van Schoute, Frontispice,
149 50; Lieve Watteeuw and Marina Van
Bos, Chroniques de Hainaut: Observaties en
resultaten van de analysis op zes miniaturen,
ibid., 157 66, esp. 158 59; Anne Dubois,
Note sur ltat de conservation de la miniature de prsentation du premier volume des
Chroniques de Hainaut depuis la n du 19 e
sicle, ibid., 167. A full-size lithographic
reproduction by Jean-Baptiste Madou
(1796 1877) and Jean-Baptiste-AmbroiseMarcelin Jobard (1792 1861) was published
in Charles Lecocq and F. de Reiffenberg,
Fastes belgiques (Brussels, 1822), unpaged,
Renaissance des lettres mcccc, but is not
entirely accurate; the full-size heliogravure
published in 1883 by Ruelens, Miniature initiale, may have been made from a retouched
negative. Both reproductions appear to show
the miniature in a less damaged state.
23. But compare the nineteenth-century reproductions cited in the previous note.
24. David Saunders and Jo Kirby, LightInduced Colour Changes in Red and Yellow
Lake Pigments, National Gallery Technical

Bulletin 15 (1994): 79 97.
25. The X-radiograph (g. 7.3), discussed by
Verougstraete and Van Schoute, Frontispice,
156, indicates that the legs of these two men
are painted over the squares of the patterned
floor, whereas the floor is painted up to and
around the contours of all the other legs. The
X-radiograph and the photograph in transmitted light (reproduced by Watteeuw and Van
Bos, Chroniques de Hainaut, 283) show
that these two heads are less transparent than
the others, with greater concentrations of lead
white. Traces of lead-tin yellow have been
found in the head on the left (Verougstraete
and Van Schoute, Frontispice, 159), though
not in the other heads examined; the head on
the right has not been investigated.
Frontispice, 151.
Frontispice, 151.
28. De Vos, Rogier van der Weyden, 242.
29. Gillis was the architect of the Collegiate
Church of Saint Gudula and died on February
10, 1460, apparently at a very advanced age.
Both he and Rogier were generous benefactors
of the charterhouse at Herne (Hrinnes), near
Enghien; see Arnold Beeltsens and Jean
Ammonius, Chronique de la Chartreuse de la
Chapelle Hrinnes-lez-Enghien, ed. Edmond
Lamalle (Louvain: Bureaux de la Revue dhistoire ecclsiastique, 1932), 62, 228. To the
chapel of Saint Catherine there, consecrated
on October 25, 1447, Gillis gave a stone statue of the saint cum annexis; it was polychromed by Rogier, who gave a picture presumably the altarpiece of the chapel. Joes also
gave the stone altar table, two windows, and
all the white stone used in the building. Rogier
would also have known Jan van Ruysbroeck,
his colleague in the employ of the town of
Brussels: see G. des Marez, Larchitecte Jean
van Ruysbroeck et le xv e sicle bruxellois,
Annales de la Socit Royale darchologie
de Bruxelles 31 (1923), 81 105.
30. De Vos, Rogier van der Weyden, 29194;
color reproductions in Albert Chtelet, Rogier
van der Weyden (Paris: Gallimard; Milan:
Electa, 1999), 121 23.
31. Campbell, Netherlandish Schools, 399.
32. The portraits of Chevrot, in the Seven
Sacraments, and of Rolin, in the Beaune Last
Judgment, are reproduced by De Vos, Rogier
van der Weyden, 132. For the early versions of
the lost Portrait of Philip the Good, see
Lorentz and Comblen-Sonkes, Muse du
Louvre Paris III, 71 80, and references.
33. Compare, for example, the young men on

the right of the Exhumation of Saint Hubert,
in the left wing of the Bladelin Triptych and
(reversed) in the scene of Baptism in the Seven
Sacraments, as well as the youngest king of the
Columba Triptych: Campbell, Netherlandish
Schools, 422; De Vos, Rogier van der Weyden,
412, 242, 219, 279.
Frontispice, 151. In strongly illuminated
areas, the patterns are dark on light; in shadowed areas, light on dark.
35. See, for instance, Van Buren, Artists of
Volume I, 65 66; Verougstraete and Van
Schoute, Frontispice, 149.
36. Lorne Campbell et al., The Materials and
Techniques of Five Paintings by Rogier van der
Weyden and His Workshop, in Early
Northern European Painting, ed. Lorne
Campbell, Susan Foister, and Ashok Roy,
National Gallery Technical Bulletin 18 (1997):
68 86, esp. 81, pl. 53; Campbell,
Netherlandish Schools, 402.
37. Campbell et al., Materials and
Techniques, 76, 79.
Frontispice, 150, 152.
39. In the Exhumation, where the two boys
were added at a late stage, the red collar and
undersleeves, and perhaps areas of the face,
of the older boy were created by leaving
exposed parts of the red robe of the man
behind and beneath; see Campbell,
Netherlandish Schools, 425.
Frontispice, 150.
Techniques, 73 74.
42. Jill Dunkerton, Observations on the
Handling Properties of Binding Media
Identied in European Painting from the
Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Centuries,
Bulletin de lInstitut Royal du patrimoine
artistique 27 (1996 98, published 2002):
287 92, esp. 292.
43. Campbell, Netherlandish Schools, 396 97.
44. Catherine A. Metzger and Michael Palmer,
The Washington Portrait of a Lady by Rogier
van der Weyden Considered in Light of Recent
Investigations, in Painting Techniques:
History, Materials, and Studio Practice:
Contributions to the Dublin Congress, 711
September 1998, ed. Ashok Roy and Perry
Smith (London: International Institute for
Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works,
1998), iic, 94 97.
Techniques, 82 83; Campbell, Netherlandish
Schools, 396, g. 4.
chapter 8
On Relationships between Netherlandish Drawing

and Manuscript Illumination in the Fifteenth Century
Stephanie Buck
When considering the relationships between early Netherlandish drawing and manuscript illumination, one has to face a well-known
but nevertheless serious problem: the scarceness of drawings still preserved
today.1 In northern Europe, drawings do not seem to have been collected as
works of art during the fteenth century.2 Thus, the large majority of them are
lost. Most of the few hundred sheets from the fteenth century that have been
preserved3 works on paper or parchment, usually mounted on cardboard
are executed in a rather detailed manner, as they were used as workshop patterns and thus had to show clear, recognizable, and repeatable images. Among
these only a small number can be linked to manuscript illumination in some
manner, meaning that they were either created by illuminators or were used as
patterns in illuminators workshops and thus played a role within the production of miniatures.4
The term drawing may, however, refer not only to these individual
objects but also to the manuscript illumination itself.5 As I see it, three different aspects can be distinguished. First, in miniature painting, as in panel painting, drawing marked a specic step in the work process. This underdrawing
was meant to be covered up with paint and was thus not expected to be visible.
Second, drawing can be seen as an integral element of miniature painting in
the sense that the linear structure, the modeling with hatches and so on, is a
visible part of the illumination as it appears in its nished state. Drawing in
this sense is understood as the graphic language that depends on line and linear structure, as distinguished from painting, in which areas of color are
blended in order to create the illusion of continuously modeled forms. Third,
there are book illuminations that are actually nished drawings and do not
differ from individual drawings. Their appearance is manifold. Jonathan
Alexander refers to a variety of techniques of nished drawings in medieval
manuscripts: colored ink drawings, illustrations with light washes, grisaille
with color tinting, and even combinations of fully painted miniatures and drawings on a single page.6
No matter what type of drawing one refers to, there are essential characteristics shared by early Netherlandish drawing and manuscript illumination
that establish a relationship that by nature is particularly close, closer than the
one between drawing and contemporary panel or glass painting. These characteristics are the same support parchment or paper the same working
tools pen or brush and ink, sometimes colored7 as well as the small scale,
and they have an important effect on the works artistic character.
104 buck
Figure 8.1
Master of the Dresden Prayer Book.
Virgin and Child Crowned by an Angel,
in a book of hours. Berlin, Staatliche
Museen Preuischer Kulturbesitz,
Kupferstichkabinett, Ms. 78 B 14,
fol. 221 v.
Figure 8.2
Infrared photograph of Virgin and Child
Crowned by an Angel (detail, g. 8.1).
By looking closely at examples of these different types of drawing, we

can gain a better understanding of their respective relationships to book illumination. I will begin with an example of spontaneous underdrawing covered
with paint that was applied in a technique of an explicitly linear character, then
look at drawings as miniatures in manuscripts, followed by individual drawings
used as models for nished illuminations, and conclude with an example that
combines drawing and miniature painting in a single image.
As is well known, underdrawings can often be found in books with
unnished illuminations.8 Whereas these drawings are visible to the naked eye,
underdrawings covered with paint in nished miniatures may be detected with
the help of infrared photography and reectography.9 Their documentation can
be of considerable interest for research not only on book illumination but also
on individual drawings. For example, among the illuminations in a book of
hours in the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett is a full-page miniature by the Master
of the Dresden Prayer Book from around 1485, representing the half-length
image of the Virgin and child crowned by an angel (g. 8.1).10 Typical for his
painting or rather drawing technique, this illuminator hardly blended the
colors but rather indicated outlines, drapery folds, facial features, as well as the
Virgins hair with individual lines and then modeled with short hatches. These
are also dominant in the background. This modeling drawing, which characterizes the nal painted image, is somewhat disorganized and lacks concentration; at the same time it covers the surface rather densely.
chapter 8: netherlandish drawing and manuscript illumination
The underdrawing has a different appearance (g. 8.2). The infrared

photograph shows that the illuminator rst planned two angels anking the
Virgins head and holding the crown. Later in the work process these two were
given up to make space for the one centrally located angel nally executed in
paint. The underdrawing is limited to uent brush lines that indicate the forms,
such as the angels wings and heads or some of the main drapery folds; the
crown is merely roughly outlined as a rectangular form. It demonstrates the
illuminators creativity in blocking in the nal composition and introduces
another facet of his draftsmanship, which is not limited to the slightly shaggy,
confused modeling drawing in paint visible on the miniatures surface.
As most individual fteenth-century Netherlandish drawings are more fully
worked out copies, this sketchy underdrawing is welcome as another of the rare
examples of uent and spontaneous freehand drawing.11 As such it suggests
that the small-scale sketch on parchment or on paper was well known to
Netherlandish artists.
In the case of drawings that are illuminations, or vice versa, works executed on colored grounds are especially interesting. Depending on their function, as either an end product or a work meant to help produce another one,
and also depending on the particular department of the museum or library
where the works are preserved today, these images are categorized either as
drawings or as illuminations. Especially in the case of very early individual
drawings dating from the late fourteenth and the early fteenth centuries, however, this categorization is rather articial, as becomes evident when reading
Cennino Cenninis Libro dellarte. Although Italian, this manual gives important information on working procedures in the north as well.
In the very beginning Cennini emphasizes that drawing is the starting
point of the artists education: As has been said, you begin with drawing.12
After explaining how to prepare a small wooden panel with a ground and how
to draw with a silverpoint on it, he describes in great detail how to draw on
sheep parchment or on paper and shade with washes: On the parchment you
may draw or sketch with this style of yours. . . . If, after you have drawn with
the style, you want to clear up the drawing further, x it with ink at the points
of accent and stress. And then shade the folds with washes of ink. . . . And you
may likewise work and shade with colors and with clothlets such as the illuminators use.13 He obviously distinguished between illumination and drawing,
but the borderlines are uid.
After practicing metalpoint drawing for a year, the young artist could
work with the pen and nally start drawing on paper or parchment tinted
in various colors in order to start trying to discover the entrance and gateway to painting.14 Early Italian examples of this type of drawing on a tinted
ground are Giovanni da Milanos Crucixion from around 1365/70 15 and
Lorenzo Monacos Visitation from the beginning of the fteenth century
(g. 8.3).16 Pen, brush, dark ink, some wash, and white gouache for the highlights are used. Monacos drawing is fully worked out and presents itself as a
complete image the composition is even surrounded by a picture frame. Still
Cennini certainly considered works like this as drawings, as we do today
because of the obvious graphic qualities, evident when focusing on the elaborate system of hatching.17
105
106 buck
Figure 8.3
Lorenzo Monaco. The Visitation. Pen and
brush, brown and black ink heightened
with white tinted with blue and yellow
goache on paper, 25.7 18.9 cm
(10 1 8 7 3 8 in.). Berlin, Staatliche
Kupferstichkabinett, inv. KdZ 608.
Figure 8.4
Jaques Daliwe. Pilgrims by a Town, in
Liber Picturatus. Silverpoint, partly
retouched with metalpoint and brush on
white prepared boxwood, 8.8 13 cm
(35 5 1 8 in.). Berlin, Staatliche
Staatsbibliothek, Ms. A 74, iib.
107
Figure 8.5
Anonymous. John Mandeville Travels to
Constantinople, in The Travels of John
Mandeville. London, British Library,
Add Ms. 24189, fol. 4 v.
Around 1400 northern artists worked in the same manner, evident

in model books like the ones by Jacquemart de Hesdin18 and Jaques Daliwe
(g. 8.4)19 or the Bohemian Vademecum.20 It is also manifest in manuscripts
such as The Travels of John Mandeville (g. 8.5).21 In all of these cases the technique corresponds exactly to the one Cennini recommended for drawings on
tinted paper or parchment, and the graphic structure is always manifest. Thus,
not only the model book drawings executed on wood but also the illuminations
in the manuscript may as well be considered drawingsthat is, illuminations
and drawings need not be distinguished.
In the period around 1400 contemporaries did not in fact necessarily
distinguish between drawings and book illumination in regard to their
nature that is, their aesthetic value, function, appearance, and technique.
This is demonstrated by a remarkable manuscript in the Wiesbaden
Hauptstaatsarchiv dated in the colophon to 1410 and illustrated with about
forty images.22 Astonishingly, most of these works executed by different
artists were produced in the late fourteenth century as individual drawings
on paper and parchment. Only later, when the manuscript was put together as
a miscellany of religious texts, were the already existing drawings glued in and
thereby adapted as text illustrations. The drawings function thus changed. As
Marta Renger stated in 1987, they were understood as suitable devotional
images that occasionally refer to the text.23
108 buck
Figure 8.6
Anonymous. Adoration of the Magi, in a
miscellany of religious texts. Wiesbaden,
Hauptstaatsarchiv, Ms. 3004 b 10,
fol. 24 v.
A particularly interesting example is The Adoration of the Magi

(g. 8.6).24 This scene was created by pasting together four drawings, all attributed by Renger to the Andr Beauneveu group.25 The three drawings showing
Kaspar, Balthasar, and the Virgin are silverpoint drawings heightened
with white. The gures of the two kings were executed on green prepared
paper, while the white ground of the drawing with the Virgin and child has a
yellow tint. Melchior on the other side is not only slightly taller than the
other two kings but is also executed in pen and ink on a white ground and is
not heightened with white. After the pasting together, a draftsman who worked
with brush, pen, watercolor, and ink tried to make the gures appear to belong
to a homogeneous composition. Thus he enlarged the Virgins throne bench to
the left, added a continuous grassy ground, retouched the gures with red, and
reinforced contours.26
Those early works executed on tinted paper, many of them heightened
with white, show the closest possible relationship between drawing and illumination. The rise of the individual drawing on paper, as we think of that phenomenon today, can be observed over the course of the fteenth century. The
technique in which tinted grounds were used and white highlights were applied
seems to have become less important for the production of early Netherlandish
individual drawings in the second and third quarters of the fteenth century,
however, while book illuminators continued working in a similar technique
when they executed grisaille miniatures.27
In the last quarter of the fteenth century the technique appears to
have again become popular in Netherlandish drawing. It is probably not by
pure chance that a group of these small-scale individual drawings executed on
gray tinted grounds are linked to manuscript illumination. Two ne examples
are The Holy Family at the Inn (g. 8.7)28 and Fourteen Male Heads
(g. 8.10).29 The format of the drawings, with borders indicated with straight
lines, and the fact that the motifs coincide with miniatures in several Flemish
manuscripts from the last quarter of the fteenth century prove the connection
to book illustrations. The drawings differ from the illuminations, however, in
that the latter are fully painted miniatures while the drawings are executed with
pen, brush, and black ink, heightened with white gouache. Questions of the
drawings attribution, of their precise function, and of their status as original

inventions or copies are still unsettled. It only seems clear that they were used
as preparatory material for the production of miniatures.
A. E. Popham and Otto Pcht attributed the Holy Family at the Inn to
the Master of Mary of Burgundy. Although G. I. Lieftinck and Anne H. Van
Buren questioned that attribution,30 Thomas Kren provisionally attributed the
London drawing to the Vienna Master of Mary of Burgundy.31 The image was
obviously very successful; Kren states that at least eight Flemish manuscripts
show the same or similar motifs. The earliest seems to be the miniature in the
Voustre Demeure Hours (g. 8.8), now attributed to an assistant of the Vienna
Master of Mary of Burgundy and dated to about 1475 80.32
The attribution of the drawing to a particular book illuminator is a
thorny question, as not a single sheet can be rmly attributed to one of the
numerous illuminators from that group. Thus there is no starting point for a
stylistic analysis. The drapery style is not of much help since the forms may
have been copied after a model and thus resemble one another closely in the
several manuscripts dating not only from the last quarter of the fteenth but
also from the early sixteenth century.33 The drawing technique with its reduction of color to black, gray, and white gives the drawing an appearance that
is completely different from that of the miniature, although there are possibilities for comparison with the Voustre Demeure Hours, as the illuminator of that
manuscript relied heavily on a grayish tone for the city and landscape. This is
particularly important, as the tiny size of the gures means that the heads are
only about three millimeters high, making it difcult to recognize the hand of a
specic master based on modeling, expression, and physiognomic features.
Despite such uncertainties, an attribution of the drawing to the Vienna
Master of Mary of Burgundy seems most unlikely if we expect this illuminator
to be the creative, innovative mind who ingeniously invented new compositions.34 A copy should thus not be attributed to him but rather be interpreted
as a work from his workshop or his circle.
This seems to be the case with the London sheet. Despite its abraded
condition, there is enough detailed information that indicates clear misunderstandings of the original composition. The artist rst drew the inner rectangular space reserved for the text block in a manuscript. Those straight lines were
ruled imprecisely, however, as the draftsman corrected the right border line.
The lower border of this inner frame was not drawn in black but only slightly
indented. This might indicate that the artist did not really construct the border
but copied its format from an existing image.
The draftsman did not clearly understand the system of light important for the miniatures of the Vienna Master of Mary of Burgundy, as is obvious in the Voustre Demeure miniature (g. 8.8). There are two light sources:
the natural light falls from the left; in the bas-de-page it causes the gures
and objects to cast strong, clear shadows, which are indicated with tiny strokes.
Because of this light falling from the left, the gures are modeled with white on
their left sides, both in the miniature and in the drawing. A second light source
is the heavenly light that the angels emit as they announce Christs birth to the
shepherds (g. 8.9). The stable on the right border is glowing because Christ
was born there. The saviors heavenly light affects the surroundings the two
shepherds, seen from the back approaching the stable from the left, are thus
109
110 buck
Figure 8.7
Workshop or circle of the Vienna Master
of Mary of Burgundy. The Holy Family
at the Inn. Pen and brush and black ink
heightened with white on gray prepared
paper, 11 7.9 cm (43 8 31 8 in.).
London, British Museum, inv.
1883.7.14.78.
lit only from the right in the miniature. Their backs are dark. In the drawing,
however, the shepherd on the left is highlighted from the back a clear misunderstanding of the original highly rened lighting system, manifest in the
Voustre Demeure miniature. In this respect the composition of the upper border with the Annunciation to the Shepherds is even less convincing in the
London drawing. In the miniature the annunciatory angel is all glowing because
he is the one who announces the heavenly message. As in the case of the stable,
this light affects the shepherds camping on the left side of the upper border. The
draftsman thus highlights those gures with some white. The reason for the
heavenly glow is not clearly indicated, however, as the annunciatory angel himself is hardly highlighted and does not glow at all.
Misunderstandings are also manifest in regard to the spatial construction of the houses of Bethlehem on the left border, where the gables are superimposed without much understanding of the houses construction and their
placement in the picture space. The same is true for the diagonally placed house
behind the pregnant Mary, which seems to oat in the air on the lower border.
All of these peculiarities distinguish the draftsman as a copyist who
sometimes lost track of the composition, probably because he had to translate a colored miniature into a black-and-white image.35 The identication of
the London sheet as a copy helps us to better understand its most striking ele-
ment, that is, the exact repetition of the gures of Mary and Joseph in the space
reserved for the text. If they had been drawn by the inventor of the gures, one
might expect some variations in the drapery and posture. An artist who copied
in order to practice, however, might well have repeated a model as exactly as
possible. Thus it seems plausible that the two pairs of gures were executed by
different hands,36 and that the artist responsible for drawing the border copied
the gures that another draftsman had drawn in the center of the sheet as a
model. Although the differences between the gures are minor, they do in fact
exist. Clearest might be the differently arranged beltlike strip of cloth around
Josephs waist, which is in fact the long tail the cornette of his hood: in the
model that band falling from the neck to the hip is dynamically drawn, while
it lacks an analogous tension in the border design (g. 8.7). An identication of
the two draftsmen is difcult to propose; we may only assume that the London
sheet was produced in the workshop or the circle of the Vienna Master of Mary
of Burgundy.
The Berlin Fourteen Male Heads (g. 8.10) poses different problems
when it comes to the question of attribution. There are no signs that indicate
that the sheet is a copy, and here, in contrast to the London drawing, the heads
do not appear in an identical manner in manuscript illuminations. The heads
intricate arrangement on the picture plane, the large variety of types, and the
111
Figure 8.8
Vienna Master of Mary of Burgundy or
assistant. The Holy Family at the Inn
and Annunciation to the Shepherds, in
the Voustre Demeure Hours. Madrid,
Biblioteca Nacional, Ms. Vit. 25 5,
fol. 68.
Figure 8.9
The Holy Family at the Inn (detail, g. 8.7).
112 buck
Figure 8.10
Master of the First Prayer Book of
Maximilian(?). Fourteen Male Heads.
Pen and brush and black ink heightened
with white, touched with red on gray
prepared paper, 7.4 11.1 cm
(27 8 43 8 in.). Berlin, Staatliche
Kupferstichkabinett, inv. KdZ 12512.
subtlety of the different expressions noted by Kren vividly speak for the drawings high quality. Kren suggests an attribution to the Master of the Houghton
Miniatures, whose work is characterized by crisp, precise draftsmanship.37 The
attribution is based on close parallels in type and particular facial features of
various heads on the drawing to those in several of the Houghton Masters
miniatures: similar mouths and noses, with lines that run from the nose to the
mouth, the suggestion of bags under the eyes, strong arches of the brows, and
hair drawn with individual wiry curls.
Despite these clear similarities, the proposed attribution seems problematic because of a crucial difference in modeling: the miniatures of the
Houghton Master appear to be executed in exquisitely thin layers of color and
resemble watercolors, even in places where much gray is used.38 The illuminator avoided strong, black contour lines but drew in extraordinary thin outlines.
The facial features were achieved in the same manner. The modeling was then
done with ne hatching and tiny parallel strokes. Highlighting with white,
strong daubs of white on foreheads, on the tips of noses, and so on seems to
be completely avoided. This, however, is characteristic for the Berlin heads
a good example is the bald, bearded man farthest to the right in the middle
row. Considering the heads small sizes, these daubs of white are deft and
thickly applied. This might be explained by the reduced color scheme, which
somehow forced the draftsman to work with white. There was no need to
reinforce the ne outlines of the busts and heads, however, as the draftsman
did, for example, in the case of the upper contour of the bald head referred to
above or the thick outline of the neck of the man turned to the left and placed
in the drawings center. This initial ne drawing is very similar indeed to the
drawing of the Houghton Master. The broad brushstrokes that lend the
heads their nal appearance, however, are different. To my eyes the drawing on
the Berlin sheet in its nal appearance thus has a less subtle character than that
of the miniatures.
The modeling, however, seems to be typical for some miniatures by
the Master of the First Prayer Book of Maximilian, to whom I attributed the
drawing in 2001:39 heads like those of Saints Christopher and David of Wales
113
in the London Hastings Hours from before 148340 show not only the facial
characteristics cited above as characteristic of the Houghton Masters gures
similar mouths and noses, strong arches of the brows, and beards drawn with
individual wiry curls but also the deft modeling with strong highlights and
the reinforcement of outlines. As the judgment as to which similarities outweigh
the others seems highly subjective, the attribution of the Berlin drawing is
difcult to resolve purely on the basis of stylistic arguments.
Finally, I would like to focus briey on an illumination that belongs to
the group of works that combine fully painted miniatures and drawings on a
single page. In the Hours of Engelbert of Nassau,41 the Vienna Master of Mary
of Burgundy depicted a grotesque tournament with animals ghting against
wild men, a scene with an allegorical meaning (g. 8.12).42 This scene differs
essentially from all the framed miniatures in that book, which depict biblical
scenes or saints. In the latter miniatures the illuminator created homogeneous
pictures in which the gures and their surroundings are painted in the same
manner (g. 8.11). Thus the illuminator interpreted the images as real,
authentic depictions of the story documented in the Bible. The mimetic painting that evokes gures and space denes the image clearly and thus pinpoints
the representation as the one particular view that the illuminator chose to offer.
Figure 8.11
Vienna Master of Mary of Burgundy. The
Holy Family at the Inn, in the Hours of
Engelbert of Nassau. Oxford, Bodleian
Library, Ms. Douce 219 20, fol. 115.
114 buck
The allegorical tournament scene, in contrast, is not placed in such a

setting. The gures are executed in paint, and despite being allegorical creatures, they are tangible, clearly dened gures. The setting, however, is limited
to a group of leaess trees, not painted but drawn with pen and black ink.
Because of its delicateness, this drawing mediates perfectly between the painted
gures and the at, light parchment that serves as a neutral ground.43 On a
purely aesthetic level this may explain the combination of drawing and painting. Moreover, the drawing which is not mimetic, as the forms do not appear
three-dimensional and lack the real color and material surface of trees (the
trunks are structured with tiny parallel hatches) enables the viewer to imagine the setting. The painted rooks that perch in these trees open up the possibility to interpret the trees as real. At the same time a brief look at the illumination on the adjacent page shows that birds may also sit on utterly abstract
lines that are part of the manuscript writing and thus do not represent a natural form at all.
Because of its nature, drawing, as opposed to painting, has the ability
to suggest reality without pinpointing it.44 Because of this, it is capable of mediating between the two essential parts of an illuminated manuscript: the written
text, which addresses itself to the readers mind and spirit, and painting, which
is experienced visually that is, with the eye and, particularly in the late
fteen century, aims to capture the natural world mimetically. On this intellectual level the relationship between drawing and manuscript illumination
appears to be particularly interesting.
Figure 8.12
Vienna Master of Mary of Burgundy.
Grotesque Tournament, in the Hours of
Engelbert of Nassau. Oxford, Bodleian
Library, Ms. Douce 219 20 (detail),
fol. 132 v.
115
Notes
1. The most recent introductions to early

Netherlandish drawings are Stephanie Buck,
Die niederlndischen Zeichnungen des 15.
Jahrhunderts im Berliner Kupferstichkabinett:
Kritischer Katalog (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001),
and Fritz Koreny, Early Netherlandish
Drawings from Jan van Eyck to Hieronymus
Bosch, exh. cat. (Antwerp: Rubenshuis, 2002)
(with bibliographies). See also Master
Drawings 41, no. 3 (2003), dedicated to early
Netherlandish drawings.
2. Hartmann Schedel (1440 1514) is considered as one of the earliest collectors; see
Beatrice Hernad, Die Graphiksammlung des
Humanisten Hartmann Schedel (Munich:
Prestel, 1990).
3. Koreny, Early Netherlandish Drawings, 12,
speaks of barely six hundred preserved
fteenth-century Netherlandish drawings.
4. For the relationship between drawings and
book illumination in general, see Marc W.
Evans, Medieval Drawings (London: Hamlyn,
1969); Jonathan J. G. Alexander, Medieval
Illuminators and Their Methods of Work
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992);
Christopher de Hamel, Scribes and
Illuminators (London: British Museum Press,
1992); Robert W. Scheller, Exemplum: ModelBook Drawings and the Practice of Artistic
Transmission in the Middle Ages (ca. 900
ca. 1470), trans. Michael Hoyle (Amsterdam:
Amsterdam University Press, 1995); Susie
Nash, Imitation, Invention, or Good Business
Sense? The Use of Drawings in a Group of
Fifteenth-Century French Books of Hours, in
Drawing, 14001600: Invention and
Innovation, ed. Stuart Currie (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 1998), 12 25; Eberhard Knig,
How Did Illuminators Draw? Some
Fifteenth-Century Examples, Mostly Flemish,
in Master Drawings 41, no. 3 (2003): 216 27.
5. See also Knig, How Did Illuminators
Draw? 219.
6. Alexander, Medieval Illuminators, 39.
Presumably the most intriguing example of a
book illustrated with drawings is the Utrecht
Psalter of around 820 (Utrecht, Bibliotheek
der Rijksuniversiteit, Ms. 32, Script. Eccl.
484), discussed in surveys on early medieval
drawings. See Evans, Medieval Drawings, 8;
Koert van der Horst and Jacobus H. A.
Engelbregt, Utrecht-Psalter: Vollstndige
Faksimile-Ausgabe, trans. Johannes Rathofer
(Graz: Akademische Druck- und
Verlagsanstalt, 1984).
7. Most fteenth-century Netherlandish drawings are executed with pen and ink; metalpoint is another common medium; see Buck,
Niederlndischen Zeichnungen, 37 39;
Koreny, Early Netherlandish Drawings,

10 12.
8. For examples, see M. S. Frinta,
Underdrawings in the Few Late Bohemian
Manuscript Illumination [sic], in Le Dessin
sous-jacent et la technologie dans la peinture:
Colloque X, 57 septembre 1993: Le Dessin
sous-jacent dans le processus de cration, ed.
Hlne Verougstraete and Roger van Schoute
(Louvain: Collge Erasme, 1995), 43 49;
Alexander, Medieval Illuminators, 35 51,
62 71; Knig, How Did Illuminators
Draw? g. 7, n. 21 (with a list of unnished
manuscript illuminations and bibliography).
9. One of the few campaigns devoted to the
documentation of underdrawings in manuscripts was dedicated to the Turin-Milan
Hours; see Anne H. Van Buren, James H.
Marrow, and Silvana Pettenati, Heures de
Turin-Milan, Inv. No. 47, Museo Civico dArte
Antica, Torino: Commentary (Lucerne:
Faksimile Verlag, 1996), 247 401; Anne H.
Van Buren: The First Campaign for Jean de
Berrys Book of Hours, Prayers, and Masses,
in Le Dessin sous-jacent et la technologie dans
la peinture: Colloque XII, 1113 septembre
1997: La Peinture dans les Pays-Bas au 16e
sicle, ed. Hlne Verougstraete and Roger van
Schoute (Louvain: Collge Erasme, 1999),
317 30.
10. Ms. 78.B.14; see Bodo Brinkmann, Die
Flmische Buchmalerei am Ende des
Burgunderreichs: Der Meister des Dresdener
Gebetbuchs und die Miniaturisten seiner Zeit
(Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), 3015.
11. Buck, Niederlndischen Zeichnungen,
25 29, 34 36; Koreny, Early Netherlandish
Drawings, 16 18.
12. Cennino Cennini, The Craftsmans
Handbook: The Italian Il libro dellarte,
trans. Daniel V. Thompson Jr. (1933; New
York: Dover, 1954), chap. 5.
13. Cennini, The Craftsmans Handbook, chap.
10. Thompson uses the word style for the
more usual stylus. The term clothlets is the
translation of the original Italian term pezzuole (i.e., little pieces of cloth); see Cennino
Cennini, Il libro dellarte, ed. Franco Brunello
(Vicenza: N. Pozza, 1971), 12 n. 5 with references to medieval sources such as the
Theophilus from around 950 (An Essay upon
Various Arts by Theophilus . . . called also
Rugerus, trans. Umbruch R. Hendrie [London:
John Murray, 1847]), in which the technique
is described. These pieces of cloth were soaked
with colors, which could be used by touching
the cloth with a wet brush.
14. Cennini, Craftsmans Handbook, chap. 15.
15. Brush in brown heightened with white,

on brown prepared paper, 28.4 22.2 cm
(11 1 8 8 3 4 in.), Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett,
KdZ 4290; Hein-Th. Schulze Altcappenberg,
Die italienischen Zeichnungen des 14. und 15.
Jahrhunderts im Berliner Kupferstichkabinett:
Kritischer Katalog (Berlin: G & H Verlag,
1995), no. 61.
16. Schulze Altcappenberg (Die italienischen
Zeichnungen, no. 80) suggests a date of
around 1408/14.
17. Schulze Altcappenberg, Die italienischen
Zeichnungen, no. 81, 42.
18. Metalpoint on boxwood, ca. 13 7 cm;
New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, M. 346
and 346a: Scheller, Exemplum, no. 19,
218 25; Philippe Lorentz, Les carnets de
dessins, laboratoires de la cration artistique, in Paris 1400: Les Arts sous Charles
VI, exh. cat. (Paris: Fayard; Runion des
muses nationaux, 2004), 304 6. The book
was executed in a rst campaign in France
around the middle of the fourteenth century
and in a second campaign around 1385 1400.
For early modelbooks see also Ulrike Jenni,
The Phenomena of Change in the
Modelbook Tradition around 1400, in
Drawings Dened, ed. Konrad Oberhuber
(New York, 1987), 35 47.
19. Scheller, Exemplum, no. 21, 233 40;
Ulrike Jenni (Das Skizzenbuch des Jaques
Daliwe: Kommentar zur Faksimileausgabe des
Liber picturatus A 74 der Deutschen
Staatsbibliothek Berlin/DDR [Leipzig: VCH,
1987], 6) dates the drawings between 1400
and 1420, as Scheller does.
20. Silverpoint, pen, and brush, touches of red
and heightened with white on green tinted
paper, glued on maplewood, 9.5 9 cm
(33 4 31 2 in.); Vienna, Kunsthistorisches
Museum, inv. 5003, 5004; Scheller
(Exemplum, no. 20, 226 32) dates it around
1400 1410.
21. The Travels of Sir John Mandeville: A
Manuscript in the British Library, introduction by Josef Krsa, trans. Peter Kussi (New
York: G. Braziller, 1983), esp. 26 30 (technique and style).
22. Marta Renger, The Wiesbaden
Drawings, in Master Drawings 25, no. 4
(1987): 390 410; Maurits Smeyers, LArt de
la miniature amande du VIII e au XVI e sicle,
trans. Monique Verboomen (Tournai:
Renaissance du livre, 1998), 178, 209.
23. Renger, Wiesbaden Drawings, 391.
The reuse and reinterpretation of the drawings sometimes involved only the addition of
text and a decorative frame to the existing
drawing.
116
buck
24. Virgin: 14 7.2 cm (51 2 2 7 8 in.);

Melchior: 14 7.1 cm (51 2 23 4 in.);
Balthasar: 12.8 8.4 cm (5 31 4 in.);
Kaspar: 13.6 6.5 cm (53 8 21 2 in.).
Renger, Wiesbaden Drawings, no. 10,
400 401; Smeyers, Art de la miniature
amande, 209, color ill. 46.
25. Rengers attribution shall not be discussed
here.
26. During this campaign not only were existing drawings retouched but new illustrations
were also drawn directly onto the manuscript
pages; see Renger, Wiesbaden Drawings,
nos. 2737, 405 10.
27. For examples of grisaille miniatures, see
Pierre Cockshaw, Miniatures en grisaille:
Bibliothque Royale Albert 1er (Brussels:
Bibliothque Royale Albert 1 er, 1986). For
the phenomenon discussed here, see also
Stephanie Buck, The Impact of Hugo
van der Goes as a Draftsman, in Master
Drawings 41, no. 3 (2003): 23335.
28. Thomas Kren, in Thomas Kren and Scot
Getty Museum, 2003), no. 21, 146 47, 524.
29. Buck, Niederlndischen Zeichnungen,
no. i.21, 159 63; Kren, in Kren and
no. 35, 178, 525.
30. A. E. Popham, Catalogue of Drawings by
Dutch and Flemish Artists Preserved in the
Department of Prints and Drawings in the
British Museum, vol. 5 (London: British
Museum, 1932), no. 13, 65 66, pl. xxiii;
Otto Pcht, The Master of Mary of Burgundy
(London: Faber & Faber, 1948), 70, no. 25,
pl. 29a; G. I. Lieftinck, Boekverluchters uit
de omgeving van Maria van Bourgondi,
c. 1475c. 1485 (Brussels: Paleis der
Academin, 1969), g. 132; Anne H. Van
Buren, Master of Mary of Burgundy, in
Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner (New York:
Grove, 1996), vol. 20, 727.
31. Today the oeuvre of the Master of Mary
of Burgundy has been divided into several
groups. Some of the most inventive miniatures
are to be found in the Hours of Mary of
Burgundy in Vienna (sterreichische
Nationalbibliothek, Ms. 1857). Their illuminator is now called the Vienna Master of
Mary of Burgundy; see Kren, in Kren and
126 27, no. 19.
32. Madrid, Biblioteca nacional, Ms. Vit.
25 5, fol. 68; Kren, in Kren and McKendrick,
Illuminating the Renaissance, 142 46, no. 20,
g. 50.
33. For the Mayer van den Bergh Breviary, see

Maurits Smeyers and Jan van der Stock, eds.,
Flemish Illuminated Manuscripts, 14751550,
exh. cat. (Ghent: Ludion Press, 1997), 80 81;
Brigitte Dekeyzer, in Kren and McKendrick,
Illuminating the Renaissance, 324 29, 528,
no. 92; for the book of hours from the workshop of the Master of James IV of Scotland,
Chatsworth, Duke of Devonshire, fol. 39, see
Kren, in Kren and McKendrick, Illuminating
the Renaissance, no. 128, g. 51.
34. For a discussion of his oeuvre and the history of attribution, see Anne H. Van Buren,
The Master of Mary of Burgundy and His
Colleagues: The State of Research and
Questions of Method, in Zeitschrift fr
Kunstgeschichte 38 (1975): 286 309;
Eberhard Knig et al., Das Berliner
Stundenbuch der Maria von Burgund und
Kaiser Maximilians: Handschrift 78 B 12 im
Kupferstichkabinett der Staatlichen Museen
zu Berlin Preuischer Kulturbesitz (Berlin:
Nicolai, 1998); Kren, in Kren and
126 27.
35. Kren, in Kren and McKendrick,
Illuminating the Renaissance, 147, points out
that the measurements of the Voustre Demeure
miniature are remarkably similar to those of
the drawing. This certainly argues for a very
close relationship. The drawing most probably
did not function as the preparatory drawing
for that particular miniature, however, as the
illuminator did not duplicate mistakes made
by the draftsman.
36. This was suggested to me by James
Marrow. I thank him for sharing his observations with me.
37. The eponymous manuscript is the
Emerson-White Hours in the Houghton
Library (Cambridge, Mass., Typ. 443 443.1);
Kren, in Kren and McKendrick, Illuminating
the Renaissance, 168 78, no. 32.
38. See, for example, the rocks in the Saint
Anthony miniature in the Emerson-White
Hours (120, g. 32a, detail).
39. See Buck, Niederlndischen Zeichnungen,
no. i.21, with illustrations from the Master
of the First Prayer Book of Maximilian. For
that master, see Kren and McKendrick,
Illuminating the Renaissance, 190 98,
305 8, 316 29, no. 41.
40. London, British Library, Add. Ms. 54782,
fol. 48 v; Kren, in Kren and McKendrick,
Illuminating the Renaissance, no. 41. For an
illustration of the Saint Christopher and Saint
David of Wales miniatures, see Janet
Backhouse, The Hastings Hours (London:
British Library, 1996), 6, frontispiece. For
a bare face, see Saint Jerome on fol. 278 v

(Backhouse, The Hastings Hours, 62).
41. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Mss. Douce
219 20; Kren and McKendrick, Illuminating
the Renaissance, no. 18.
42. For an interpretation, see Master of Mary
of Burgundy: A Book of Hours for Engelbert
of Nassau, Oxford, Bodleian Library, introduction and legends by Jonathan
J. G. Alexander (New York: G. Braziller,
1970), 18 20.
43. Alexander (Master of Mary of Burgundy,
19), refers to much earlier Anglo-Saxon and
Byzantine psalters in which the actors are
portrayed on the blank space of the margins
with no setting, and to the tradition of the
gothic marginal drollery starting in the early
thirteenth century.
44. By combining painting and drawing, the
Vienna Master of Mary of Burgundy seems to
have realized this. This view seems plausible,
as the illuminators fundamental reection on
the reality levels of the main miniatures, the
border decoration, and the book as a physical
object is manifest throughout the manuscript;
see Alexander, in Book of Hours for Engelbert
of Nassau, 14 18. As the trees are drawn in
dark ink, it seems uncertain whether the illuminator or the scribe, Nicolas Spierinc, was
responsible for them. That problem does not
touch upon the core of the question discussed
here, however, and thus shall be excluded.
chapter 9
Flemish Illuminated Manuscripts: Assessing Archival Evidence
Jan Van der Stock
At the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth

century the production of prestigious manuscripts was a highly complex business. We know that several illuminators would work together on one manuscript, either simultaneously or in consecutive stages, for the production of
important manuscripts was an exceedingly capital- and labor-intensive enterprise. Moreover, only a limited number of specialized craftsmen were employed
in this niche industry, and there was room for no more than a handful of top
illuminators. Unquestionably this necessitated an ingenious division of labor
and a prudent spreading of the risks. Unfortunately the actual technicalities of
such cooperation and collaboration remain a mystery. The archives are silent
on the matter. How the actual collaboration and specic labor relations worked
remains unclear.
This article is organized around a compelling series of archival examples that are either being published here for the rst time or being remarked
upon for the rst time. They offer us insights into the character of collaboration
in manuscript production, the organization of production, the oftencontroversial scholarly practice of localization, and professional relationships.
They encourage us to think harder about the subtle nature of collaboration
within artistic production, the complexity of the organization of production,
the mobility required in executing commissions for princely patrons, and the
inevitable reality of conict among members of the book trade.
S e a rc h i n g for H a n d s
We know, in fact, very little about the actual circumstances in which

works of art came into being. We know even less about the exact working relationships and ambitions of the various producers. Art historians gladly make it
a lifetimes work to classify and identify individual hands on the basis of stylistic or technical differences. Nonetheless, in a letter to Emperor Maximilian,
dated October 27, 1512, the Antwerp block cutter Joost de Negker set out precisely how he intended to organize his collaboration with two other artists in
order to accomplish a joint project. He guaranteed the emperor that he would
personally oversee the project. He would give the instructions and prepare
everything meticulously. Moreover, de Negker emphasized that he himself
would complete everything and would add the nishing touch, so that, he
stressed, it would seem as if the work was realized by one and the same hand
and nobody would be able to distinguish several hands.1 Thus, the three artists
agreed to work in a single style under the supervision of one contractor, in such
118 van der stock
a way that nobody could spot the differences. In other words, if someone actually did detect a difference, the agreement would have been breached. Who are
we then, ve hundred years later, to make it the ultimate goal of our research
to try to isolate individual hands? Is it impossible or useless to try to distinguish
different artists? Not at all, but the quest for the hands becomes truly engrossing only if it can lead to a general picture: who worked with whom, when, how
often, and, in the rst place, why? Put another way, it becomes interesting only
if our goal is the clarication of the global picture of the actual organization
of production.
S e a rc h i n g for Wo r k s h o p s
When it comes to the matter of the workshop, we are often presented with a picture of the master who, along with his pupils or less skilled
assistants, accepted and executed a commission. This image is apparently
conrmed by the letter from De Negker quoted above. But there is much more
to it than that. Because of the very high level of specialization and the substantial risk-bearing capital involved, it is possible to compare the manuscript
workshop with other highly specialized production centers, such as the
workshops where altarpieces were made. In the latter case too we can speak
of a highly complex labor organization, but in this instance we have a multitude of archival documents. If we take it as our basic assumption that the working methods in various types of artists workshops were similar, a whole string
of much more complex collaborations become conceivable.2
Between 1475 and 1530 certain members of the Antwerp Guild of
Saint Luke acted as contractors and intermediaries between customers and
manufacturers. Digne Zierix, a fascinating woman of the late fteenth century,
was in charge of a studio in which a fellow or unfree master (also called a
knape) looked after the execution of the commissions. Another guild member,
Dierick Proudekin who was, in my view, one of the greatest contractors of
sculpture of that time managed an exceptionally complex workshop that
maintained relations with commercial contacts all over Europe. Proudekin no
longer saw the workshop as the workplace in which he supervised a group of
different artists. His company instead embodied a form of cooperation based
on service agreements that did not necessarily entail a xed location or permanency. Here Proudekin serves as a model of a kind of decentralized but
integrated production. This type of craftsman tended to run a larger, not necessarily permanent workshop within a town or a region. In certain cases an ad
hoc atelier might even be put together.3 The contractor was likely to control
several stages of the art production: the need for joinery, carving, and painting
was an invitation to the vertical integration of successive processes. The integration did not need to take place under the craftsmans own roof. But said craftsman could control the other processes very carefully, letting out to others the
work that was not his own specialty; indeed, his role was comparable to that of
a producer (or, in the case of books, a publisher). The system of subcontracting allowed the coordination of the manufacturing of export goods and made
an increase in scale feasible; after all, with a credit loan a number of producers
were made dependent, and the producer could then tie several smaller workshops into one hierarchical network. Thus, they created what we could term
a scattered manufacture: a combination of decentralized production and
chapter 9: assessing archival evidence
centralized management. In any case, I have not found a single document that
suggests that this form of organization of production would have been inimical
to the guild spirit.4
That the operating procedure by which a certain master functioned
as contractor for the job and as leader of a exible studio, thus acting the part
of publisher, was also applied by producers of manuscripts is important to
my argument. The late fteenth century saw the emergence of booksellers
(librariers), bookbinders, and scribes who took on the role of merchandisers,
acting as middlemen between patrons and scribes, illuminators and bookbinders, receiving commissions for manuscripts and then dealing with a variety
of collaborators in order to piece together the nished product. Several documents show that the Antwerp bookbinder Goswin Bernardus, member of the
Guild of Saint Luke in 1492/1493, operated as a kind of contractor and as an
intermediary among writers, illuminators, and the customer. In a number of
cases he was closely associated with orders from Averbode Abbey to unspecied
Antwerp illuminators.5 He also performed a similar function for the chapter of
the Antwerp Church of Our Lady. In 1512 /1513 the Brethren of the Common
Life in Brussels were requested to write a missal. In the course of 1513/1514 the
job was completed.6 When it came to the illumination of the manuscript,
Bernardus was called on. The accounts indicate that he acted as gobetween and coordinator and that it was not he himself who created the illuminations. The phrases int besteden,7 voer den verlichtere,8 inden naem
vanden verlichtere,9 and te doen verlichten10 make this clear. The manuscript, which has been lost, must have been of some importance, for the payments run from Christmas 1512 to Christmas 1516.11
In none of the cases that I have studied did the guild act as a selfsupporting and self-controlled system aimed at preservation of the status quo.
The guild system did not stand in the way of a exible operating method and a
complex organization of production. The corporatism of the guild by no means
thwarted a concentration of production in the form of networks of small-scale
workshops under a central, exible coordinator. It did not hinder the expansion of subcontracting at all: many corporate statutes and regulations passed
over the phenomenon in silence, and some even clearly consented to it.
T h e S c h o l a r ly P r a c t i c e o f L o c a l i z a t i o n
a n d t h e E v i d e n c e fo r M o b i l i t y
Other documents point to the enormous mobility of artists within the

Low Countries to mobility on even a European scale. In August 1490 the
king of Portugals factor, Rodriques Fernandes, engaged several Antwerp
artists, cooks, and pastry cooks (div[er]se personen van schilders, coken en
pasteibakkers). They were told they would be paid for the journey to and from
Portugal and would enter the service of Crown Prince Afonso, King Joao II of
Portugals son, who was about to marry Isabella, daughter of the Catholic
Monarchs of Spain.12 They were likewise informed that three of the painters
(drie vanden schilders) so clearly there were more than three would also
receive remuneration in Portugal. The three were mentioned by name: the
Antwerp painter and scribe Jan Casus; the painter Jacob van Lathem, who was
the son of the illuminator Lieven van Lathem, became a member of the Antwerp
Guild of Saint Lukes only in 1493/94, and was later court painter to Philip the
119
120 van der stock
Fair and Charles V; and lastly the otherwise unknown Willem de Hollander (it
is tempting to see him as related to the younger Antonio Hollanda).13 Another
document reveals the names of the pastry cooks: Guillaume Le Fran and Steven
Janss.14 Some eighteen months later Jan Casus was back in Antwerp, where he
summoned the king of Portugals factor before the courts because the agreements had not been fullled. The illuminator Lieven van Lathem, who was
around fty-four years old at that time (out omtrent liiii jaer), appeared as
a witness in the case.15 This is not the place to go into every aspect of this fascinating group of documents.16 It is certainly surprising, however, that at the
end of the fteenth century, Antwerp artists and pastry cooks were sent to
Portugal, probably by ship, to carry out a limited commission connected with
the marriage of the kings son. What did they take with them? Raw materials
or half-nished products? How did they get on with one another? Were they
members of an ad hoc atelier, or was each of these artists and artisans
engaged individually? And what did they actually produce when they got there?
These are questions that cannot be answered at present. We know, of course,
that in the fteenth century many artists were mobile and established themselves elsewhere, but archival evidence that they traveled to the other side of
the Continent to undertake a limited commission for a local customer is
extremely rare.
Conflict (and Collaboration?)
There are, of course, the regulations of the various guilds that brought
together the makers of illuminated manuscripts, yet these reveal only a small
part of the story.17 And there are also accounts and some contracts. But these
documents too do not reveal what actually went on. This is why legal practice
could become a fundamental resource. A number of problems arise here as well,
however. The relative vagueness of the guilds regulations and the considerable
nancial value of illuminated manuscripts must have led to not a few misunderstandings and heated debates between the makers of manuscripts themselves
and between makers and customers or patrons. But because these conicts had
rst to be dealt with by the guilds, only a limited number of documented quarrels have been preserved. The guilds ofcers usually settled disputes among
craftsmen, between masters and servants, or between masters and apprentices.
Only when the parties could not be reconciled or when the dispute crossed the
boundaries of the guild or the city, was the municipal magistrate called upon
the scene. Moreover, when dissension arose between members of the guild and
their clientele, the magistrate sometimes referred the complaint back to the
guilds jurisdiction. Like other artisans organizations, the Guilds of Saint
Luke and in Bruges the Confraternity (Ghilde) of Saint John the Evangelist,
founded by the book artisans occupied a semiautonomous position with
regard to the issuing of rules and the arbitration of disputes. The problem is further compounded by the fact that justice was usually dispensed verbally. Often
only the verdict itself was recorded in writing, and sometimes not even that. So
the grounds on which particular decisions were based have usually been lost.
Occasionally an interim judgment has survived, but these are generally so
abridged that their context remains shrouded in mystery.18
In this respect, I have found new evidence in the National Archives in
Brussels (Brussels Algemeen Rijksarchief) to indicate that the book business in
chapter 9: assessing archival evidence
the late fteenth and early sixteenth century was in any case not always a model
of cozy comradeship. In 1492 /1493 the archives mention a certain Simon the
Illuminator (Simon de Verlichtere), who was ned in Antwerp for trying to
stab another illuminator with a dagger.19 This could not have been Simon
Bening, for he was only ten years old at the time. In the same year Damian the
bookbinder was convicted for coming to blows with an illuminator by the
name of Godevaard (Godevaerde den colurier).20 And in December 1492
Gheraert Leeu, the rst Antwerp book printer, was murdered by the punch
maker Hendrick van Symmen, who gave master Gerard a slight stab in the
head (die meester Geraert een klein steekje in zijn hoofd gaf).21 As is typically the case, we have no idea of the circumstances of these disputes, though
the archives contain sundry examples of these particularly aggressive forms of
collaboration. These shocking events remind us that ordinary human passions, undoubtedly including jealousies and rivalries, also informed, either
directly or indirectly, the creation of artistic books from this era.
In my view these diverse examples from the archives should encourage
us to approach matters of connoisseurship, the role of patronage, the nature of
production, and the character of book producers a bit differently and in a more
nuanced light. They constitute invaluable evidence that deserves to inform our
analyses of book production more fully than it has up until now.
121
122
van der stock
Notes
1. So will ich daran und darob sein, den

zwaien formschneidern alle sachen frordnen,
beraiten und zuletst mit meiner aigen hand
aus- und abfertigen und rain machen, damit
die arbait und stuckwerk alle ainander des
schnitz gleich und zuletst von ainer hand
ausgemacht werden auch niemand mer dann
ain hand daran erkennen muge (Adolf Buff,
ed., Rechnungsauszge, Urkunden und
Urkundenregesten aus dem Augsburger
Stadtarchive: Erster Theil [von 1442 1519],
Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen
des Allerhchsten Kaiserhauses 13 [1892]:
xvii).
2. Jan Van der Stock, Beeld in veelvoud te
Antwerpen (15de eeuw1585): Produktie
controle consumptie: Vijf perspectieven, met
speciale aandacht voor houtsnede en kopergravure (Ph.D. diss., Katholieke Universiteit
Leuven, 1995), 304 420 (Als een meester
schuldig is te doene: Hirarchie en traditie in
de organisatie van het Antwerpse beeldbedrijf
[1480 1530]). For a summary of a part of
this study, see Van der Stock, De organisatie
van het beeldsnijders- en schildersatelier te
Antwerpen: Documenten, 1480 1530, in
Antwerpse retabels, 15de16de eeuw, exh.
cat., ed. H. Nieuwdorp, vol. 2, Essays
(Antwerp: Museum voor Religieuze Kunst,
1993), 47 53. See also Richard H. Rouse and
Mary A. Rouse, Manuscripts and Their
H. Miller, 2000).
3. As by the sculptor Cornelis de Gheet, for
instance, who in 1502 hired ve or six
gesellen consteneers to produce new choir
stalls for the charterhouse at Kiel in Antwerp.
Whether these specialized fellows were independent masters working as subcontractors or
unfree masters cant be established from the
documents. See Stadsarchief Antwerpen,
Schepenregisters 120, fols. 140 v 141 v. For
detailed analyses of these kinds of documents,
see Van der Stock, Beeld in veelvoud te
Antwerpen, 310 18.
4. Compare with C. Lis and H. Soly,
Corporatisme, onderaanneming en loonarbeid: Flexibilisering en deregulering van de
arbeidsmarkt in Westeuropese steden (veertiendeachttiende eeuw), Tijdschrift voor
sociale geschiedenis 20 (1994): 388.
5. Maurits Smeyers, De liturgische handschriften der Abdij van Averbode: Een bijdrage
tot de studie van de laat-middeleeuwse
miniatuurkunst, Arca Lovaniensis 2 (1973):
91131.
6. Item betaelt eenen broeder van Bruesele
die een missael doet scriven voer den hooghen
koor op rekeningheii pond x sc[elling]. . . .
// Item betaelt den broeder van Bruesel op
rekeninge daermen dmissael vanden hoogen
choor scryft viii pond viii sc[elling] ix

d[eniers] (Antwerp, Cathedral Archives,
Archieven van het Onze-Lieve-Vrouw Kapittel
te Antwerpen [1124 1801], Rekeningen van
de Kerkfabriek, no. 12, accounts for
Christmas 1512 Christmas 1513, fols. 24, 26;
Item betaelt den fraters van Bruessel die dat
nieu missael onderhanden hebben ende scriven
voir den hooghen choor dat noch niet gelevert
en is op rekeninghe iii pond x sc[elling] ix
d[eniers] (ibid., accounts from Christmas
1513Christmas 1514, fol. 26 v).
7. Item betaelt den selven [=Goswin
Bernardus] van dat hy verleyt heeft int besteden vanden missale dienende inden hooghen
choor om dat te verlichten viii sc[elling]
(ibid., accounts from Christmas
1513 Christmas 1514, fol. 27).
8. Item noch Goesen den boecbyndere voer
den verlichtere vanden voirs[creven] missale
inde choor dienende xxiii sc[elling]. . . .
Item betaelt den selven [=Goswin Bernardus]
voir den verlichtere van allen den letteren te
stofferene inden voirs[chreven] missale
dienende inden hooghen choor xxviii
sc[elling] (ibid.).
9. Item betaelt noch Goessen den boecbyndere inden naem vanden verlichtere die dat
cruys gemaect heeft voer tcanon in dat
voirs[creven] missael op rekeninge xxxv
sc[elling] (ibid.).
10. Item betaelt Goessen den boeckbyndere
voir synen arbeyt dat hy der kercken
behulpich geweest is om dit missael te doen
verlichtenxvi sc[elling] vi d[eniers] (ibid.,
fol. 27 v).
11. Item betaelt Goessen de boecbyndere van
dat cruys te stofferene int missael voir tcanon
inden hoogen choor xv sc[elling] (ibid.,
fol. 27; that this illumination was not made by
Goswin is clear from note 9 above); Item
betaelt Goessen den boecbyndere de reste aengaende den verlichten vanden missale inden
hoogen chooriii pond gr[ooten] (ibid.).
In 1514 /1515 he received a further 31 shillings
vanden nieuwen missale te binden, te vergulden en[de] diverse sollicitacien die hy
gehadt heeft int maken ende scrivenen vanden
selven missale (ibid., accounts for Christmas
1514 Christmas 1515, fol. 25 v ). In the
accounts of 1515/16 there were two other
payments in connection with the manuscript:
Item betaelt Jacop Vermylen[?] goutsmit
van twee silveren slooten aent nieu missael
wegende xii onchen ii 1 2 Inglen, elc onse
xxxi sc. f[aci]t iiii pond xiiii sc[elling].
Item betaelt den selven voir dat fatsoen vanden
voors[creven] slooten xviii sc[elling] (ibid.,
accounts for Christmas 1515 Christmas 1516,
fol. 21 v).
12. Antwerp, Stadsarchief, Vierschaar 1231
(Vonnisboek 1488 1494), fol. 154, and
Antwerp, Stadsarchief, Certicatieboeken 2

(1488 1494), fol. 103v.
13. Cornelis de Hollandere was a scribe in
Antwerp. It is not clear whether they were
related to each other. See Antwerp,
Stadsarchief, Schepenregisters 95, fol. 192 v
(1479); Schepenregisters 97, fol. 199 v (1491);
Schepenregisters 100, fol. 232 v (1491);
Schepenregisters 105, fol. 196; and
Schepenregisters 108, fol. 208. Cornelis de
Hollandere was inscribed into the Antwerp
Guild of Saint Luke in 1492/93.
14. Antwerp, Stadsarchief, Vierschaar 1231
(Vonnisboek 1488 1494), fol. 152v (January
13, 1492 [n.s.]).
15. This means he was born in 1438 or thereabouts.
16. See also J. A. Goris, tude sur les colonies
marchandes mridionales (portugais, espagnols, italiens) Anvers de 1488 1567
(Louvain: Librairie Universitaire, Uystpruyst,
1925), 281; L. Van Puyvelde, Les primitives
portugais et la peinture amande, in XVI
Congrs International dhistoire de lart:
Rapports et communications, vol. 1 (Lisbon,
1949), 32; Luis Reis-Santos, Obras primas da
pintura amenga dos sculos XV e XVI en
Portugal (Lisbon, 1953), 41; E. Duverger,
Miscellanea, Gentse bijdragen tot de kunstgeschiedenis en de oudheidkunde 31 (1996):
291ff.
17. The documents concerning the Bruges
Confraternity of Saint John have not yet
been properly published, let alone studied.
At present IlluminareCentre for the Study
of the Illuminated Manuscript (Katholieke
Universiteit Leuven) is preparing a complete
study of these archival materials. See also
P. Valvekens, Het ambachtswezen en de
socio-economische aspecten van de boekverluchting in de Nederlanden, hoofdzakelijk
tijdens de tweede helft der vijftiende eeuw,
in Ontsluiting van middeleeuwse handschriften in de Nederlanden: Verslag van
studiedagen gehouden te Nijmegen, 3031
maart 1984, ed. A. J. Geurts (Nijmegen: Alfa,
1987), 207 14, and E. Cornelis, De kunstenaar in het laat-middeleeuwse Gent, pts. 1
and 2 Handelingen der maatschappij voor
geschiedenis en oudheidkunde te Gent, n.s.,
41 (1987): 97 128; n.s., 42 (1988): 95 138.
18. See Van der Stock, Beeld in veelvoud te
Antwerpen, 19 20.
19. Van Symon de Verlichtere van dat hy
gesteken heft eenen ande[re]n verlichte[re]
sond[er] te rakenxx sc[elling] gr. (Brussels,
Algemeen Rijksarchief [Archives Gnrales
du Royaume], Rekenkamers [Chambres des
comptes], no. 12904, fol. 174 [1493]).
20. Ibid., fol. 267 v.
21. Charles Ruelens, La Mort de Grard
Leeu, Annales du bibliophile belge et hollandais 1 (1864 66): 5 7.
Part 3: i n d i v i d u a l i l l u m i n at o r s
chapter 10
The Master of Fitzwilliam 268:

New Discoveries and New and Revisited Hypotheses
G re go r y T. C l a r k
In essays published in 1992 and 1997, Bodo Brinkmann

ascribed miniatures in seven manuscriptsthree books of hours and four secular codices to a very distinctive associate of the Master of the Dresden
Prayer Book whom Brinkmann named after a book of hours, Ms. 268, in the
Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.1 As Brinkmann demonstrated, in two of
those seven codices the Master of Fitzwilliam 268 collaborated with the presumed Simon Marmion and with Willem Vrelant as well as with the Master of
the Dresden Prayer Book. All four of the secular manuscripts that Brinkmann
attributed entirely or in part to the Fitzwilliam Master are dated or datable.
One of the four, a collection of works by Virgil now at Holkham Hall in
Leicestershire, was written in March of 1473. The other three, all copies of the
ordinances of Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, must have been made
between 1473, when the ordinances were issued, and 1477, the year of the
dukes death.
Four of Brinkmanns seven codices were included in the exhibition
Europe in 2003.2 The four were the eponymous manuscript (no. 52); the
Holkham Hall Virgil (no. 118); the Ordinances of Charles the Bold in the
British Library, London (no. 64); and the book of hours in the Victoria and
Albert Museum, London, known from its last private owner as the Salting
Hours (no. 53). In the accompanying catalogue, Scot McKendrick seconded
Brinkmanns ascriptions to the Fitzwilliam Master. Thomas Kren also added
to the Fitzwilliam Masters oeuvre one of the ve manuscripts that Brinkmann
had situated in the circle of the artist, a copy of Petrus Crescentiuss Livre des
profts ruraux in the Morgan Library in New York (no. 65).3 Kren dated the
Morgan book around 1470.
Whereas Brinkmann had placed the Salting Hours between about
1475 and 1480, Kren moved it back to between around 1470 and 1475, and
McKendrick dated Fitzwilliam 268 to about 1475. McKendrick also believed
that the London Ordinances should be identied with the copy made for
Charles the Bold himself for which Philippe de Mazerolles, resident of Bruges
and court painter and valet de chambre to the duke from 1467, was paid in
August of 1475. As he still ascribed the frontispiece of the London Ordinances
to the Fitzwilliam Master, however, it is clear that McKendrick agreed with
catalogue cocontributor Catherine Reynolds that payments do not prove
authorship, only responsibility.4
124 clark
Although the present writer seconds the ascriptions of Kren and

McKendrick to the Fitzwilliam Master, at least three questions about the artist still remain unanswered. First, can the painters style be shown to have
developed over time and, if so, over the course of how many years? Second,
can we better establish the connections among the Fitzwilliam Master, his
collaborators, and the artists in his circle? Finally, can we pinpoint more precisely the nature of the relationship between the Fitzwilliam Master and
Philippe de Mazerolles?
In an effort both to address these questions and to enlarge our picture
of the artist and his achievements, I would like here to look closely at two
books of hours by the Fitzwilliam Master that were not known to Brinkmann
together with the eponymous manuscript and the Salting Hours. The more
sumptuous of the two new horae, attributed to the painter by McKendrick in
an endnote in Illuminating the Renaissance, is in the Museu Calouste
Gulbenkian in Lisbon.5 The more modest of the two, brought to my attention
by Anne-Marie Legar, was auctioned in Paris by the expert Christian
Galantaris in 2003; it was purchased by the antiquarian bookseller Heribert
Tenschert of Ramsen, Switzerland.6
As I believe that the Salting Hours predates Fitzwilliam 268, I will
begin my consideration of the Fitzwilliam Masters development with the former codex.7 Twelve of the eighteen original miniatures in the Salting Hours
survive.8 Nine of the twelve are the work of the presumed Simon Marmion, two
are by the Fitzwilliam Master, and one is in the style of Willem Vrelant.9
Figures by the Fitzwilliam Master, the Vrelant hand, and the Dresden Prayer
Book Master also embellish the paired borders that surround both the illuminations and the text blocks on the facing rectos.
Figure 10.1
Master of Fitzwilliam 268. Herdsmen
Tityrus and Meliboeus in a Landscape,
in Virgil, Eclogae, Georgica, and Aeneid.
Wells-next-to-the-Sea, Holkham Hall,
Earl of Leicester, Ms. 311, fol. 9.
chapter 10: the master of fitzwilliam 268
One of the two miniatures by the Fitzwilliam Master in the Salting

Hours, the Annunciation to the Shepherds (g. 10.2), invites comparison with
the same painters depiction of the herdsmen Tityrus and Meliboeus in the
Virgil of 1473 (see g. 10.1). The roughhewn male gures are characteristically
small and spry, with rather overlarge heads and ushed cheeks. Knobby knees
pull at leggings, and prominent heels and protruding ankles stretch leather
boots, the toes of which are sharply pointed. The foregrounds of both illuminations are littered with scatterings of stones; cityscapes can just be seen over rises
in the distance.
The Salting Presentation in the Temple takes place under an eyecatching gilded canopy composed of numerous Gothic pendentive arches
(g. 10.3). Equally striking here is the inclusion of a black man just behind the
high priest. The handmaiden with the taper and basket of doves is typical of the
Fitzwilliam Masters more rened characters. While the womans cheeks, like
those of the coarser men, are visibly rouged, her facial features are more delicately rendered. Her eyes, nose, and mouth are also set closer together to allow
for a larger, more domed forehead, and her chin is brought to a marked point
at the bottom of her wedge-shaped head.
The style of the miniatures in the Tenschert Hours resembles that of
the two Salting miniatures by the Fitzwilliam Master but is drier and slightly
less developed.10 Thirteen of the original fteen full-page miniatures survive; all
are by the Fitzwilliam Master. While the gures in the Tenschert Annunciation
125
Figure 10.2
Master of Fitzwilliam 268. Annunciation
to the Shepherds, in the Salting Hours.
London, Victoria and Albert Museum,
l.2384 1910 (Salting Ms. 1221),
fol. 85 v.
Figure 10.3
Master of Fitzwilliam 268. Presentation
in the Temple, in the Salting Hours.
London, Victoria and Albert Museum,
l.2384 1910 (Salting Ms. 1221),
fol. 97 v.
126 clark
Figure 10.4
to the Shepherds, in a book of hours.
Ramsen, Antiquariat Heribert Tenschert,
fol. 49 v.
Figure 10.5
Master of Fitzwilliam 268. Presentation
in the Temple, in a book of hours.
Ramsen, Antiquariat Heribert Tenschert,
fol. 59 v.
to the Shepherds (g. 10.4) appear to be the work of the same artist who produced the Salting miniature of the same subject (see g. 10.2), this and the other
twelve Tenschert miniatures are less richly detailed than the two by the
Fitzwilliam Master in the Salting manuscript. Gold highlighting is used more
stingily on the Tenschert townscapes and greenery, stones are scattered less
generously in the landscapes, and most of the physiognomies in the thirteen
miniatures are less markedly angular. This last tendency is especially apparent
when one compares the Virgin in the Tenschert Presentation in the Temple
(g. 10.5) with the handmaiden in the Salting Presentation (g. 10.3). And
while the chalice-shaped altars in both miniatures are strikingly similar, the
gilded architectural superstructure in the Tenschert Presentation lacks the
numerous pendentives that enliven the Salting overhang.
If the Tenschert miniatures seem less mature than those in the Salting
Hours, the illuminations by the Fitzwilliam Master in the Gulbenkian Hours
are more than the equal of those in the Salting manuscript (gs. 10.6 10.8).11
The Gulbenkian Hours was originally decorated with nineteen full-page miniatures and twenty-four small calendar illustrations. Of the eleven full-page
miniatures that remain, one is by the Dresden Prayer Book Master, four are by
the Fitzwilliam Master, and six are by the Vrelant hand who illustrated the calendar.12 Each of the three painters was also responsible for the gures in the
paired borders that enclosed his miniatures and the facing text blocks.
At the opening of the Hours of the Virgin at Matins, the Fitzwilliam
Master has included the patroness in the outer corners at the bottom of the two
facing borders, a detail not seen on any pages in the Tenschert or Salting Hours.
On the verso, beneath the Annunciation (g. 10.8), she reads an opened book
of hours, which competes with a little dog for space on her lap; on the recto,
she has closed the book on her lap and looks down at her pet, who now jumps
up against her legs.
127
Figure 10.6
Master of Fitzwilliam 268. Penitent Saint
Jerome in a Landscape, in a book of hours.
Lisbon, Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Ms.
LA 144, fol. 126 v.
Figure 10.7
Master of Fitzwilliam 268. Trinity
Enthroned, in a book of hours. Lisbon,
Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Ms. LA 144,
fol. 158 v.
Figure 10.8
Master of Fitzwilliam 268. Annunciation,
in a book of hours. Lisbon, Museu
Calouste Gulbenkian, Ms. LA 144,
fol. 180 v.
128 clark
The patroness appears in the same location on ve other miniature

pages in the Gulbenkian manuscript. To the left of the Trinity (g. 10.7), the
Fitzwilliam Master used the design employed for the patroness next to the
Annunciation; only the angle of her head and the positions of her forearms have
been changed. On the page with the Penitent Saint Jerome in a Landscape
(g. 10.6), the sleeping dog has been removed to a fold of its mistresss dress
to the right of her lap. For the depictions of the patroness next to The
Coronation of the Virgin (fol. 15 v) and The Raising of Lazarus (fol. 52v), the
two responsible artists the Vrelant painter and Dresden Prayer Book Master,
respectively employed the design pressed into service by the Fitzwilliam
Master for his page with the Trinity. In contrast, the Vrelant hand used the
model employed by the Fitzwilliam Master to the left of Saint Jerome (g. 10.6)
for his representation of the patroness on the page with The Martyrdom of
Saint Catherine (fol. 147 v).
These seven renditions of the books original owner strongly recall the
gure painted by the Vienna Master of Mary of Burgundy in the border on folio
14v of the celebrated Hours of Mary of Burgundy in the sterreichische
Nationalbibliothek.13 The seven Gulbenkian gures are especially remarkable
in that no other copies or reections of the Vienna patroness are known to me
to exist. Not one of the seven Gulbenkian gures exactly matches the Vienna
owner, however: did the three Gulbenkian artists employ other, related designs
by the Vienna Mary of Burgundy Master, or vice versa?
The four miniatures by the Fitzwilliam Master in the Gulbenkian
Hours are more lavishly detailed and rened than any we have considered thus
far. For example, the citadels in the middle grounds beyond the Tenschert,
Holkham Hall, and Salting herdsmen (gs. 10.1, 10.4, 10.2) seem rather modest when compared with the elaborately spired one behind the Gulbenkian
Saint Jerome (g. 10.6). A scattering of structures and outcrops further enlivens
the Lisbon backdrop. The six gilded pendentive arches above the Salting
Presentation (g. 10.3) are no match for the nine that overhang the Gulbenkian
Trinity (g. 10.7). Finer bosses and a crowning thicket of nials further enrich
the Gulbenkian canopy. The appropriately tripartite Flamboyant Gothic screen
behind the three Gulbenkian gures also provides a more lavish complement to
the superstructure than the sculpted Moses and two leaded-glass panes in the
Salting illumination. Finally, no interior in the Tenschert or Salting Hours is as
luxurious as the vaulted chapel in which the Gulbenkian Annunciation takes
place (g. 10.8).
In Illuminating the Renaissance, McKendrick notes the Fitzwilliam
Masters debt to Lieven van Lathem.14 To introduce the Gulbenkian suffrage to
Michael (fol. 119 v), the artist rendered the archangel vanquishing the devil
even as that demon and his fellow rebel angels fall from heaven and sink into
the sea. This iconography for Michael had already been used by Van Lathem
around 1470, when he completed the prayer book for Charles the Bold now in
the Getty Museum.15 But while Van Lathem circumscribed his body of water
with rocky outcrops and a far shore, the lake or sea that swallows up the much
larger swarm of rebel angels in the Fitzwilliam Masters rendition stretches all
the way to the horizon.
129
Figure 10.9
Lieven van Lathem. Trinity Enthroned,
in the Prayer Book of Charles the Bold.
Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum,
Ms. 37, fol. 14.
The Fitzwilliam Masters debt to Van Lathem is also evident from the
Gulbenkian Trinity (g. 10.7). That miniatures iconography is unusual in that
it shows Christ as the Man of Sorrows supported by an elderly God the Father
wearing a papal tiara and the Holy Ghost in the form of a winged gure rather
than a dove. Once again, the Fitzwilliam Master exploited an iconographic
formula employed by Van Lathem for the Prayer Book of Charles the Bold
(g. 10.9). Because the Holy Ghost in both miniatures is unbearded, that character appears to be younger than God the Father and Christ. As a consequence,
the Getty and Gulbenkian gures also represent the Three Ages of Man. Youth,
embodied by God the Holy Spirit, occupies the sinister side from the perspective of the gures within the two miniatures; middle age, represented by God
the Son, is at the center; and maturity, embodied by God the Father, takes the
place of honor on the dexter side.
Turning to Fitzwilliam 268 itself, we nd the Fitzwilliam Master collaborating with only one other painter, an artist working in the style of Vrelant,
whose contribution was conned to the twenty-four calendar illustrations.16
Fifteen of the eighteen original full-page miniatures are still in situ. The setting
130 clark
Figure 10.10
Master of Fitzwilliam 268. Annunciation,
in a book of hours. Cambridge,
Fitzwilliam Museum, Ms. 268, fol. 13 v.
of the Fitzwilliam 268 Annunciation (g. 10.10) shares many points of similarity with that in the Gulbenkian Hours (g. 10.8), even to such details as the
uted central column between the gures and the double-headed eagle on the
vase of lilies in the immediate foreground. But while the opened rear door in
the Gulbenkian structure reveals a shallow, uninhabited courtyard, the same
embrasure in the Fitzwilliam image lets onto a deeper enclosure with a standing male gure.
A comparison between the Penitent Saint Jeromes in the two books
(gs. 10.6, 10.12) demonstrates how the greater width of the Fitzwilliam illuminations allowed the artist to space his shrubbery, crags, habitations, and
other props farther apart. When compared with the unprecedented panorama
in which the Fitzwilliam Annunciation to the Shepherds is set (g. 10.11), the
landscape settings in the Holkham Hall, Tenschert, Salting, and Gulbenkian
codices (gs. 10.1, 10.4, 10.2, 10.6, respectively) no longer seem especially
expansive. There are also no analogs in those four manuscripts for the tiny
gures that pepper the middle grounds of the Fitzwilliam Annunciation to the
Shepherds and of ve other miniatures in the same codex.17
If the Tenschert, Salting, Gulbenkian, and Fitzwilliam Hours were all

indeed partly or entirely illuminated by the same artist, they suggest both that
the Fitzwilliam Masters style matured over time and that dates for that development can be proposed. Given the close resemblance between the Salting
Annunciation to the Shepherds (g. 10.2) and the depiction of the two herdsmen in the Virgil written in 1473 (g. 10.1), a manufacture between about 1470
and 1475 for the Salting codex seems most likely.
If that dating is correct, then the slightly less mature Tenschert Hours
should be situated toward 1470 (gs. 10.4, 10.5), and the more mature
Gulbenkian Hours around 1475 (gs. 10.6 10.8). A date around 1475 for
the Gulbenkian manuscript is further supported by the resemblance between
the patronesses in seven of its borders and the same gure on folio 14v of the
Vienna Hours of Mary of Burgundy, a book that Kren and McKendrick situated between about 1470 and 1475. Given this, a manufacture between about
1475 and 1480 for the more expansive Fitzwilliam Hours would seem most
likely (gs. 10.10 10.12).18
These proposed dates are supported by the border styles in the
Tenschert, Salting, Gulbenkian, and Fitzwilliam codices. All four were decorated in a manner that was routine for Bruges and Ghent horae of the 1470s
and 1480s.19 The full-page miniatures always appear on the versos of leaves
with blank rectos.20 Both the illuminations and the text blocks on the facing
rectos are enclosed by matching oral borders.
131
Figure 10.11
to the Shepherds, in a book of hours.
Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum,
Ms. 268, fol. 40 v.
Figure 10.12
Master of Fitzwilliam 268. Penitent Saint
Jerome in a Landscape, in a book of
hours. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum,
Ms. 268, fol. 143 v.
132 clark
In fourteen of the fteen illustrated Tenschert openings, the border

ora and fauna were painted onto the traditional bare parchment; there are
colored grounds in just the rst opening, that for the Hours of the Virgin at
Matins. In contrast, the marginal decoration was set against colored grounds in
fteen of the eighteen Salting openings; bare vellum appears only in the three
that introduce the Salva sancta facies, the Mass of the Virgin, and the Ofce of
the Virgin at Advent. The border ora and fauna in all nineteen Gulbenkian
openings and in sixteen of the eighteen Fitzwilliam openings are painted on
colored grounds; there are bare-parchment borders in just the openings at the
Hours of the Cross and Seven Penitential Psalms in the latter manuscript. As
bare-vellum oral borders fell out of fashion in the early 1480s, a date toward
or after 1485 for the Fitzwilliam Hours seems unlikely.21
My proposed chronology for the four books of hours with miniatures
by the Fitzwilliam Master thus suggests that the artist was active from about
1470 to about 1480. I have also shown that the Fitzwilliam Master collaborated
at least twice with the Dresden Prayer Book Master and fully three times with
artists working in the style of Willem Vrelant. Can more be said now about the
working relationship between the Fitzwilliam Master and his collaborators?
In 1997 I speculated that the uneven quality of the illuminations of the
1460s and 1470s in the style of Willem Vrelant might be the consequence of
Vrelants having transformed himself by about 1460 into a middleman, or
libraire, who sometimes subcontracted the painting of miniatures to others
adept at approximating his trademark style.22 Vrelant would have paid the
subcontractors individually for their efforts, assembled their contributions, and
then marketed the nished volumes. Thus we might surmise that he oversaw the
production of the Salting Hours, Gulbenkian Hours, and Fitzwilliam 268.23
It is also possible, however, that the Master of Fitzwilliam 268 orchestrated the manufacture of those three books. The payment of 1475 for the
aforementioned Ordinances of Charles the Bold makes it clear that Philippe de
Mazerolles played the role of libraire on at least one occasion.24 Did Mazerolles
oversee the making of more manuscripts in the style of the Fitzwilliam Master
than just the three surviving Ordinances? We know that Mazerolles joined the
Bruges illuminators guild in 1469 and died in 1479.25 The established dates for
the Holkham Hall Virgil and the London Ordinances and the proposed dates
for the four Bruges books of hours ascribed here to the Fitzwilliam Master
dovetail nicely with the documentary record for Mazerolles. Given the evidence, I believe that Mazerolles was both a libraire and an illuminator, and that
he and the Fitzwilliam Master are one and the same.
While I have admittedly raised as many questions here as I have
answered, I believe that I can state with condence that many of the manuscripts produced in Bruges in the 1470s are the products of a complex system
of manufacture that has yet to be fully understood. If I seem to stress commerce
as much as connoisseurship, this should be considered a compliment, for the
making of art is as much a business as it is a calling, and the artisans of 1470s
Bruges were clearly and admirably adept at both.
133
Notes
1. Bodo Brinkmann, The Contribution of

Simon Marmion to Books of Hours from
Ghent and Bruges, in Margaret of York,
Simon Marmion, and the Visions of Tondal,
ed. Thomas Kren (Malibu, Calif.: J. Paul Getty
Museum, 1992), 184 86, 192 n. 17, g. 145;
Brinkmann, Die Flmische Buchmalerei am
Ende des Burgunderreichs: Der Meister des
Dresdener Gebetbuchs und die Miniaturisten
seiner Zeit (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997),
164 69, 27174, text gs. 46 49, 76.
2. Thomas Kren and Scot McKendrick,
2003).
3. For the ve codices that Brinkmann placed
in the circle of the Fitzwilliam Master, see
Brinkmann, Contribution of Simon
Marmion, 192 n. 17, and Brinkmann,
Flmische Buchmalerei, 168 69 nn. 66 69.
Renaissance, 21.
5. Ms. LA 144; Kren and McKendrick,
Illuminating the Renaissance, 218 n. 15.
6. For a physical description of the Tenschert
book of hours, see Prcieux manuscrits et
livres XV eXX e sicles, sale cat., piasa
(Picard Audap Solanet Velliet), Htel DrouotRichelieu, Paris, March 12, 2003, 24 27,
lot 56, with six illustrations. A monograph
on the manuscript by Mara Hofmann and
Ina Nettekoven (Philippe de Mazerolles: Ein
unbekanntes Stundenbuch aus Brgge)
appeared in 2004 (after this paper was submitted for publication), published by Heribert
Tenschert as his catalogue 51 and as number 5
in his Illuminationen series.
7. For the texts and miniatures in the Salting
Hours, see Kren and McKendrick,
Illuminating the Renaissance, 220 21, with
references to earlier literature. Like those in
the Tenschert and Gulbenkian Hours and in
Fitzwilliam 268, the Hours of the Virgin and
Ofce of the Dead in the Salting manuscript
are written for the universal use of Rome.
The Salting calendar does contain two redletter feasts for Bruges, however, those of
Donatian on October 14 and of Basil the
Great on June 14.
8. Although now inserted in front of the
Ofce of the Dead, Marmions Last Judgment
(fol. 152 v) most likely was originally positioned before the Hours of the Holy Spirit,
that is, between folios 26 and 27. While it is
true that The Last Judgment does not usually
introduce those hours, the subject does involve
the weighing of souls and thus is a perfectly
appropriate introduction to that text. More

compellingly, the green-ground borders with
acanthus and gures by the Dresden Prayer
Book Master on folios 27 and 152 v perfectly
match each other, even to the trumpeting
angels on both pages.
9. Both Brinkmann (Contribution of Simon
Marmion, 185 86, and Flmische
Buchmalerei, 159 64) and Kren (Illuminating
the Renaissance, 220) also ascribe to the
Fitzwilliam Master the Hell and Paradise in
the Salting Hours (fol. 153). That painting is
not enclosed by a oral border and is as large
as the other twelve full-page Salting illuminations and their borders combined. In addition,
Hell and Paradise is the only full-page miniature in the book to appear on a recto;
Marmions Raising of Lazarus (fol. 153 v)
occupies its verso. The breadth of its infernal
and paradisiacal landscape panoramas, its
more subtly graduated atmospheric perspective, its airborne ock of birds, and its cloud
formations also separate Hell and Paradise
from the rest of the Fitzwilliam Masters
oeuvre. All of this suggests to this writer that
Hell and Paradise was painted by another
illuminator onto the blank recto of folio 153,
most likely in the early sixteenth century. It
was probably also at that time that The Last
Judgment (fol. 152 v) was relocated from its
original position between folios 26 and 27
(see note 8 above).
10. For the physical makeup of the Tenschert
Hours, see the bibliography in note 6 above.
To judge from its calendar, the Tenschert
manuscript was written to be usable by a
Netherlandish, a German, or even an Italian
client. Although the partial calendar contains
no strictly local feasts written in red, a number
of those written in black are peculiar to the
Low Countries, Germany, and Italy. Thus
there are two saints for Tournai (Eleutherius,
February 20; Donatian, October 14); two
for Utrecht (Firminus, April 6; Fausta,
September 20, also celebrated in Mainz);
four for Germany (Godehard, May 4; Ten
Thousand Martyrs, June 22; Gall, October 16,
also celebrated in Switzerland; and Victoria,
December 23, also celebrated in Utrecht and
Milan); and four feasts for Italy that range
geographically from Verona and Brescia to
Ostia (Proculus, March 23: Verona;
Philastrius, July 17: feasted in Brescia on
July 18; Aurea, August 31: octave of feast celebrated on August 24 in Ostia; and Venerius,
September 13: Palmaria, near La Spezia).
11. Save the reference in Illuminating the
Renaissance, the Gulbenkian Hours is
apparently unpublished. 274 vellum leaves

(11.7 8.3 cm); 1 column, 15 lines (5.8
4 cm); Latin, in textualis formata; 11 full-page
miniatures, 24 calendar illustrations; goldtooled red morocco with black morocco
inlays, marbled endpapers, probably nineteenth century.
While the Gulbenkian calendar suggests
only a destination in the southern
Netherlands, the indication in red of Donatian
on October 14 and of Basil the Great on
June 14 points more specically in the direction of Bruges. The calendar also contains at
least four other red-letter saints celebrated
in northern France and Flanders (Eligius,
June 25; Remigius, October 1; Bavo,
October 1; and Nicasius, December 14).
The frequent use throughout the
Gulbenkian text of the letter c with a cedilla
rather than z raises the possibility that the
books scribe was Portuguese. (Three examples
are Laarii on folio 14, eliabeth on folio 44,
and laarum on folio 70 v.)
As the only suffrage in the manuscript is to
Catherine (fols. 148 49), there is good reason
to suspect that she was the owners patron
saint, if not her namesake. In the lower margin on folio 148 are painted the unidentied
armorials of either that woman or a later
owner (gules, between two lions rampant or a
tower argent with a dome azure).
12. The four by the Fitzwilliam Master are
The Archangel Michael (fol. 119 v), Saint
Jerome (g. 10.6), The Trinity (g. 10.7), and
The Annunciation (g. 10.8). The Dresden
Prayer Book Master painted The Raising of
Lazarus (fol. 52 v); the Vrelant miniatures
are The Coronation of the Virgin (fol. 15 v),
The Last Judgment (fol. 27 v), The Virgin
among Virgins (fol. 107 v), The Martyrdom
of Catherine (fol. 147 v), The Tree of Jesse
(fol. 166 v), and The Adoration of the Magi
(fol. 229 v).
13. Ms. 1857; Kren and McKendrick,
Illuminating the Renaissance, 137 41, no. 19,
and 229, g. 65.
Renaissance, 219.
15. Ms. 37, fol. 15 v; for the Prayer Book of
Charles the Bold, see Kren and McKendrick,
Illuminating the Renaissance, 128 31, no. 16.
16. For a physical description of Fitzwilliam
268, see Francis Wormald and Phyllis M.
Giles, A Descriptive Catalogue of the
Additional Illuminated Manuscripts in the
Fitzwilliam Museum Acquired between 1895
and 1979 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1982), 211 15. The inclusion of the
134
clark
martyr Servatius in the litany and the entry in

red of Remigius and Bavo on October 1 in the
calendar suggest a southern Netherlandish
destination for the codex. If the arms of
Aragon in the window behind Saint Nicholas
(fol. 138 v) are original, then the books
Spanish or Italian commissioner was not bothered by, or perhaps did not even notice, the
presence of those three northern saints.
17. The ve other Fitzwilliam 268 landscapes
with middle-ground gures are the Visitation
(fol. 27 v), Nativity (fol. 36 v), Adoration of the
Magi (fol. 44 v), Raising of Lazarus (fol. 99 v),
and Martyrdom of Catherine (fol. 140 v).
18. I would also locate in the second half of
the 1470s a fth book of hours by the
Fitzwilliam Master, the codex identied by
Wormald and Giles (Descriptive Catalogue,
213) with seven half-page miniatures formerly
in the collection of Ren Hron de Villefosse
(present whereabouts unknown; see Ren
Hron de Villefosse, En marge dun rare livre
dheures, Connaissance des arts 87 [May
1959]: 56 59). The panoramic landscapes
behind the Villefosse David in Prayer
(Villefosse, En marge dun rare livre
dheures, p. 56) and Meeting of the Three
Living and Three Dead (Villefosse, En marge
dun rare livre dheures, p. 59) are sprinkled
with lilliputian middle-ground gures like
those in Fitzwilliam 268.
19. Brinkmann, Contribution of Simon
Marmion, 18191, and Brinkmann,
Flmische Buchmalerei, 149 201.
20. McKendrick (Illuminating the
Renaissance, 219), states that unusually for
Flemish books of hours, all the miniatures [in
Fitzwilliam 268] are painted on integral
leaves. All of the miniatures in the Cambridge
manuscript are, however, on the versos of
folios whose rectos are blank and unruled.
21. For the eclipse of the bare-vellum border
in the rst half of the 1480s, peruse Kren and
and see Gregory T. Clark, The Chronology
of the Louthe Master and His Identication
with Simon Marmion, in Kren, ed., Margaret
of York, 200, 208 n. 24.
22. Gregory T. Clark, The Hours of Isabel
la Catlica: The Facsimile Edition
Commentary (Madrid: Testimonio; Mnster:
Bibliotheca Rara, 1997), 107. For the role of
the libraire in the contemporary Parisian book
trade, see Richard H. Rouse and Mary A.
Rouse, Manuscripts and Their Makers:
Commercial Book Producers in Medieval
Paris, 12001500, 2 vols. (Turnhout: H.

Miller, 2000).
23. In this connection, it will be remembered
that the Gulbenkian and Fitzwilliam 268
calendar illustrations were both painted in the
style of Willem Vrelant. But while the two
series of twenty-four images frequently employ
the same or similar compositions, they are not
by the same painter.
Renaissance, 252.
25. For the biography of Mazerolles, see
Brinkmann, Flmische Buchmalerei, 274.
chapter 11
Marketing Books for Burghers:

Jean Markants Activity in Tournai, Lille, and Bruges
Dominique Vanwijnsberghe
Illuminating the Renaissance was in many ways a dream

exhibition. Going from vitrine to vitrine, visitors may have had a feeling of
exhilaration, as if they were hiking in high mountains. In this raried atmosphere they were fascinated by an extraordinary landscape of solitary mountain
peaks, rising from an immense sea of clouds. What happened under the white
layer, in the real world, no longer mattered, so beautiful was this sublime
vision. For many, this was a unique aesthetic and emotional experience.
The vast majority of them stopped at this point and retained the vista
as a marvelous memory. Unfortunately scholars do not proceed in this manner.
They react differently. They cannot resist lifting a corner of the veil. They want
to gaze under the clouds, to understand how the isolated mountaintops relate
to one another.
While looking at the most rened examples of Ghent-Bruges miniature
painting, we may have sensed unbridgeable gaps among these peaks and felt at
the same time that they had to be organically connected. In my view, the study
of second-tier works can help us to bridge the gaps, to reconstruct important
networks of connections among painters and painting styles, which can lead to
a better understanding of the circulation of artistic ideas among the different
illuminators and production centers of the southern Low Countries. I will illustrate this point by focusing on Jean Markant, a scribe-miniaturist active in
Tournai, Lille, and Bruges at the turn of the sixteenth century.1
T h e L e S a u v ag e H o u r s
The reconstruction of Markants oeuvre is based on a book of hours

that was kindly brought to my attention by Anne Margreet As-Vijvers. Its
whereabouts are currently unknown.2 As far as can be judged from photographs, this manuscript represents a somewhat provincial version of styles associated with Bruges and Ghent. But the pictorial expression of the cycle illustrating the Hours of the Cross is compelling: in six of the seven illustrations of
Christs Passion, the scenes spill out over the frame into the border.3 In the
miniature Christ Nailed to the Cross (g. 11.1), for example, the cross is portrayed in an emphatic diagonal that extends beyond the ctive space of the
miniature and seemingly projects into the realm of the viewer; the treatment
vividly enhances the dramatic and devotional impact of the illustration.
The manuscript contains two portraits (g. 11.2), probably those of
the original owners, painted by a different hand and added at the beginning of
the codex. The coats of arms above the sitters are those of Jean le Sauvage, lord
136 vanwijnsberghe
Figure 11.1
Jean Markant. Christ Nailed to the Cross,
in the Le Sauvage Hours. Whereabouts
unknown.
Figure 11.2
Anonymous master. Jean le Sauvage,
Lord of Escobecques, and Jacqueline de
Boulogne, Lady of Le Maisnil, Adoring
the Virgin and Child, in the Le Sauvage
Hours. Whereabouts unknown.
of Escobecques, and Jacqueline de Boulogne, lady of Le Maisnil, two prominent

citizens of the Flemish city of Lille around 1500. The sitters are presented to the
Virgin and child by their respective patrons, Saints John the Baptist and James
the Greater. Jean le Sauvage was to have an exceptionally successful career in
the service of Philip the Fair and his son, the Holy Roman emperor Charles V.
Le Sauvage was born in Lille in 1455 and received a law degree at Louvain.4 In
1503 he was appointed president of the Council of Flanders and undertook
several diplomatic missions for Philip the Fair. With Guillaume de Cro he soon
became one of the most eminent power brokers of the Hapsburg state. In 1508
he was made head of the Great Council in Malines and in 1515 great chancellor of Burgundy. The same year, he left for Spain with Charles V and died in
Saragossa in 1518.
At what stage of le Sauvages brilliant career was the manuscript
made? An original colophon furnishes us with the date of its completion and
this is quite exceptional the name of the artist who wrote and illuminated the
core of the book: Ces heures furent escriptes et illumins par moy a tous
indigne serviteur Jennin Markant, lan 1502, le premier jour de mars that is
to say, on March 1, 1503 (n.s.), the same year that le Sauvage became president
of the Council of Flanders.
chapter 11: marketing books for burghers
T h e M a r k a n t G ro u p
Thus far I have identied nine other prayer books that are related
stylistically to the Le Sauvage Hours.5 Most of them contain internal evidence
pointing to Lille as the place of their origin. Since space does not permit me to
examine the stylistic development of Jean Markant from his earliest works, such
as the Hours of Marie Mussart (g. 11.3), to those of the 1530s, such as the
Huntington Hours (gs. 11.8, 11.11), I would like instead to focus briey on one
salient aspect of his production: the use and reuse of certain compositions.
One of the most striking examples is the Mass of Saint Gregory
(gs. 11.3, 11.4), found in ve manuscripts.6 Very characteristic is the arrangement of the altar and its ornaments, with the missal on a lectern directed not
to the priest but to the reader and placed at right angles to the front part of the
altar; the agellation column with the knotted rope; and the Man of Sorrows
emerging from the tomb. The miniatures of David in prayer (gs. 11.5, 11.6) in
seven of the books of hours7 are derived from a common model, as are those of
the Annunciation8 and Saint John the Baptist.9
An analysis of details also reveals common sources: in the Brussels
Presentation (g. 11.7), for example, the twisted column supporting the central
table appears to have been painted by the same craftsman who portrayed the
Figure 11.3
Jean Markant. Mass of Saint Gregory,
in the Hours of Marie Mussart.
Whereabouts unknown (London,
Sothebys, December 1, 1987, lot 58,
fol. 23).
Figure 11.4
Jean Markant. Mass of Saint Gregory,
in the Le Sauvage Hours. Whereabouts
unknown.
137
138 vanwijnsberghe
Figure 11.5
Jean Markant. David in Prayer, in the Le
Sauvage Hours. Whereabouts unknown.
Figure 11.6
Jean Markant. David in Prayer, in a
book of hours. Baltimore, Walters Art
Museum, Ms. W. 435, fol. 107 v.
column of the falling idols in the Flight into Egypt of the Huntington (g. 11.8)
and Baltimore Hours. A comparison with the Madrid Presentation (g. 11.9)
shows how the model could be used and reinterpreted. In the Brussels Hours,
the pedestal was omitted, so that the slab of the altar and the column appear to
oat in the air. The green cloth behind the high priest, with its typical square
pattern of folds underlined in gold, appears in the Annunciation of the
Huntington Hours (fol. 31v). The concave moldings of the arches and openings
of these miniatures are also found in, among others, the Madrid hours
(gs. 11.7, 11.9).
A n I l l u m i n a t o r i n To u r n a i a n d L i l l e
The mention of the illuminators name in the Le Sauvage Hours is

exceptional and important, not only because of the rarity of this kind of information but also, and above all, because it allows us to identify Markants style
and to reconstruct the activity of a group of illuminators who worked around
him in Lille, a city that has not previously been famous for its book painters.
Archival evidence recently collected and published by Marc Gil has documented the presence of a few book illuminators in Lille at the turn of the sixteenth century,10 but until now no extant works had been connected with
named painters there.
139
Figure 11.7
Jean Markant. Presentation, in a book
of hours. Brussels, Bibliothque royale
de Belgique, Ms. II 7605, fol. 69 v.
Figure 11.8
Jean Markant. Flight into Egypt, in a
book of hours. San Marino, Calif.,
Huntington Library, Ms. 1149, fol. 72 v .
Figure 11.9
Jean Markant, Presentation, in a book
of hours. Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional,
Ms. Res. 191, fol. 61 v.
140 vanwijnsberghe
No traces of Markant had previously been found in records from

Lille,11 although he was known to have worked in the neighboring towns of
Tournai and Bruges. In 1489 he was mentioned as an apprentice of Jean
Csar,12 probably the most important Tournaisian illuminator of the last quarter of the fteenth century, who trained no fewer than ve pupils.13 Csars style
has not been identied yet, but a manuscript illuminated by Arnould le Peletier,
another of his apprentices,14 still exists: a remarkable Vie du Christ-Vengeance
de Notre-Seigneur painted in 1496.15 My hope is that the study of the sources
for both Markant and Le Peletier may eventually permit us to identify the most
prolic Tournaisian workshop of its time.
Thanks to the colophon in the Le Sauvage Hours, we can suggest that
by 1503 Markant had settled in Lille. He appears to have been resident there,
since he worked for citizens or institutions in Lille during the rst three decades
of the sixteenth century. Among his patrons were persons connected to the local
Franciscan community;16 Marie Mussart, from a well-known Lille family;17
Jeanne Martinache, prioress of the hospital at Seclin, south of Lille;18 and
Laurence Baillet, widow of Franois Van Hoyqueslot, a native of The Hague,
who became a citizen of Lille in 1532.19 From 1522 to 1531 Markant was paid
for calligraphic work for the city council in Lille.20 In 1532 34 he was still
at work for the hospital of Saint Julian in Lille, from which he received payments for calligraphy and illuminations.21 This is the last known record of his
activity. He may also have trained illuminators, such as the somewhat crude
painter of a book of hours made for a nun at the Hospice Comtesse,22 who was
clearly one of his followers.
M a r k a n t a n d t h e M a s t e r o f E d w a rd I V
As early as 1512 Markant is mentioned in the accounts of the

Confraternity of Saint John the Evangelist in Bruges as scrivere te Ryssele
(scribe in Lille).23 Markant paid his fees to the guild, not because he had moved
to Flemish Flanders, but most probably because he wanted to have access to the
ourishing Bruges market. The following year, he made a payment in kind:
Jan Marcquandt, now designated as verlichter te Rysele, heeft ghegeven
der ghilde een bardeken van verlichterien van Sint-Anne.24 He gave the guild
a panel with a miniature of Saint Anne, probably an illumination on parchment
glued to a wooden board, a type of devotional picture that was mass-produced
in Lille by 1510 and sent by the dozen in baskets as far as Paris.25
Markants enrollment in the Bruges confraternity was most probably
a way to sanction a long-lasting relationship with the Flemish city. In view of
his later achievements, it is tempting to suggest that, after an apprenticeship in
Tournai, he probably worked under the supervision of a leading Bruges illuminator. Scholars who have discussed some of the works I attribute here to
Markant among them Lilian Randall, Bodo Brinkmann, and Roger Wieck
have noted strong relationships between Markants style and compositions and
those of the Master of Edward IV.26 Randall, for example, points to striking
similarities between the Crowning of the Virgin in the Baltimore Hours and a
miniature by the Edward Master also in the Walters Art Museum.27
In this regard, I would like to stress briey the pivotal role of a book
of hours included in the Los Angeles London exhibition: the Blackburn Hours,
painted by the Master of Edward IV and datable to around 1480 90 on
stylistic grounds.28 In some of the marginal illustrations, which extend the central scenes into the realm of the viewer, we nd a direct source for Markants
impressive cycle in the Le Sauvage Hours. Some compositions reect common
sources, such as Pentecost (gs. 11.10, 11.11), which, as Scot McKendrick has
shown, is ultimately derived from a model created by the Vienna Master of
Mary of Burgundy.29 In other instances, Markant seems to have made use
of models by the Master of Edward IV, which he interpreted with his more
limited talent: the Mass of Saint Gregory might be one of these, or the very distinctive Saint John the Baptist.30
T h e M a s t e r o f E d w a rd I V i n L i l l e ?
This brings us to a hypothesis put forward by Brinkmann in his monograph on the Master of the Dresden Prayer Book.31 Could it be that, just like
the Dresden Master, the Master of Edward IV was compelled to leave Bruges
when supporters of the Hapsburgs or at least artists who had worked for the
court encountered political difculties in Flemish Flanders?32
As Brinkmann and McKendrick have noted, the 1480s saw new developments in the style and clientele of the Edward Master.33 In just this period,
he worked extensively for patrons from northern France and Hainaut, most
prominent among them Baudouin II of Lannoy and John II of Oettingen.
Baudouin had several possessions in the Tournai-Lille region (g. 11.12): he was
lord of Molenbaix and Tourcoing and governor of the bailiwick of Lille, Douai,
141
Figure 11.10
Master of Edward IV. Pentecost, in
the Blackburn Hours. Blackburn,
Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery,
Hart Ms. 20884, fol. 40 v.
Figure 11.11
Jean Markant. Pentecost, in a book of
hours. San Marino, Huntington Library,
Ms. 1149, fol. 23 v.
142 vanwijnsberghe
Tourcoing
Figure 11.12
Map of the Tournai-Lille region.
LILLE
Flobecq
Molenbaix
Lannoy
TO U R NA I
Escaubecque
Seclin
MONS
Orchies
Saint-Amand
D O UA I
Cond
VA L E NC I E N N E S
and Orchies. He owned at least six books by the Master of Edward IV.34 As
for John of Oettingen, lord of Flobecq, he was married to Isabeau de Cond
and was based in Cond, midway between Tournai, Valenciennes, and Mons.35
John certainly possessed ve books illustrated by the Edward Master.36 A
psalter made for the Abbey of Saint-Amand, south of Tournai, dates to the same
period.37 The origin of the Blackburn Hours (g. 11.10) is not known, but at
the beginning of the seventeenth century it was owned by Eugne de Noyelles,
a member of a prominent northern French family.38 Last but not least, the
Master of Edward IV was responsible for the illumination of a missal for the
Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Lille, now in Edinburgh (g. 11.13).39
Viewed together, this evidence points to a sojourn of the Master of
Edward IV in the southern part of Flanders, and Lille appears to be the most
likely center where he would have resided. Lille was at that time a Flemish city,
with privileged political and economic ties to the other towns of the county of
Flanders.40 Numerous expatriates from Lille are mentioned in the Bruges
poorterboeken (lists of new citizens).41 The Lille scribe Quentin Poulet, the
future librarian of King Henry VII, is a good case in point. When he enrolled as
an apprentice in the Confraternity of Saint John the Evangelist in Bruges in
1477,42 Poulet could count on fellow citizens and most probably relatives who
had settled in the city earlier: a Haquinet Poulet from Lille had become a
burgher in 1467,43 a Matheus and an Andries Poulet, respectively, in 146944 and
1470.45 Moreover, unlike other Flemish cities, Lille chose to remain faithful to
the Hapsburgs and was therefore a safe haven for their supporters.46
The two other cities where the Master of Edward IV might conceivably
have settled Tournai and Valenciennes were not as favorable as Lille. The
ordinances of 1480 promulgated in Tournai seem to correspond to a period of
general decline in the city, affecting also the activity of the book trade. This set
of strict rules was created primarily to protect declining mtiers and their jeopardized members.47 The document itself states that les mtiers taient fort
diminus et journellement se diminuaient en prot et en bons ouvriers, dont
les autres villes saugmentaient.48 As for Valenciennes, Simon Marmion dominated manuscript illumination in the city until his death in 1489. He established a very distinctive tradition, epitomized by his follower the Master of
Antoine Rolin,49 and it would have been difcult for any illuminator to have
escaped his inuence. The situation differed in Lille, where a local tradition
hardly existed until the 1470s.50 The miniaturists there, unlike those in Tournai
Figure 11.13
Master of Edward IV. Crucixion,
in a missal for the use of Saint Peter in
Lille. Edinburgh, University Library,
Ms. D. b. iii. ii, fol. 104 v.
or Bruges, did not submit to any regulation until 1510, which enabled them to
work without constraints.51
Whether or not the Master of Edward IV moved from Bruges to Lille,
he would not have been the rst to do so. A hitherto unremarked document
indicates that at least one other major illuminator who worked for the dukes of
Burgundy one of the most prolic of his day resided in Lille in 1483 and
1484. The city accounts of Valenciennes mention a life rent of 7 pounds paid
A Lois Liedet, enlumineur demourant a Lille, a se vie et de Huchon son
frere.52 Loyset Lidet disappeared from the accounts of the Confraternity of
Saint John in Bruges after 1479,53 not, as has been stated time and again,
because he had died,54 but rather because he chose to settle in Lille possibly,
considering contemporary political events in Flanders, in the interest of selfpreservation.
This document sheds interesting light on Huchon Lidet, who is also
mentioned in the accounts of the Bruges Confraternity from 1477 to 1484.55
He was not, as McKendrick recently suggested,56 the son of Loyset, but his
brother. It is unclear whether, by 1484, Huchon had accompanied Loyset to
Lille or whether he was still working in Bruges. Whatever the case may be, the
brothers no doubt served as important conduits between the two Flemish cities,
fostering contacts and bringing some of the artistic know-how of Bruges to
143
144 vanwijnsberghe
Lille. Huchon is rst documented in Bruges in 1477. If by 1484 he had settled

in Lille, this move to the south would correspond neatly to the route probably
followed by the Master of Edward IV. Are Huchon and the Edward Master one
and the same person? The evidence, which is as yet only circumstantial, is
weak, but I think that Huchon Lidet should be seriously considered as a possible candidate. In any case, the relationship between Loyset Lidet and the
Master of Edward IV should be explored further.57
A last observation in support of the presence of the Master of Edward
IV in Lille is the lasting inuence he had on other miniaturists active there. A
book of hours for Tournai use (g. 11.14), now preserved in the Isabella Stewart
Gardner Museum in Boston,58 appears to be one of these made in Lille manuscripts, as suggested by the type of border decoration and the generic Tournai
calendar in French. The same hand painted another hours for Tournai use, now
in the library of Tournai Cathedral.59 Both reveal the strong inuence of the
Master of Edward IV. A book of hours for Rome use in the Philadelphia Free
Library belongs to another group.60 The inuence of the Master of Edward IV
is even more evident here.
Much work still has to be done in order to distinguish among these
different hands, and the information that I briey present here is only the preliminary result of research in progress.61
Figure 11.14
Anonymous master. Pentecost, in a book
of hours. Boston, Isabella Stewart
Gardner Museum, Ms. 4, fol. 27 v.
A n o t h e r M a r ke t
Unlike the Master of Edward IV, who worked for prestigious

courtiers, Jean Markant fashioned prayer books primarily for urban patrons
a clientele of wealthy burghers in a middle-size city of about ten to twenty thousand inhabitants. His manuscripts depend strongly on artistic ideas, textual
features, and production methods practiced in Bruges, yet they are not entirely
standardized products resulting from strict divisions of labor among different
craftsmen. After all, Markant was not only a miniaturist but also sometimes
transcribed the texts he illustrated. Among these are the Le Sauvage Hours and
the various ordinances he produced for the city council of Lille.62 A codicological analysis of his works shows that he practiced what we might term a
mixed production method, which allowed him to exercise complete control
of the design and appearance of his books. He often used full-page miniatures
on separate folios inserted between quires of text, but not systematically. In
some of his books, full-page miniatures are also parts of bifolios,63 whereas in
others they alternate with half-page illustrations integrated within the text.
Even workshop models were not reproduced mechanically but were adapted, as
we have seen, very freely.
All this shows that Markant had the production of his books well
under control, practicing in some cases a form of vertical concentration.64 If
he had assistants, they must have worked in close collaboration with him. He
also sometimes sent miniatures to Bruges and perhaps even to Paris.65 This
combination of activities reects the limited size of the local market. In large
cities such as Bruges or Paris,66 book production was organized by booksellers
rather than scribes or illuminators. The fact that Markant was active both as
a scribe and an illuminator and also exported his own miniatures is typical of
a secondary center, where the scale of production was not sufcient to support
specialists who practiced only one craft; in smaller centers, craftsmen frequently had to diversify their sources of income.
Jean Markants oeuvre gives evidence of the diffusion outside Bruges
of an inuential mainstream style, centered on the anonymous Master of
Edward IV. Markants work helps us trace some of the pathways along which
artistic practices and ideas moved from one production center to another. Lille
absorbed impulses from the traditions of both Tournai and Bruges. It beneted
from its neutral status and safe position in times of political upheaval in
Flanders, as well as from the decline of its immediate neighbor and competitor,
the French city of Tournai. Lille attracted a prominent miniaturist, Loyset
Lidet, as early as 1483. Lidets presence in the city may in turn have attracted
other colleagues and stimulated a new local tradition, heavily dependent on
Bruges. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the trade in miniatures in Lille
was sufciently strong as to have provoked a conict with the painters: in 1510
they complained of unfair competition from the miniaturists and tried to compel them to join their guild if they were to continue producing illuminations
that could be used as paintings.
Pascale Charron, who published the documents related to this conict,
aptly observed that the work of these illuminators in Lille still remained to be
discovered.67 Jean Markant is one of them we may hope that others will also
be identied.
145
146
vanwijnsberghe
Notes
This study owes its completion to a leave of

absence from the Institut royal du Patrimoine
artistique and a grant from the Von Humboldt
Stiftung. I would like to record here my gratitude to the director of the Institut royal,
Myriam Serck, and to my hostess at the
Kunsthistorishes Institut of the Universitt
Heidelberg, Professor Lieselotte SaurmaJeltsch. I would also like to take the opportunity to thank all the friends and colleagues
who helped me in preparing this paper, generously sharing their time and knowledge: Anne
Margreet As-Vijvers, Franois Avril, Bernard
Bousmanne, Brigitte Dekeyzer, Jan De Vroe,
Consuelo Dutschke, Marc Gil, Jeffrey
Hamburger, Ilona Hans-Collas, Peter Kidd,
Franois Leclercq, Susan Marti, Scot
McKendrick, Ludovic Nys, Pascal Schandel,
Geert Van Bockstaele, Pieter van Hooff, Cline
Van Horenbeeck, and Lieve Watteeuw. Last
but not least, I would like to express my
gratitude to Christina Currie and Jim Marrow
for editing various drafts of this text and to
Elizabeth Moodey for taking care of the nal
polish. With his usual generosity, Jim Marrow
was kind enough to provide me with slides of
some of the manuscripts discussed here.
1. A rst biographical sketch was published in:
Dominique Vanwijnsberghe, De n or et
dazur: Les commanditaires de livres et le
mtier de lenluminure Tournai la n du
Moyen ge (XIV e XV e sicles) (Louvain:
Peeters, 2001), 301 2. A provisional handlist
of works attributed to Jean Markant includes:
(1) Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery, Ms. W. 435
(see g. 11.6); (2) Brussels, Bibliothque royale
de Belgique, Ms. II 7605 (see g. 11.7); (3)
Lille, Bibliothque municipale, Ms. A 91
(Hours of Jeanne Martinache); (4) location
unknown, Sotheby's, December 1, 1987, lot
58 (Hours of Marie Mussart; see g. 11.3);
(5) London, British Library, Harley Ms. 2923;
(6) Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, Res. 191 (the
so-called Hours of the Queen of Sweden; see
g. 11.9); (7) New York, Morgan Library, Ms.
M. 171; (8) New York, Columbia University,
Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, Western
Ms. I; (9) San Marino, Huntington Library,
Ms. 1149 (Hours of Laurence Baillet; see
gs. 11.8, 11.11); (10) location unknown, Le
Sauvage Hours (see gs. 11.1, 11.2, 11.4, 11.5).
2. In 1991 the book was owned by a Dutch
collector. It was presented by B. Van Dyck,
acting as an intermediary, to the city council
of Grammont (Geraardsbergen). See: A[lbert]
S[chrever], Koopt Geraardsbergen 16deeeuws manuscript? Het Volk, March 1, 1991.
The negotiations ultimately failed, and since
then it has not been possible to obtain information concerning the whereabouts of the
book. Cf. Geert Van Bockstaele, Het cultureel
erfgoed van de Sint-Adriaansabdij van
Geraardsbergen, 10962002 (Grammont:
Stadsbestuur, 2002), 195.
3. On the implications of this formal device,
see James H. Marrow, The Hours of Margaret
of Cleves (Lisbon: Museu Calouste
Gulbenkian, 1995), 31 37.
4. On Jean le Sauvage, see Herman Vander
Linden, Sauvage (Jean), in Biographie
nationale, vol. 21 (Brussels: . Bruylant,
1911 13), cols. 441 44; Alida J. M.
Kerckhoffs-de Heij, De Grote Raad en zijn
functionarissen, 14771531: Biograen van
de raadsheren (Amsterdam, 1980), 133 36.
5. See handlist, note 1.
6. Hours of Marie Mussart (handlist no. 4),
fol. 23; London Hours (handlist no. 5), fol.
30; Madrid Hours (handlist no. 6), fol. 152 v;
Morgan Hours (handlist no. 7), fol. 41;
Le Sauvage Hours (handlist no. 10).
7. Baltimore Hours (handlist no. 1), fol. 107 v;
Martinache Hours (handlist no. 3), fol. 88 v;
Hours of Marie Mussart (handlist no. 4), fol.
73 v; London Hours (handlist no. 5), fol. 90 v;
Madrid Hours (handlist no. 6), fol. 81 v;
Huntington Hours (handlist no. 9), fol. 103 v;
28 v; London Hours (handlist no. 5), fol. 39 v;
Madrid hours (handlist no. 6), fol. 24 v;
Morgan Hours (handlist no. 7), fol. 30 v;
Martinache Hours (handlist no. 3), fol. 33;
19v; Madrid hours (handlist no. 6), fol. 130 v;
10. Marc Gil, Le mtier de relieur Lille
(v. 1400 1550), suivi dune prosopographie
des artisans du livre lillois, Bulletin du bibliophile, no. 1 (2002): 7 46.
11. Markant is not mentioned in Gils lists (Gil,
Le mtier de relieur Lille).
12. See Vanwijnsberghe, De n or et dazur,
279 80.
13. Jean Csar, documented from 1470 to
1498, had the following pupils: Jacques Cabry
(apprentice in 1470), Simon Ore (apprentice
in 1476), Arnould le Peletier (apprentice in
1480, master in 1485), Jean Capry (apprentice
in 1483), and Jean Markant (apprentice in
1489).
14. Vanwijnsberghe, De n or et dazur,

297 98.
15. Ramegnies-Chin, Communaut des
religieuses de Saint-Andr, Ms. 096 /vit. For
the work of Le Peletier in this manuscript, see
Vanwijnsberghe, De n or et dazur, 17 18,
150, 297 98, ill. 121.
16. New York, Morgan Library, Ms. M 171.
17. London, Sothebys, December 1, 1987,
lot 58. On the Mussart family, see Paul Denis
du Page, Recueil de gnalogies lilloises
(Lille: Impr. Lefebvre-Ducrocq, 1906 8),
vol. 2, 780 800.
18. Lille, Bibliothque municipale, Ms. A 91.
On Jeanne Martinache, see Thodore
Leuridan, Histoire de Seclin, vol. 4, Histoire
de lhpital Notre-Dame (Roubaix, 1905),
54, 64.
19. San Marino, Huntington Library, Ms.
1149. On Franois Van Hoyqueslot and
Laurence Baillet, see Denis du Page, Recueil
de gnalogies lilloises, vol. 4, 1615.
20. A Johannes Markant pour avoir gross
et escript en deux grandes peaux de vellin les
ordonnances des cas privilegiez dont eschevins
congnoissent . . . iiii livres, Au dit Marliere
quil a pay a Johannes Markant pour son
sallaire davoir gross les deux tableaux des
ordonnances des services des curez de ceste
ville de Lille . . . liii sous (Lille, Archives
municipales, Registres aux comptes de lchevinage, no. 16257 [1522], fol. 81 v); Au dit
Marliere quil a pay a Johannes Marquand
escripvent pour son sallaire davoir gross en
deux peaux de vellin les ordonnances et reformacions des praticiens mises en ung tableau en
le halle . . . lx sous (ibid., no. 16258, fol. 94);
A Johannes Marcquand escripvent que
accord lui a est par eschevins pour son sallaire davoir faict et escript toutes les lettres de
lABC dor oretees dasur mises aux layes de
la nouvelle tresorerie . . . lxvi sous (ibid., no.
16265, fol. 95 v). Published by Alexandre de
La Fons-Mlicocq, Les tablettes de cire, les
jetons, les poinons, les marques, les enseignes
et les mesures des chevins et des corps de
mtiers de la ville de Lille, aux xiv e, xv e et
xvi e sicles, Bulletin du Comit de la
Langue, de lHistoire et des Arts de la France,
vol. 3, 18551856 (Paris: Imprimerie
Impriale, 1857), 637. With special thanks to
Pascal Schandel, who generously shared his
original transcriptions.
21. Lille, Archives dpartementales du Nord,
Archives hospitalires, xviii e 28, fol. 73 v.
Published by Alexandre de La Fons-Mlicocq,
Orfvres, brodeurs, architectes, tailleurs
dimages, peintres, enlumineurs, etc., des xiv e
et xv e sicles, qui ont orn et dcor les
marketing books for burghers
chapelles des hospices de Lille, Revue universelle des Arts 13 (1861): 58.
22. Cambridge, Trinity College, Ms. B. 13. ii.
See Alain Arnould, in Splendours of Flanders:
Late Medieval Art in Cambridge Collections,
exh. cat. (Cambridge: Fitzwilliam Museum,
1993), no. 24, 82 83; Vanwijnsberghe, De
n or et dazur, 19, nn. 120, 121, g. 122.
23. Louis Gilliodts-Van Severen, Loeuvre de
Jean Brito, prototypographe brugeois,
Annales de la Socit dmulation de Bruges
47 (1897): 284.
24. Gilliodts-Van Severen, Loeuvre de Jean
Brito.
25. See Pascale Charron, Les peintres, peintres verriers et enlumineurs lillois au dbut du
xvi e sicle daprs les statuts indits de leur
corporation, Revue du Nord 82 (2000: no.
37), 731 33, 738.
26. Lilian M. C. Randall, Medieval and
Renaissance Manuscripts in the Walters Art
Gallery, vol. 3, Belgium, 12501530
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press
in association with the Walters Art Gallery,
1997), 447 55; Bodo Brinkmann, Die
mische Buchmalerei am Ende des
(Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), vol. 1, 374, 397;
and Roger S. Wieck, Time Sanctied: The
Book of Hours in Medieval Art and Life (New
York: George Braziller in association with the
Walters Art Gallery, 1988), 132, 217.
27. Randall, Medieval and Renaissance
Manuscripts, 453.
28. Blackburn, Museum and Art Gallery,
Ms. Hart 20884. See Thomas Kren and Scot
Getty Museum, 2003), no. 98, 342 43.
Renaissance, no. 26, 156 57.
30. Fols. 166 and 188, respectively, in Master
of Edward IV, the Blackburn Hours (see
g. 11.10); see notes 6 and 9 above.
31. Brinkmann, Flmische Buchmalerei, 371,
374.
32. The death of Charles the Bold at Nancy on
January 5, 1477, plunged the Low Countries
into a time of turmoil. The power struggle
among the cities of Flanders, backed by
Louis XI and Maximilian of Austria, started
soon after the latters marriage to Mary of
Burgundy (April 21, 1477). The conict was
sparked by Flanderss refusal to recognize
the Hapsburg as regent of the Low Countries
after Marys death on March 27, 1482; it culminated in 1488, when the citizens of Bruges
held Maximilian prisoner within their walls,

with disastrous and bloody consequences. On
this episode, see Henri Pirenne, Histoire de
Belgique, vol. 3 (Brussels: H. Lamertin, 1907),
355.
Renaissance, 295 96, esp. n. 13.
34. Hanno Wijsman, Gebonden weelde:
Productie van gellustreerde handschriften en
adellijk boekenbezit in de Bourgondische
Nederlanden (1400 1550) (Ph.D. diss.,
Universiteit Leiden, 2003), 292.
35. See Claudine Lemaire, Les manuscrits de
Jean II, comte dOettingen ou la n dune
lgende, in Miscellanea Martin Wittek:
Album de codicologie et de palographie offert
Martin Wittek, ed. Anny Raman and Eugne
Manning (Louvain: Peeters, 1993), 243 53.
Ms. fr. 20096 97 (in two parts) and New
York, Morgan Library, Ms. M. 894 (three
parts of a Vita Christi by Ludolph of Saxony);
Geneva, Bibliothque publique et universitaire,
Ms. fr. 76 (Quintus Curtius Rufus, Livre
des Fais du grant Alexandre); Brussels,
Bibliothque royale de Belgique, Ms. 11073
(Xenophon, Cyropdie).
37. New York, Collection Scott C. Schwartz,
Ms. 24 (olim, London, Sothebys, June 24,
1986, lot 97).
38. Eugne de Noyelles was probably related
to Jean de Noyelles (d. 1580), lord of Marles
and Rossignol, a member of a prominent
Artois family. On Jean, see: Charles Piot,
Noyelles (Jean de), in Biographie nationale,
vol. 15 (Brussels: Bruylant, 1899), cols.
946 47.
39. Edinburgh, University Library, Ms. D. b.
iii. See Catherine R. Borland, A Descriptive
Catalogue of the Western Mediaeval
Manuscripts in Edinburgh University Library
(Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, 1916),
no. 52, 94 96.
40. On the history of Lille in the late Middle
Ages, see Histoire de Lille, vol. 1, Des origines
lavnement de Charles Quint, ed. Louis
Trenard and Guy Fourquin (Lille: Giard,
1969), 219 464.
41. Published by Remi A. Parmentier, Indices
op de Brugsche poorterboeken (Bruges:
Brouwer, 1938); Alfred Jamees, Brugse
poorters opgetekend uit de stadsrekeningen, 4
vols. (Handzame: Familia et Patria, 1974 90).
42. William H. J. Weale, Documents indits
sur les enlumineurs de Bruges, Le Beffroi:
Arts, hraldique, archologie 4 (1872 73):
297.
43. Parmentier, Indices, 652 53; Jamees,
Brugse poorters, vol. 2.1, 335.
147
44. Jamees, Brugse poorters, vol. 2.1, 344.

45. Parmentier, Indices, 652 53; Jamees,
Brugse poorters, vol. 2.1, 348.
46. Before the coming of the Hapsburgs, the
city had submitted to the rule of the dukes of
Burgundy. See Trenard and Fourquin, Histoire
de Lille, 222 23, 265 66.
47. Vanwijnsberghe, De n or et dazur,
114 29.
48. We see the same phenomenon later in
Tournai, among the tapestry weavers. In 1492
many withdrew to Amiens, where they were
welcomed with open arms. The magistrate
enacted regulations intended to assure tapestry
workers a monopoly in their trade. The text
explains that they ed a cause de ce quilz ne
pooient bonnement gaigner les vie deulx,
leurs femmes et enfants, de leurdit mestier
terms strangely similar to those of the ordinances of 1480. For an edition of the text, see
Alexandre Pinchart, Histoire gnrale de la
tapisserie, vol. 3, Pays-Bas (Paris, 1884), 78.
It must be noted that contemporary political
conditions were hardly favorable to Tournai.
See Gabriel Wymans, Le dclin de Tournai
au xv e sicle, Anciens pays et assembles
dtats 22 (1961): 11334.
49. Anne-Marie Legar, The Master of
Antoine Rolin: A Hainaut Illuminator
Working in the Orbit of Simon Marmion,
in Margaret of York, Simon Marmion, and
the Visions of Tondal, ed. Thomas Kren
(Malibu, Calif.: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1992),
209 22.
50. The production of paper manuscripts with
wash drawings has been studied by Pascale
Charron and Pascal Schandel; see Pascale
Charron, Le Matre du Champion des dames
(Paris: cths, 2004); Pascal Schandel, Le
Matre de Wavrin et les miniaturistes lillois
lpoque de Philippe le Bon et de Charles le
Tmraire (Ph.D. diss., Universit de
Strasbourg, 1997). For a few examples of illuminated manuscripts on parchment, see Marc
Gil, Deux nouveaux manuscrits excuts
pour Jean, btard de Wavrin, chevalier et
crivain bourguignon, et la question de
lenluminure sur parchemin Lille dans la
seconde moiti du xve sicle, Le Muse
Cond 58 (November 2001): 35 45.
51. Charron, Peintres, peintres verriers et
enlumineurs lillois.
52. Valenciennes, Archives municipales,
Comptes de la ville, CC 747, fol. 57 v. I would
like to thank most warmly my friend Ludovic
Nys for drawing my attention to this exceptional document, just a by-product of his tireless explorations in the Valenciennes archives.
53. For the last mention in 1479, see Weale,
Documents indits, 301.
148
vanwijnsberghe
54. Alexandre Pinchart seems to have been

the rst to propose this idea, cautiously, in
Miniaturistes, enlumineurs et calligraphes
employs par Philippe le Bon et Charles le
Tmraire et leurs oeuvres, Bulletin des
Commissions royales dart et darchologie 4
(1865): 481. Since then, most authors have
treated the hypothesis as an established fact.
55. Weale, Documents indits, 292 (1477),
297 (1478), 299 (1479), 302 (1480), 306
(1482), 308 (1483), 310 (1484).
Renaissance, 230.
57. See Hanno Wijsman, William Lord
Hastings, Les faits de Jacques de Lalaing et le
Matre aux inscriptions blanches: propos du
manuscript franais 16830 de la Bibliothque
nationale de France, in Als ich can": Liber
Amicorum in Memory of Professor Dr.
Maurits Smeyers, ed. Bert Cardon, Jan Van der
Stock, and Dominique Vanwijnsberghe
(Louvain: Peeters, 2002), 165155. This
continuity between the production of Loyset
Lidet and the followers of the Master of
Edward IV can perhaps be explained in part
by a shared artistic base, in this case Bruges.
It is interesting to note that the Master of
Edward IV and a colleague completed a
Speculum humanae salvationis that had been
begun near the middle of the century by Jean
le Tavernier (Paris, Bibliothque nationale de
France, Ms. fr. 6275), a task that, for the
livres non parfaits of the ducal library,
usually fell to Lidet.
58. Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum,
Ms. 4. I would like to thank Jeffrey
Hamburger for sending me slides of this
manuscript.
59. Tournai, Bibliothque de la Cathdrale,
Ms. A 19; reproduced in Vanwijnsberghe, De
n or et dazur, 428, g. 119 (erroneously
referred to as Ms. A 20).
60. Philadelphia, Free Library, John Frederick
Lewis Collection, Ms. 108; reproduced in
James R. Tanis and Jennifer A. Thompson,
eds., Leaves of Gold: Manuscript Illumination
from Philadelphia Collections, exh. cat.
(Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art,
2001), 111 12, no. 35.
61. Another Lille group can be reconstructed
around the Claremont Hours (Claremont,
Calif., School of Theology, Ms. I [hours for
Tournai use with original binding by Robiers
Plourins]). It includes Arras, Bibliothque
municipale, Ms. 540 (hours for Amiens use,
only the pasted miniatures on fols. 33, 56, 56 v,
74 v, 106, 106 v, 110 v , 130 v are by the
Claremont Master); Brighton, Jubilee Library,
inv. no. R61718 (hours for Tournai use, kindly brought to my attention by Jim Marrow);
Fcamp, Muse Bndictine, without shelfmark; Lille, Bibliothque municipale, Ms. 705
(missal for the use of the Abbey of Loos);
Trogen, Kantonsbibliothek, Cod. Membr. 264
(hours for Tournai use, with thanks to Susan
Marti for providing me with digital photographs); New York, Grolier Club, Ms. 9
(hours for Tournai use, with thanks to Jim
Marrow for providing me with slides). This
last book has the Claremont borders, which
are characteristic of other Lille hours produced for the Hospice Comtesse: Lille,
Bibliothque municipale, Ms. 96 and Ms. 111
(original Plourins binding). Other Lille manuscripts with an original Plourins binding
include two books of hours for Tournai use:
Douai, Bibliothque municipale, Mss. 185,
189 (owned in the sixteenth century by a certain Louise Baillet demourant au marchi de
poisson a Lille), as well as two hours illuminated around 1890 by the so-called Spanish
forger (Les Enluminures, Catalogue 9: Books
of Hours, no. 11, 66 69; Livres anciens,
manuscrits et livres dheures, sale, Drouot
Richelieu, Paris, February 27, 2003, lot 347).
62. See note 20.
63. In the Baltimore Hours, for example,
only six out of the twelve full-page miniatures
are inserted. See Randall, Medieval and
Renaissance Manuscripts, 447.
64. Vertical concentration, an economic concept, occurs when a company is responsible
for most of the stages of production along
with distribution. This corresponds more or
less with L. M. J. Delaisss concept of atelier or ofcine.
65. See note 25.
66. On the role of the Bruges librariers, see
Maurits Smeyers and Bert Cardon,
Merktekens in de Brugse miniatuurkunst,
in Merken opmerken: Typologie en methode,
ed. Christine Van Vlierden et Maurits Smeyers
(Louvain: Peeters, 1990), 45 70. On book
production in Paris, see Richard H. Rouse
and Mary A. Rouse, Manuscripts and Their
H. Miller, 2000).
67. See note 25.
c h a p t e r 12
Iconographic Originality in the Oeuvre

of the Master of the David Scenes
E l i z a b e t h M o rr i s o n
Beginning in the last quarter of the fifteenth century,

the explosion of demand for Flemish paintings and manuscripts throughout
Europe produced endless opportunities for narrative and compositional creativity among Flemish artists. A number of these artists turned for inspiration to
the dramatic possibilities inherent in Old Testament stories, such as Bernard
van Orley in his famous Job Altarpiece (Brussels, Muse dArt ancien). In the
realm of manuscripts, the Master of James IV of Scotland and his pupils were
among the most active in incorporating Old Testament iconography into their
works. Typological pairings abound in the works of the Master of James IV,1
and one of his pupils, the Master of the Soane Hours, included two entire suites
of illuminations drawn largely from the Old Testament in a single manuscript.2
It is, however, another of the Master of James IVs students, the Master of the
David Scenes, who exhibited the greatest penchant for Old Testament subject
matter, a quality that sets him apart from his contemporaries and lends his
work much of its special appeal. Indeed the artists very name, which reads
in full the Master of the David Scenes in the Grimani Breviary, is based on a
series of unusual miniatures concerning King David in one of the most admired
of all Flemish manuscripts. Over the course of a career that probably spanned
the thirty years from around 1490 to 1520, the Master of the David Scenes
demonstrated an increasing interest in rarely depicted stories from the Old
Testament and the Golden Legend. An examination of a series of books from
the height of the artists career that contain some of the most original imagery
found in Flemish devotional manuscripts of the period makes it clear that the
Master of the David Scenes found his niche in creating illustrations for elaborate narratives with few if any manuscript precedents in terms of subject matter or composition.
In the early part of his career, the Master of the David Scenes was associated with a workshop that specialized in very small prayer books whose
imagery was drawn almost entirely from a series of patterns.3 In general, these
pattern-based miniatures are characterized by small, undistinctive gures and
generic backgrounds. The manuscript that stands out from all the workshop
productions of these early years is the Hours of Joanna of Castile (London,
British Library, Add. Ms. 18852). Although the artist, perhaps assisted by
workshop members, relied on previously used models for a number of the
miniatures, the manuscript also contains some unusual iconography that hints
at the future direction of his work. A full-page miniature of the Temptation of
150 morrison
Figure 12.1
Master of the David Scenes in the
Grimani Breviary. Adam and Eve;
Speculum Consciencie, in the Hours of
Joanna of Castile. London, British
Library, Add. Ms. 18852, fols. 14 v 15.
Adam and Eve is surrounded by a border into which the artist has cleverly
incorporated a version of the Expulsion.4 The page faces a smaller miniature
depicting the rare subject of the speculum consciencie, portrayed as a skull
reected in a mirror (g. 12.1). As James H. Marrow has noted, this remarkable miniature depicts the reection in the mirror from the standpoint of the
viewer, forcing the young Joanna to contemplate her own mortality.5 The facing miniatures acted as a reminder to Joanna that sin was inherited by all
humankind from Adam and Eve and that only constant vigilance and resistance
of temptation would prepare her soul for her inevitable demise. The images
appropriately introduce a list of the Ten Commandments, those basic laws that
Joanna was enjoined to follow to evade sin. Although the Fall of Adam and Eve
is based on a pattern seen elsewhere in the artists work,6 it is used here in a
highly original way and demonstrates the artists emerging interest in Old
Testament subjects.
While the Hours of Joanna of Castile contains some iconographically
unusual miniatures, I would consider the so-called Brukenthal Breviary from
the middle part of the Master of the David Sceness career as a turning point.7
The manuscript belongs to the Brukenthal Museum in Sibiu, Romania, and
although it has long been known as the Brukenthal Breviary, it is really a lavish book of hours.8 This little-known manuscript provides important evidence
of the artists penchant for rare Old Testament stories. The full-page miniature
chapter 12: iconographic originality in the master of the david scenes
that introduces vespers of the Hours of the Virgin faces a three-quarter-page

illustration of the Massacre of the Innocents. It shows a little-known story from
1 Samuel 22, the slaying of the priests of Nob (g. 12.2). The priests were ruthlessly murdered by order of Saul, who was punishing the servants of the Lord
for having helped David. Saul appears at the right, personally overseeing the
slayings, while the distant background shows the beginning of the story, with
David running for protection to the Shrine of Nob. Although this appropriate
Old Testament event appears as a typological pairing with the Massacre of
the Innocents in the Biblia Pauperum,9 neither the type nor the antitype was
included in the Speculum humanae salvationis, a more common source for
typological imagery in fteenth- and sixteenth-century Flanders.10 The scene is
rarely represented in manuscript illumination.11
Several other unusual Old Testament types are also found in the
Brukenthal cycle, such as the Annunciation to Abraham and Sarah, which is
paired with the Annunciation to the Virgin, and the story of Esau and Jacob,
paired with the Flight into Egypt.12 The consistency of the cycle13 and the fact
that the New Testament scenes are often by a different artist suggest that the
Master of the David Scenes had a personal interest in Old Testament iconography. He apparently recognized the obscurity of some of the scenes because
titles were included beneath the Old Testament types along with citations of
the biblical chapters and verses from which they are derived. Such uncommon
Old Testament imagery would play an increasingly important role in the
artists work.
Figure 12.2
Grimani Breviary. The Slaying of the
Priests of Nob, in the Brukenthal
Breviary. Sibiu, Romania, Museu
Brukenthal, Ms. 761, p. 316.
151
152 morrison
Figure 12.3
Grimani Breviary. Saint Andrew and border with Scenes from the Life of Andrew,
in a book of hours. Oxford, Bodleian
Library, Ms. Douce 112, fol. 152.
Figure 12.4
Grimani Breviary. The Ark of the
Covenant, in a book of hours. Oxford,
Bodleian Library, Ms. Douce 112, fol. 51.
We may trace this development in three devotional manuscripts from

the height of the painters career: a book of hours (Oxford, Bodleian Library,
Ms. Douce 112), the Grimani Breviary (Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana,
Ms. Lat. I 99), and a prayer book (Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek, Gl. Kgl.
Saml. 1605 40). A number of suffrages in the Bodleian manuscript are illustrated with borders that take their imagery from rarely depicted events from the
Golden Legend.14 The border accompanying the suffrage for Saint Andrew
(g. 12.3) shows the little-known story of a bishop who venerated Saint
Andrew above all others.15 Because the devils envy was aroused by such devotion, he took the form of a beautiful woman to deceive the bishop. While the
two were at dinner, a pilgrim came to the door to beg entrance. Through a
series of questions, the pilgrim revealed the true nature of the beautiful woman,
whereupon she disappeared. The pilgrim was, of course, Saint Andrew, who is
shown twice in the border wearing the same garb as in the miniature. The
womans real identity is suggested by the serpentine tail that peeks out beneath
her skirt under the table; except for her costume, she is completely transformed
as she ies away. The border image is not derived from familiar events of Saint
Andrews life but was instead taken directly from the text of the Golden
Legend. This unusual visual narrative not only imparted a clear moral message
but also encouraged the viewer to consider the saints life anew.
For the Hours of the Virgin in the Bodleian manuscript, the Master of
the David Scenes returned to Old Testament sources for his imagery. Although
all of the full-page miniatures of the Hours of the Virgin are missing, the facing
three-quarter-page miniatures and accompanying historiated borders are still
extant.16 The opening for the beginning of Lauds depicts the rarely illustrated
event from 2 Samuel 6 of King Davids servants placing the Ark of the Covenant
temporarily in the house of Obededom (g. 12.4). The upper part of the surrounding border shows Zacharius receiving word from an angel that his aged
wife Elizabeth would give birth to John the Baptist, and the lower part shows
the birth of the Baptist. The facing full-page miniature would have presumably
depicted the Visitation.17 According to the Golden Legend, the Virgin Mary
had stayed with Elizabeth for the three months from the Visitation until the
birth of John the Baptist.18 In like manner, the Bible recounts that the ark had
been safely stored in the home of Obededom for three months before its
removal to Jerusalem. Since this story would probably have been unfamiliar to
readers in the context of a book of hours, the Master of the David Scenes again
supplied the biblical book and chapter beneath the image. This typological
pairing appears neither in the Biblia pauperum nor in the Speculum humanae
salvationis and is extremely rare in manuscript illumination; I have yet to nd
another example in the work of any other artist of the period.19
The manuscript from around 1515 20 known as the Grimani
Breviary, to which the artist owes his name, is considered by many as the greatest Flemish manuscript of the sixteenth century. Its ambitious program of
illumination, consisting of almost one hundred miniatures, is a result of contributions by some of the leading artists of the day, including the Master of James
IV of Scotland, Gerard David, the Maximilian Master, and Simon Bening. The
very fact that the Master of the David Scenes was asked to participate in the
illumination of the manuscript indicates the high regard in which his work must
have been held at this time. The manuscript is of such complexity and the problems of attribution are so manifold that the miniatures are usually discussed
individually rather than in the context of their place within the program of illumination of the manuscript.20 The unusual iconography of the psalter illustrations by the Master of the David Scenes has never been treated systematically.21
The artist supplied a full-page miniature for each of the rst psalms commencing matins for each day of the week (psalms 1, 26, 38, 68, 80, 97), with an additional miniature to open the psalter as a whole.22 Each full-page miniature is on
a verso, with the recto blank, and faces a folio with a full border.23 The miniatures t into a cohesive, if not readily familiar, pattern. The Master of the David
Scenes could have drawn on a traditional psalter program of iconography, but
instead the illuminations are based on a psalter commentary written by
Nicholas of Lyra (1270 1349) and related to a program of miniatures in the
Pembroke Psalter-Hours, made in Flanders around 1465 70.24
In a recent article on the Pembroke Psalter-Hours, Marrow notes that
its cycle of psalter illustrations was drawn from the accompanying tituli, written in red before each psalm. He posits that the tituli are based either directly
or indirectly on Nicholas of Lyras fourteenth-century psalter commentary.25 In
comparing the unusual full-page subjects of the Pembroke Psalter-Hours with
those in the Grimani Breviary, it is evident that the two series are related in subject matter and, in some cases, also compositionally. Psalm 97 in the Grimani
153
154 morrison
Figure 12.5
Grimani Breviary. Advent, in the Grimani
Breviary. Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale
Marciana, Ms. Lat. I 99, fol. 357 v.
Figure 12.6
Grimani Breviary. Advent, in the
Pembroke Psalter-Hours. Philadelphia
Museum of Art, inv. no. 45-65-2,
fol. 171 v.
Breviary is illustrated with a miniature of David and a group of others looking

to a half-length gure of God above, with a cave containing naked gures to the
right (g. 12.5). The composition of the miniature introducing the same psalm
in the Pembroke Psalter-Hours is closely related (g. 12.6). The subject of both
illustrations is Advent, based on the titulus in the Pembroke Psalter-Hours,
Psalmus David de adventus Christi primo in iuditio.26 In several other
casesincluding the miniatures introducing psalms 26, 68, and 80 the subjects and compositions of the two manuscripts also align.27 What is remarkable
about the Grimani Breviary is that it contains no tituli that could have suggested the subjects to the Master of the David Scenes.28 Furthermore, the
Master of the David Scenes could not have personally known the Pembroke
Psalter-Hours, for not only was it illuminated at a signicantly earlier date but
also, by 1515, the book had likely already been in England for nearly fty
years.29 The probable conclusion is that there was an independent and rarely
depicted cycle of illustrations based on Nicholass text in Flemish psalter illumination, transmitted most likely through workshop drawings.30 The Master of
the David Scenes based some of his illuminations in the most celebrated manuscript of his time on this uncommon series.
The subject of the miniature accompanying psalm 38 in the Grimani
Breviary has long proved puzzling (g. 12.7).31 Armed with knowledge of the
tituli in the Pembroke Psalter-Hours and the predilection of the Master of the
David Scenes for material from the Golden Legend, it becomes possible to
identify the scene correctly for the rst time. In the Pembroke Psalter-Hours,
psalm 38 is illustrated with a miniature of the siege of Jerusalem, while psalm
155
Figure 12.7
Grimani Breviary. Episodes from the Life
of David, in the Grimani Breviary.
Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana,
Ms. Lat. I 99, fol. 321 v.
52 (the one missing a miniature in the Grimani Breviary) is accompanied by a

scene of David foreseeing the account in 2 Maccabees 5 and 7 of the taking of
Jerusalem and the torment of the seven Maccabee brothers and their mother by
Antiochus.32 The Master of the David Scenes has conated the two events from
the Pembroke Psalter-Hours into one, showing the siege and taking of
Jerusalem in the background and the seven Maccabee brothers and their mother in the foreground.33 As in the illustration for psalm 38 in the Pembroke
Psalter-Hours, David is shown lamenting the siege with his eyes closed. The
gure commanding the arrests is familiar from the illustration of psalm 52 in
the Pembroke Psalter-Hours; he is the heathen easterner Antiochus, dressed
appropriately in turban and furs. In terms of its composition, the scene has only
a general resonance with the miniatures in the Pembroke Psalter-Hours, but the
similarity of subject matter is undeniable. It now remains only to nd the source
of the secondary elements of the image.
If the Pembroke Psalter-Hours provides the key for the main subject
of the miniature, the remaining iconography can be identied by looking to the
Golden Legend. The account of the siege of Jerusalem by Vespasian and Titus,
the same story that was portrayed in a border scene in the Oxford hours, is the
source for this iconography. During the siege, the Golden Legend recounts,
the hunger was so acute that people chewed their shoes and a woman strangled her child, cooked the body, and . . . robbers, smelling cooked meat, rushed
back into the house and threatened the woman with death unless she gave
up the food. She uncovered what was left of the infant.34 Because it is known
that the Master of the David Scenes used the siege in a different context in
156 morrison
another manuscript (the Oxford hours) and because these elements are not seen
in the Pembroke Psalter-Hours, it seems likely that Master of the David Scenes
conceived the idea of incorporating them into the miniature.35 Perhaps the artist was struck by the vividness of the details given in the Golden Legend and
decided to incorporate those elements into his composition to add visual interest to the scene.
Other of the miniatures contributed by the Master of the David Scenes
to the psalter of the Grimani Breviary are unrelated to Nicholas of Lyras commentary. Psalm 1 in the Pembroke Psalter-Hours is accompanied by a depiction
of Ezra renewing the law of the Lord, for Nicholas of Lyra had identied Ezra
as the author of the rst psalm.36 In the Grimani Breviary, psalm 1 is instead
introduced by one of the few traditional miniatures in the entire series: Davids
triumphant return with the head of Goliath. This scene, absent from the fullpage miniatures of the Pembroke Psalter-Hours and the Nicholas of Lyra commentary, is one of the most commonly found openings to psalters in Flemish
breviaries of the period and also often accompanied the Penitential Psalms in
books of hours.37 The miniature of the Temptation of Adam and Eve that precedes the prologue to the psalter in the Grimani Breviary, however, is a somewhat unorthodox choice (g. 12.8). Although the Master of the David Scenes
had an evident afnity for this scene, as shown by the numerous times it
Figure 12.8
Grimani Breviary. The Temptation of
Adam and Eve, in the Grimani Breviary.
Ms. Lat. I 99, fol. 286 v.
appears in his oeuvre,38 this is the only case I know of either in his work or in
that of any other illuminator of the period in which it is associated with the
psalter. The Master of the David Scenes evidently chose this subject based on
the text of the psalter prologue that it introduces. One of the repeated responsories in the prologue is Adoremus dominum qui fecit nos (Let us adore God,
who has made us), and its rst text is a hymn traditionally ascribed to Saint
Gregory, beginning Primo deirum omnium quo mundus extat conditus vel quo
resurgens conditor nos morte victa liberet (The rst of all days, when the
world was made or, more exactly, when the risen creator liberated us and conquered death).39 In this context, a depiction of Adam and Eve no doubt
appeared as quite an appropriate complement to the psalter prologue.
The Master of the David Scenes drew inspiration from a variety of
sources in designing his series for the psalter of the Grimani Breviary: its rare
iconographic cycle is based on Nicholas of Lyras commentary, the Golden
Legend, traditional psalter iconography, and elements of the text itself.40 The
psalter illuminations contain some of the most original contributions to the
Grimani Breviary in terms of subject matter, a unique unit in an already
remarkable manuscript.
The devotional book in Copenhagen dating from around 1515 to 1520
represents perhaps the most iconographically innovative work by the Master
of the David Scenes. All of the miniatures are by his hand, and they include a
series dedicated to the seven deadly sins whose iconography has few precedents
in manuscript illumination.41 Although Hieronymus Bosch treated the sins in
his famous tabletop now in Madrid and there are tapestry and print series
dedicated to the subject,42 the series in the Copenhagen book is unrelated
iconographically to the aforementioned sets, and I am aware of only one other
comparable series of manuscript illuminations.43
The lively miniature that illustrates the sin of lust comes from the Old
Testament story of Joseph and Potiphars wife (g. 12.9). The Master of the
David Scenes faithfully followed the biblical story, including elements such as
the garment snatched off Josephs back by Potiphars wife, but also incorporated new details, such as Joseph wearing an outt at the height of fashion, to
enliven the narrative and to make the image a memorable complement to the
text.44 Like the illustration for lust, the image illustrating the sin of sloth also
takes an Old Testament story and transforms it into a moral lesson (g. 12.10).
Unlike the relatively well-known tale of Joseph, however, the story here is
obscure, taken from 1 Kings 21. According to this text, King Ahab had
wanted the vineyard of a man named Naboth because it was near his house and
he could conveniently make a vegetable garden out of it. When Naboth refused
to part with the inheritance of his forefathers, Ahabs wife, Jezebel, arranged for
false witness to be brought against Naboth, whereupon he was stoned to death
and the property of the dead criminal was forfeited to the king. Once again, the
artist seemed to realize that this scene would not be immediately recognizable
to many viewers, so he labeled the body of Naboth, helping the viewer to make
the connection between the sin of sloth and the scene.45 Although the Master
of the David Scenes chose the more familiar stories of Lazarus and Dives to
illustrate the sin of gluttony (fol. 28) and Cain and Abel for jealousy (fol. 29),
the artist did not derive all the subjects in this cycle from the Old Testament.
The sin of pride is illustrated by a woman preening in front of a mirror (fol. 24),
157
158 morrison
Figure 12.9
Grimani Breviary. Potiphar's Wife, in a
psalter-hours. Copenhagen, Kongelige
Bibliotek, Ms. 1605 40, fol. 26.
avarice takes the form of a man gloating at a table over a pile of money (fol.
25), and anger is portrayed through a scene of four men ghting over a game
of cards (fol. 27). The subjects, although clearly related to their corresponding
sins, have no biblical source.46 Although the individual compositions have yet
to be identied elsewhere, the popularity of the seven deadly sins during the
later Middle Ages indicates that the series by the Master of the David Scenes
probably reects an emerging pictorial tradition.
In the catalogue of Illuminating the Renaissance, I suggested that the
manuscript is missing an additional series of images for a now-missing Hours
of the Virgin and that the manuscript was in fact once a psalter-hours.47
Since the publication of the catalogue, I have been able to locate some of these
miniatures. Bodo Brinkmann had published that the Lindenau-Museum in
Altenburg, Germany, owns four miniatures by the Master of the David
Scenes.48 Upon examining them, I realized that the leaves match the
Copenhagen manuscript not only in terms of style but also in dimensions.49 In
159
Figure 12.10
Grimani Breviary. The Death of Naboth,
in a psalter-hours. Copenhagen,
Kongelige Bibliotek, Ms. 1605 40, fol. 30.
addition, the secondary decoration of the leaves and the manuscript correspond
exactly: architectural borders painted to simulate wood, a border style used
consistently in the Copenhagen manuscript but not often seen in other works
by the Master of the David Scenes. The four miniatures depict Veronicas Veil,
the Annunciation, the Flight into Egypt, and the Massacre of the Innocents (g.
12.11). The rst probably originally accompanied the prayer to the Holy Face,
while the other three were almost certainly intended for a cycle of the Hours of
the Virgin. Therefore it seems likely that the Copenhagen manuscript was
indeed originally a psalter-hours and that it lost its Hours of the Virgin and its
Prayer to the Holy Face along with the accompanying miniatures. The psalterhours was probably intended for the young man depicted in prayer to his
guardian angel found in the suffrages (fol. 46). The unusual iconography
throughout the book, and especially in the catechismal texts intended to teach
the basic precepts of the faith, would no doubt have been forcefully impressed
on the young mans mind.
160 morrison
Figure 12.11
Grimani Breviary. The Massacre of
the Innocents. Altenburg, Germany,
Staatliches Lindenau-Museum,
inv. no. 186.
In this paper I have frequently invoked words such as rare, obscure,

and unusual in an attempt to characterize the work of the Master of the David
Scenes.50 The fact that these uncommon scenes, from both the Bible and the
Golden Legend, repeatedly appear in the artists mature works indicates that he
was attracted by the challenge inherent in developing unusual iconography. His
work was likely known for this quality and may have even been sought out for
it. The Grimani Breviary is a case in point. The series the artist contributed is
especially notable when compared with other pictorial cycles in the Grimani
Breviary, which, with few exceptions, are relatively conventional in their
iconography. In addition, whereas works by the other contributing artists
appear throughout the manuscript, the miniatures by the Master of the David
Scenes all occur within the space of the psalter. It seems likely, then, that the
artist known for his capabilities in depicting Old Testament subject matter
was asked to contribute a series to illustrate the psalms of King David.
Unfortunately, since almost nothing is known about the patrons of any of the
manuscripts under discussion, it is difcult to determine who decided the
specic narrative program of the illuminations. One wonders nevertheless how
the novel content of the illuminations was intended to contribute to the patrons
understanding of and interaction with the text, and how it inuenced their
decision to acquire a manuscript by this artist. It may be that the unusual
iconography that gives the manuscripts of the Master of the David Scenes much
of their allure also contributed to their popularity and became, in fact, the
artists trademark.
161
Notes
I would like to thank Thomas Kren, Peter

Kidd, Scot McKendrick, Jim Marrow, Roger
Wieck, and Kate Challis for their thoughtful
discussions with me about the iconography of
the Master of the David Scenes.
1. See Thomas Kren and Scot McKendrick,
2003), nos. 108, 109, 124, 126.
2. See Kren and McKendrick, Illuminating the
3. Bodo Brinkmann, Ofzium der Madonna:
Vat. Lat. 10293 (Zurich: Belser, 1987).
4. For bibliography on the borders developed
by the Master of the David Scenes and his
workshop, see Kren and McKendrick,
Illuminating the Renaissance, 383 n. 8.
5. James H. Marrow, In desen speigell: A
New Form of Memento Mori in Fifteenthcentury Netherlandish Art, in Essays in
Northern European Art Presented to Egbert
Haverkamp-Begemann on His Sixtieth
Birthday (Doornspijk: Davaco, 1983),
156 58, 161.
6. For a list of later works in which the pattern appears, see note 38 below.
7. Sibiu, Romania, Museu Brukenthal, Ms.
761. Anne Margreet As-Vijvers has discovered
that the Huth Hours (London, British Library,
Add. Ms. 38126) served as the model for
miniatures and borders in the Brukenthal
manuscript, and further concluded that the
latter predates the Hours of Joanna of Castile
[Recycling the Huth Hours: The Master of
the David Scenes and the Making of the
Brukenthal Breviary, or: The Ghent Associates
and the Contribution of Simon Marmion to
Ghent-Bruges Manuscript Painting, in
Brigitte Dekeyzer and Jan Van der Stock, eds.,
Manuscripts in Transition: Recycling
Manuscripts, Texts and Images (Louvain:
Peeters, 2005), 379 90]. Based on the
Brukenthal manuscripts greater narrative
ambition, level of artistic achievement, and
complexity of production, I would place it
after the Hours of Joanna of Castile.
8. For the contents of the Brukenthal Hours,
see As-Vijvers, Randversiering in GentsBruges Manuscripten: De Meester van de
Davidscnes en andere Verluchters als
Specialisten in Margedecoratie [Ph.D. diss.,
Universiteit van Amsterdam, 2002], 505 13.
9. Avril Henry found no precedent or patristic
writing for the slaughter of the priests of Nob
as a type for the massacre before the Biblia
pauperum (Avril Henry, ed., Biblia pauperum:
A Facsimile and Edition [Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 1987], 62, 134). Because the

composition by the Master of the David
Scenes bears no resemblance to those in the
Biblia pauperum, it is difcult to determine
whether the artist took the idea from the
printed book or another unknown source.
10. Adrian Wilson and Joyce Lancaster Wilson
discuss the popularity of the Speculum in manuscript form and its relationship to the Biblia
pauperum, in A Medieval Mirror: Speculum
humanae salvationis, 13241500 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1984), 1012.
For a discussion of the Speculum in Flemish
hours and breviaries of the period, see Kate
Challis, Things of Inestimable Value:
Deluxe Manuscript Production and the
Marketing of Devotion in Late Southern
Netherlandish Illumination (Ph.D. diss.,
University of Melbourne, 2002), 167 82.
11. Although the scene is occasionally depicted
in Romanesque Bibles and Gothic psalters (for
psalm 51), I have yet to nd the scene represented as part of a typological pairing in any
other book of hours.
12. Other pairings in the series are more common, such as Sext, which features the visit of
the Queen of Sheba and the Adoration of the
Magi, and None, depicting the Presentation of
Samuel and the Presentation of Christ.
13. Many of the most famous Flemish Hours
of the Virgin cycles that contain typological
scenes are inconsistent in their mixing of typological and strictly New Testament narratives
(see Kren and McKendrick, Illuminating the
Renaissance, nos. 33, 93, 109, 124, 138).
14. The Oxford book of hours also opens the
Prayer to the Holy Face with border scenes
featuring rarely depicted stories from the
Golden Legend related to the subject of the
main miniature, which depicts the Salvator
Mundi (see Kren and McKendrick,
Illuminating the Renaissance, 441).
15. Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend:
Readings on the Saints, trans. William
Granger Ryan (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1993), vol. 1, 18 20.
16. All the remaining full-page miniatures in
this manuscript are painted on tipped-in
leaves, blank on the back. Stubs are still visible at most of the openings for the Hours of
the Virgin. This manuscript is also without a
calendar, suggesting that it was taken at the
same time as the full-page miniatures.
17. The Hours of the Virgin in the Oxford
manuscript, like that in the Brukenthal Hours,
was most likely composed of consistent typological pairings, and although some of the
same Old Testament scenes appear in both
manuscripts, there are differences in subject

matter as well as composition.
18. Voragine, Golden Legend, vol. 1, 330.
19. The Visitation in the Brukenthal Hours is
also paired with a scene related to the ark
(pp. 24546 [the manuscript is paginated]).
In a manuscript of the Speculum humanae
in Chantilly by a follower of the Master of
James IV (Muse Cond, Ms. 139, fol. 37 v),
the bringing of the ark into Jerusalem (as
recounted in 1 Chronicles 15 and the portion
of 2 Samuel 6 following the arks presence in
Obedodoms house) serves as a type for the
Coronation of the Virgin, and its composition
is not related to the Bodleian version.
20. For the extensive bibliography on the
manuscript, see Kren and McKendrick,
Illuminating the Renaissance, no. 33.
21. See Challis, Things of Inestimable
Value, 114 16.
22. As in most breviaries of the period, the
psalms are arranged according to the weekly
ferial secular psalter (see Challis, Things of
Inestimable Value, 38). Confusingly in the
Grimani Breviary, the rubrics indicate that the
psalms proceed numerically.
23. The rst psalm recited at matins on
Wednesday (psalm 52) has no corresponding
full-page miniature. Folio 330 has a full border and begins with psalm 52, while folio 329
has the last text associated with Tuesday
matins, and folio 329 v is blank (see Challis,
Things of Inestimable Value, 489 500).
It seems probable that there is a missing fullpage miniature by the artist that would have
prefaced psalm 52.
24. Philadelphia Museum of Art, inv. no. 4565-2. I am indebted to Jim Marrow for bringing both the tituli based on Nicholas of Lyras
commentary and the manuscript to my attention. See James H. Marrow, The Pembroke
Psalter-Hours, in Als ich can: Liber
Amicorum in Memory of Professor Dr.
Maurits Smeyers, ed. Bert Cardon, Jan Van der
Stock, and Dominique Vanwijnsberghe
(Louvain: Peeters, 2002), 861 99. There are
also a number of illustrations related to
Nicholass commentary in the complex cycle
devoted to the psalter in the Breviary of
Isabella of Castile (London, British Library,
Add. Ms. 18851, fols. 111 v 112, 124, 139,
155 v). The actual compositions in the Isabella
Breviary, however, are unrelated to those in
either the Pembroke Psalter-Hours or the
Grimani Breviary. For a discussion of the
Nicholas commentary in relation to the
Isabella Breviary, see James McKinnon, The
Fifteen Temple Steps and the Gradual Psalms,
Imago musicae 1 (1984): 29 49.
162
morrison
25. Marrow, Pembroke Psalter-Hours,

881 82. The text has never been edited, but
a facsimile exists: Nicholas of Lyra, Postilla
super totam bibliam (Strasburg, 1492; facsimile, Frankfurt, 1971), 4 vols. The psalter
commentary, which connects the psalms to
both Old Testament and New Testament
events, can be found in volume 3.
26. Marrow, Pembroke Psalter-Hours, 867.
27. The images for psalm 26 in both manuscripts depict the anointing and crowning of
David. Scenes from Christs Passion illustrate
psalm 68 in both, and the images for psalm 80
depict singing within a church and the harvesting of grapes without.
28. While it is possible that the artist had
access to the commentary itself, there is no
detailed information contained in the commentary that would make it likely that two
artists working independently would design
such similar compositions.
30. The fact that some images in the psalter of
the Isabella Breviary (see note 24 above) also
rely on the Nicholas commentary but are
unrelated compositionally implies that perhaps
the Nicholas commentary itself was also popular during the period.
31. The facsimile commentary of 1971
describes it as a rather confused and crowded
scene representing incidents from the second
book of Samuel (Gian Lorenzo Mellini, in
The Grimani Breviary [London: Thames and
Hudson, (1972)], pl. 49).
33. Since the illumination for psalm 38 combines the imagery for psalms 38 and 52 associated with the Nicholas of Lyra commentary,
psalm 52 in the Grimani Breviary was probably illustrated with a scene unconnected to
the commentary, as is the case with psalm 1
(see below). It is not clear why the artist combined the imagery from the two psalms.
Perhaps confusion arose from the fact that
there were no tituli to help guide the artist.
34. Voragine, Golden Legend, vol. 1, 276.
35. Nicholas of Lyra associated psalm 38 with
the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem (Nicholas of
Lyra, vol. 3, fol. t iii v), while the details given
in the Golden Legend relate to the later siege
by Vespasian and Titus. The Babylonian siege,
however, was also followed by famine
(4 Kings 25.3). It is unknown whether the
artist made the connection between the two
sieges because they were both followed by
famine or whether the artist was simply told
to represent a siege of Jerusalem.
This scene also occurs in the Isabella Breviary
(fols. 111 v 112).
37. Kate Challis has identied this pattern in

seven contemporary Flemish manuscripts
(Things of Inestimable Value, 116 17).
38. The Temptation of Adam and Eve appears
in the Oxford hours (fol. 36), the Brukenthal
Hours (p. 26), and the Hours of Joanna of
Castile (fol. 14 v).
39. Grimani Breviary, fol. 287.
40. The Pembroke Psalter-Hours also mixes
traditional iconography with that inspired by
Nicholas of Lyra (see Marrow, Pembroke
Psalter-Hours, 867 79). Even in the most
luxurious manuscripts of the day, it was not
unusual to see a mix of approaches in a given
section of the manuscript (see note 13 above).
41. The Joanna Hours also contains an entire
series of catechismal texts similar to those in
the Copenhagen manuscript, including the
seven deadly sins, but the Copenhagen series
is illustrated throughout, while the Joanna
Hours contains only an illumination for the
Ten Commandments.
42. I thank Scot McKendrick for bringing to
my attention tapestry sets of the vices. All of
the series of tapestries and prints of which I
am aware consist of allegorical gures representing the sins, often in conict with the
virtues. See Thomas Campbell, Tapestry in the
Renaissance: Art and Magnicence, exh. cat.
(New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art;
New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002),
410 16, and Tapisseries bruxelloises de la prRenaissance, exh. cat. (Brussels: Muses royaux dart et dhistoire, 1976), 100 103. For
the popularity of the seven deadly sins in the
later Middle Ages, see William Voekle,
Morgan Manuscript m.1001: The Seven
Deadly Sins and the Seven Evil Ones, in
Monsters and Demons in the Ancient and
Medieval Worlds: Papers Presented in Honor
of Edith Porada, ed. Ann E. Farkas, Prudence
O. Harper, and Evelyn B. Harrison (Mainz on
Rhine: P. von Zabern, 1987): 10114.
43. I thank Thomas Kren for bringing to my
attention a series of the deadly sins in a French
book of hours, perhaps by Robinet Testard
(New York, Morgan Library, Ms. 1001).
Although the Testard miniatures are comparable to the Copenhagen images in that the
gures act out scenes illustrating the sins, it
seems the two series are related only distantly,
if at all. See Voelkle, Morgan Manuscript
M.1001, pls. xxxvii xl.
44. A similar scene was represented by the
Master of the Joseph Sequence in a design for
a series of stained-glass roundels devoted to
the life of Joseph, including the representation
of Joseph in fashionable garb. The roundels
are related to a series originally designed by
Hugo van der Goes, some of which later
appeared in manuscript illumination (see

Timothy Husband, The Luminous Image:
Painted Glass Roundels in the Lowlands,
14801569, exh. cat. [New York:
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1995], 56 63).
Although there was an increasing interest in
rarely seen Old Testament stories in stained
glass of the time, I have yet to nd any direct
correspondences between other media and the
works of the Master of the David Scenes.
45. The stoning of Naboth makes an appearance in a Biblia pauperum produced in
Germany around 1463 as a type for Christ
Brought before Pilate. See Albert Schramm,
Der Bilderschmuck der Frhdrucke, vol. 11
(Leipzig: Deutsches Museum fr Buch und
Schrift, 1922), no. 286. I know of no other
Biblia pauperum in which it is included.
46. The Copenhagen prayer book contains
other catechismal texts in addition to the
seven deadly sins, and many of them are
illustrated with equally novel images. The
codicology of the manuscript also indicates
that fteen full-page illuminations would have
divided the psalter portion of the book into
sections of ten psalms each. Stubs of the
tipped-in miniatures can be seen opposite
full-page borders, and in some cases, cuts
can be seen on nearby folios where the knife
was applied.
Renaissance, 440 n. 1.
48. Mark Evans and Bodo Brinkmann, The
Sforza Hours, Add. Ms. 34294 of the British
Library (Lucerne: Faksimile Verlag, 1995), 583.
49. The justication measurements in the
Copenhagen manuscript are 11.9 7.4 cm.
The Altenburg images are unfortunately glued
down, so there is no way to measure the
justication on their rectos, but the width of
the painted area is 7.4 cm, and the measurement from the bottom of the image to the
bottom of the arch is 11.6 cm. (There are no
full-page images remaining in the Copenhagen
manuscript to compare with the measurements
of the Altenburg leaves.)
50. Even the Master of James IV of Scotland,
whom we think of as an artist interested in
narrative, usually limited himself to standard
subjects and typology. On the relationship
between the former and the Master of the
David Scenes, see Kren and McKendrick,
Illuminating the Renaissance, 383. The Soane
Hours (London, Sir John Soanes Museum,
Ms. 4) also makes great use of unusual
iconography (both Old and New Testament),
and it too was painted by a probable pupil of
the Master of James IV (Kren and
444 46).
Part 4: d i r e c t i o n s f o r f u rt h e r r e s e a r c h
c h a p t e r 13
Scholarship on Flemish Manuscript Illumination of the Renaissance:

Remarks on Past, Present, and Future
J a m e s H . M a rrow
In the catalogue that accompanies the exhibition

Illuminating the Renaissance, Scot McKendrick introduces his informative
essay Illustrated Manuscripts of Secular Vernacular Texts, 1467 1500 by
describing a well-documented manuscript that provides evidence of the complex processes involved in making an imposing copy of a major secular text.1
The effort was time-consuming and expensive, involving the collaboration of a
host of highly skilled craftsmen, each a master of his art and all working to the
high standards expected by members of the discerning elite of the luxury book
market. McKendricks example strikes me as an apt analogy for Illuminating
the Renaissance, which was years in the making, involved considerable personal and institutional investment, and was carried out by an extraordinary
team of leading scholars, each working to the highest standards of contemporary scholarship.
The exhibition and its catalogue are milestones in the study of Flemish
manuscript illumination, at once summarizing past scholarship in this eld,
rening our knowledge in innumerable areas, and expanding it considerably.
The size and scope of the exhibition surpass all previous efforts with respect to
the quantity and quality of the works brought together at its two venues, of
which a considerable number were previously unknown or rarely seen by the
public. This can be credited to the wide knowledge of the exhibitions two
organizers, Thomas Kren and Scot McKendrick, and the high respect in which
they are held by the many institutions and private owners who permitted their
treasures to be studied and exhibited.
The catalogue for Illuminating the Renaissance also breaks new
ground in at least two other ways. First, it is enriched by a series of essays and
appendixes by the two organizers and a group of specialists that explore relevant historical and thematically dened topics. Second, the catalogue entries
are exceptional in their scope and detail, brimming over with new information
and hypotheses. The catalogue is a rarity in the genre, likely to serve as a touchstone for research for a generation or more as well as to expand the study of
late medieval Flemish illumination in many directions.2
Notwithstanding all the welcome accomplishments of Illuminating the
Renaissance, I want to focus these comments on broader questions of scholarship in the eld and, in particular, on desiderata for future research. To begin,
I am concerned by the persistence of approaches to the material centered, above
all, on such basic and traditional matters as the discernment of different hands
in illuminated manuscripts (whether of scribes, decorators, or the painters of
164 marrow
miniatures); the compilation of oeuvres; the patterns of collaboration among

craftsmen; dating, chronology, and localization; and the tracing of compositional, iconographic, and stylistic links through and across the tradition. While
no one should discount the importance of such matters, which provide foundations for all further research, they seem to me still rooted in the concerns of the
founding generations of art history and to fall far short of our ultimate goals. I
would argue that the hold these older approaches maintain on scholarship in
the eld has served as an impediment to the development of fresh and more
expansive engagements with illuminated manuscripts.
Part of the problem lies in the sheer number and complexity of these
demanding objects, for formidable energies are required merely to track down
and describe the extant works and to analyze them along familiar guidelines.
In her nely crafted comments on the different installations of Illuminating
the Renaissance in Los Angeles and London, Catherine Reynolds alluded to
these demands when she observed that manuscript scholars are distinguished
from other practitioners of art history primarily through their compulsion to
count and measure.3 The inclination of most practitioners of manuscript
studies to take refuge in the relative certainties of positivistic, or quasipositivistic, research is evident from a number of recent tendencies. These include the
popularity of codicological research, which is concerned with the physical
makeup of medieval manuscripts; the continuing prominence of connoisseurship; renewed attention to the conditions of manuscript production, such as
guild structures; and the growing interest in technical analyses, for example,
those concerned with pigment studies, binding structures, and underdrawings.
But are such approaches capable of doing justice to the objects of our study?
Or do they rather, as I believe, deal only with basic issues and divert attention
from many different types of historical and interpretive analysis, including
those likely to contribute to better understanding of the essential character of
illuminated manuscripts and the accomplishments of their leading creators?
It is high time, as we enter the twenty-rst century, to move beyond
preliminary levels of engagement with illuminated manuscripts those based
on material description, production techniques, the identication of hands, and
the compilation of lists of presumed derivations and inuences to more
sophisticated considerations of the complex design strategies that underlie
many of their most audacious and inuential developments. How else to deal
adequately with late medieval Flemish manuscripts, some of the most creative
and aesthetically exuberant books ever made, and to appreciate the novel ways
these works elicit interest, structure understanding, and communicate meaning?
There are no simple or all-encompassing means of addressing such
topics, nor is there a single theoretical key, and students of diverse backgrounds
will interrogate the material differently. In the hope of stimulating further
thought and discussion in this regard, I want to consider a few problems that
seem to me either inadequately conceptualized and insufciently studied or
simply overlooked in scholarship on Flemish manuscript illumination of the
Renaissance.
The rst concerns important differences among certain types of manuscripts produced in the Low Countries during the late fteenth and the early
sixteenth centuries differences that were highlighted by the two installations
of Illuminating the Renaissance in Los Angeles and London. I am thinking
chapter 13: scholarship on flemish manuscript illumination
about unexplained differences in the conceptions of some kinds of devotional

books, such as books of hours (and occasionally liturgical books, such as breviaries), and many genres of historical or didactic works, such as chronicles,
other histories, romances, and some allegorical works. While the devotional
codices were most prominent in the Getty showing of the exhibition, the secular manuscripts were far better represented at the London venue. Why is it that
works of the rst type seem to have been the primary locus for the cultivation
of virtuoso and sometimes extravagant pictorial effects (and other design innovations), while works of the second type are apparently much more conservative and restrained in their design? Patrons tastes and budgetary constraints do
not account for the differences, since single patrons sometimes commissioned
books of both genres.
Without pretending to exhaust the possibilities, I would like to suggest
some potential explanations for these differences in design. I stress that these
are not mutually exclusive and that each would necessitate different types of
research to be evaluated on its own terms or to be weighed for its relative
signicance. Among these I mention:
(1) The persistence of different modes for certain kinds of literature,
such as a devotional mode, a liturgical mode, and secular modes for chronicles,
histories, or romances. Distinguishing and dening these is further complicated
by conventions, both artistic and literary, that attend Latin and vernacular
literature.
(2) The books audiences and the situations in which books belonging
to these different genres were used. Most devotional books, for example, were
read privately and handheld, whereas some large historical works were used in
more public contexts, such as gatherings of members of the court, or were read
aloud to one or more listeners.
(3) The specialization of different craftsmen in each of these branches
of book production. Some illuminators, such as Simon Bening and the Master
of Charles V, apparently worked virtually exclusively on devotional books,
while others specialized in historical and didactic works. These kinds of divisions are mirrored frequently in modern scholarship, with some students specializing primarily in works of religious art and others in secular manuscripts.
(Kren and McKendrick, co-organizers of Illuminating the Renaissance, are
obvious examples of this kind of specialization in the study of different genres
of manuscript books.)
(4) Different approaches to the marketing of various types of books.
Were devotional works commissioned or sold differently than works of secular
subject matter?
(5) The notion that the painters of familiar genres of texts, such as
books of hours, may have felt a need to cultivate virtuoso pictorial effects to distinguish their products from earlier works of the same type (not to mention
from printed books of hours, which came to be produced in large numbers during precisely the same period treated in Illuminating the Renaissance). In the
case of many historical and didactic works, one assumes, the material was
sufciently unfamiliar that painters aimed for narrative and pictorial clarity
rather than visual pyrotechnics.
(6) Essential differences in the character and function of religious and
secular books. Religious works carry a different burden of meaning than works
165
166 marrow
Figure 13.1
Anonymous master. The Crucixion,
in a book of hours. San Marino, Calif.,
Huntington Library, Ms. HM 1174,
fol. 14v.
of secular content, and accordingly, they elicited different design strategies.

Whereas most genres of historical works and some didactic ones are rooted in
worldly realities and follow linear patterns of narrative, works of sacred subject
matter, such as books of hours and liturgical books, were intended to guide
viewers beyond the here-and-now, to evoke multiple and alternative levels of
truth, and to effect profound transformations of understanding. As a consequence, many of the novel juxtapositions of subject matter and scale, of viewpoint, and of different kinds of illusionism that we encounter in manuscripts of
religious subject matter produced in Flanders during the late fteenth and the
early sixteenth centuries may have been intended to defy customary expectations, contravene traditional pictorial conventions, and pose contradictions
all in the interest of guiding the users of these books to the leaps of thought and
imagination deemed necessary to achieve a deepened appreciation of the character of the sacred and the mysteries of the faith.4
The different design characteristics of manuscripts with secular and
religious content suggest important differences in the ways we ought to study
them.5 In the case of manuscripts of secular subject matter containing expository cycles of illustrations, we ought to consider how their picture cycles are
geared to the linear and narrative structure of their texts.6 While recent
attention has been directed to certain conventions of pictorial

narrative in illuminated manuscripts, these efforts have
been focused primarily on works of art from earlier
periods.7 Most such studies are centered either on
standardized techniques through which painters
establish and maintain narrative impulses in
their picture cycles or on the ways they dene
and articulate particular kinds of meaning,
which is to say, that they are interpreted primarily in relation to questions of iconography.
What seems to me to be lacking from many
studies are wider and more complex considerations of the shape and dynamics of expository
cycles of illustration. We might better ask: How
do the picture cycles complement and inect
the texts they accompany? How do they shape
their content and reception, whether by focusing attention in particular ways, helping to
pace the exposition, augmenting and releasing
dramatic tension, or signaling other important
moments or transformations in the story line?
And where, how, and why do some picture
cycles fashion discourses that differ in telling
ways from those expounded in the texts they
illustrate?8 Although I know of many instances
in which scholars have studied the shape and
dynamics of picture cycles in works of religious illumination,9 I dont recall a single
example of a comparable analysis of a picture
cycle in any secular manuscript from the late period of Flemish illumination.
Picture cycles accompanying religious texts of pronounced narrative
character such as lives of saints, Christ, and Mary, and some Bible histories ought sometimes to be analyzed in similar fashion, although in late
Flemish illumination, as I observed previously, many cycles of religious content
are distinctly nonlinear in purpose and structure. As a result, some painters
devised techniques of grafting antinarrative elements onto traditional subjects
or cycles of illumination so as to guide viewers beyond familiar encounters with
the historical dimensions of depicted events to fresh encounters with their
deeper meanings. An example of this kind of impulse in late Flemish illumination can be found in a book of hours in the Huntington Library in which an
illustration of the Crucixion is situated within a marginal representation of a
fountain (g. 13.1).10 The juxtaposition evokes the metaphorical association,
commonplace at this time, that likened the crucied Christ to the Fountain of
Life or Pity and that generated its own tradition of pictorial treatments.11 One
work from this tradition is a panel painting of the period by Jean Bellegambe
that depicts Christ on the Cross emerging from an elaborate fountain in which
souls desirous of salvation bathe themselves (g. 13.2).12 While Bellegambes
painting is purely allegorical in its subject matter, the miniature in the
Huntington Hours seems to have it both ways, representing both the historical
Figure 13.2
Jean Bellegambe. Fons pietatis (central
panel of a triptych), oil on panel,
81 58 cm (31 7 8 22 7 8 in.). Lille,
Muse des Beaux-Arts.
167
168 marrow
Figure 13.3
Master of Antoine Rolin. Agony in
the Garden of Gethsemane and facing
text page, in the Boussu Hours. Paris,
Bibliothque de lArsenal, Ms. 1185,
fols. 186 v 187.
Crucixion on Calvary, complete with witnesses, and alluding to the allegorical

meaning of the event.
The Passion cycle of the Boussu Hours in the Bibliothque de lArsenal
in Paris displays another means by which conventional narrative illustration
might be interrupted and transformed by the interposition of depictions of a different pictorial order.13 In two openings of the Hours of the Cross, which can
serve to illustrate the design principle at work throughout this cycle, we nd
a full-page miniature of Christ praying in the Garden of Gethsemane facing a
page whose border contains representations of drops of sweat and blood
(g. 13.3), and a large miniature of the Carrying of the Cross facing a border of
crying eyes (g. 13.4). These unusual marginal depictions are derived from the
Gospel of Saint Luke, in which the account of Christ's prayer in the garden
informs us, And being in an agony, he prayed the longer, And his sweat became
as drops of blood trickling down upon the ground (Luke 22.43 44), and that
of the Carrying of the Cross, in which Christ addresses the women who follow
him, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not over me but weep for yourselves, and
for your children (Luke 23.28). Through their different scale, the different pictorial modes employed for their representation, and not least their strangeness,
such marginal depictions disrupt the rhythm and sunder the narrative continuity of a traditional cycle of miniatures. They do so in order to capture our
attention and draw us more fully into the subjects and meanings of the full-page
illustrations with which they are paired.
As these two examples demonstrate, the makers of some late Flemish
manuscripts showed considerable ingenuity in manipulating pictorial forms
and modes in order to invest depictions of sacred subjects with expanded

frames of reference and to enhance the capacities of the books decoration to
engage viewers in imaginative explorations of subject matter and meaning.
What especially distinguishes Flemish illumination of this period from works of
earlier date and other regions is the range of pictorial stratagems their makers
devised to these ends and their willingness to deploy them in seemingly limitless permutations and combinations, whether through cycles of illustration,
across different zones of individual pages (miniatures, initials, margins), or
within individual ones.
Given the variety and complexity of the pictorial forms and conceits
found in works of late Flemish manuscript illumination, we need to develop
more diverse and exible conceptual frameworks and more precise ways to
discuss works in this medium. Many scholars, for example, employ such terms
as pictorial realism, illusionism, and trompe loeil virtually interchangeably in
their discussions of works of Flemish illumination, without adequately distinguishing among them or recognizing that they are sometimes used side by side,
variously complementing one another or, on the contrary, establishing alternative modes of pictorial expression.14 Above all, we must realize that what we
call pictorial styles, modes, or conceits are means, not ends. Thus, pictorial
realism can be used to evoke our experience of the inhabited world, illusionism to alter our consciousness of the nature of works of art and of our relationships to them, and trompe loeil overtly to contradict our logic and
experience, which, in turn, can provoke different orders of consciousness about
the meanings of artworks and our attitudes toward them.
169
Figure 13.4
Master of Antoine Rolin. Carrying of the
Cross and facing text page, in the Boussu
Hours. Paris, Bibliothque de lArsenal,
Ms. 1185, fols. 195v 196.
170 marrow
Until we are prepared to undertake closer studies of individual works

of late Flemish illumination, to recognize and discriminate among the wide
range of pictorial devices deployed by their makers, and to make the difcult
effort to understand how all these various strategies were used to establish and
communicate particular kinds of meaning, we shall not do justice to the essential character and achievements of these works, nor will we understand either
their messages or the novel ways in which their makers delineated them. The
tasks are formidable, if only because of the willingness of leading Flemish illuminators of the period continually to challenge their audiences. In contrast to
the positivistic bent of research in our eld that I commented on earlier, this
effort will require us to look and think about works more expansively than has
been customary and to acknowledge the full range of wit, playfulness, and
invention demonstrated, sometimes page by page, by their makers. A few other
examples will suggest something of the breadth of visual imagination manifested in major works of late Flemish illumination and the possible insights to
be gained from considering the deeper purposes that underlay some of its virtuoso pictorial conceits.
I begin with two examples from the Grimani Breviary, one of the bestknown and most sumptuous commissions of the period.15 Many of its leaves
display colored or gilt panel borders of the type that is a virtual hallmark of late
Flemish illumination, in which painted objects such as owers, jewels, animals,
and insects seem to stand in relief, even casting shadows onto the panels. On
one page of the manuscript the illuminator signicantly amplied and played
with this effect by painting a large, magnicent dragony in the lower margin
and showing his transparent wings as if extending over the text, decorated panels, and parts of the lower margin (g. 13.5). He thereby added a third layer
of depth and illusion to the page, above those of the gilt panel and the still-life
objects it supports. This exceptional display of painterly virtuosity honors Saint
Luke, the patron saint of painters, shown working at his easel on the same page.
While the column miniature at the upper left corner of the leaf refers in a conventional manner to Lukes status as an exemplary painter and functions
implicitly as an emblem of its makers profession, the bravura depiction of the
dragony at the opposite corner of the same leaf provides another kind of paradigm of the craft of painting, this one informed by tropes of artistic prowess
known from antiquity that celebrated artists abilities to create illusion, including that of objects on or in front of paintings, and thereby fool the eye.16
Many other illustrated pages of the Grimani Breviary are enclosed in
simulated wooden or gilt frames, complete with what appears to be carved
tracery at the corners. The use of such frames allies the miniatures with monumental works of painting (an important source of inuence on late Flemish illumination) as well as, in some instances, evoking the ecclesiastical settings and
rituals in which many devotional books and paintings were used.17 The miniature of the building of the Tower of Babel has an outer frame of this type but
also incorporates a second framed element (g. 13.6): here the miniaturist
thought to integrate the text within the ctive world of the picture space by portraying it on what I take to be one of the rst billboards in history, or at least
in art. Is this striking manner of juxtaposing image and text an instance of mere
aesthetic play, or might it not also allude wittily to the purport of the event
depicted? In the context of an illustration of the event that, after all, ended the
Figure 13.5
Attributed to the Master of the First
Prayer Book of Maximilian (Alexander
Bening?). Saint Luke and painted border
with dragony, in the Grimani Breviary.
Ms. Lat. I, 99, fol. 781 v.
171
172 marrow
Figure 13.6
Master of James IV of Scotland. The
Tower of Babel, in the Grimani Breviary.
Ms. Lat. I, 99, fol. 206.
universality of verbal communication, I am inclined to consider that this conspicuous display of texts on ctive structures located within the picture space
comments ironically on the meaning of this story.18
Flemish illuminators experimented in numerous other ways with the
interrelationship of text and images. Another arresting example occurs in the
Spinola Hours, in which the miniaturist suggests that the text commencing the
Sunday Hours of the Trinity is pinned to the page (g. 13.7).19 The portrayal,
which is unlike any other in the same book, mixes elements of illusionism and
trompe loeil in ways that contradict conventional spatial or pictorial logic. (Are
we, for example, to believe that the text is pinned to the heavens?) How are we
to understand a depiction like this, in which illusionistic devices are aunted in
ways that seem both to insist upon the veracity of what the miniaturist represents and to contradict our logic and experience in which the paradoxes of
illusion necessarily elicit from viewers a new range of thoughts and reactions?
Jarred by the apparent claims of the image to represent real three-dimensional
Figure 13.7
Master of James IV of Scotland. The Holy
Trinity Enthroned, in the Spinola Hours.
Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum,
Ms. Ludwig IX 18, fol. 10 v.
173
174 marrow
forms familiar from our world and by its no less conspicuous ctions, the
beholder must reconsider not merely the subject matter of the image but also
the implications of its effect that is, the conicting processes of thought and
intuition that such a pointedly contradictory image unleashes. Is it coincidental
that this striking pictorial conceit occurs in a depiction of the Trinity, one of
the primary theological concepts of Catholic doctrine that also embodies
conundrums of conventional logic and that served as one of the foundational
mysteries of the faith? I am inclined to view the treatment of this page as an
imaginative wedding of subject matter and visual language, in which a conspicuous disjunction between pictorial and textual imagery of the Trinity evokes
something of the unfathomable nature of the Godhead and the inadequacy of
conventional frameworks of experience and understanding to comprehend such
an enigma.
As these and numerous other examples make clear, many of the
painted conceits found in religious manuscripts produced in the Flemish Low
Countries during the late fteenth and the sixteenth centuries relate in complex,
subtle, and sophisticated ways to the subject matter of the leaves on which they
are deployed. They offer new points of entry into the meanings of depictions in
hand-painted books and provoke new ways of thinking about them. The novel
juxtapositions, transpositions, and other pictorial manipulations we encounter
in these books do more than simply enrich the store of iconographic formulas
available to painters of the day. Rather, they provide new ways of structuring
pictorial meaning and of altering its reception. Innovations in pictorial syntax
are, I believe, some of the most important achievements of Flemish illuminators
of the late Middle Ages. I understand pictorial syntax here in its deepest
sense, that is, as the ways in which the designers of illuminated books used contrasting forms and modes of pictorial representation to dene and inect the
subjects treated in their works as well as to stimulate exploration of those subjects and facilitate understanding. By playing in many of their works with the
inherent contradictions and the paradoxical implications of illusionism, the
designers of these books were able to draw viewers into a lived experience of
the uneasy juncture between the realities professed by artworks and their essential ctions, which is to say that they engaged their viewers consciousness in
order to press them into radically new relationships with pictorial imagery.20
It is to these and other underexplored topics that I hope future students of the material will turn with passion and energy to inaugurate a new
stage in the study of late Flemish illumination. Happily, the achievements of
Illuminating the Renaissance are sufciently far-reaching as to prepare the way
for new kinds and levels of sympathetic investigations of the material. How better to honor the extraordinary efforts and accomplishments of the organizers
and authors of that exhibition and catalogue?
175
Notes
This paper is based on the brief commentary

I offered at the conclusion of the one-day symposium on Illuminating the Renaissance held
at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, in
February 2004. By design, much of that commentary was delivered extemporaneously so
that I might shape my comments in reaction to
the contributions of other speakers. In preparing this paper for publication, I have rened
and elaborated some of the ideas I discussed at
the symposium, but I have resisted all temptations to change either its content or character.
Then, as now, I have considered only a few,
selected problems rather than pretending to
offer a comprehensive view of scholarship on
late Flemish illumination (a task that would
require signicantly more preparation and a
very different forum). I have tried also to preserve something of the papers original character as a spoken commentary, restricting both
the number of examples I discuss and bibliographical references in footnotes. For additional examples of many of the topics I treat
here and fuller bibliography, see James H.
Marrow, Pictorial Invention in Netherlandish
Manuscript Illumination of the Late Middle
Ages: The Play of Illusion and Meaning
(Louvain: Peeters, 2005). Jeffrey Hamburger
posed some of the questions I treat in this
paper in a discussion session at the earlier
symposium accompanying Illuminating the
Renaissance, held in September 2003 at the
J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles; we pursued them in conversation there and have continued to do so in an ongoing dialogue. For
an important and wide-ranging consideration
of many areas of research and methodological
issues that seem to have made little impact,
as yet, in the study of Flemish manuscript illumination (such as questions of authorship,
textimage studies, the history of reading,
and others), see the discussion and bibliographical citations in Jeffrey F. Hamburger,
Rewriting History: The Visual and the
Vernacular in Late Medieval History Bibles,
in Retextualisierung in der mittelalterlichen
Literatur, ed. Ursula Peters and Joachim
Bumke (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2005),
260 307. Along with Jeffrey Hamburger,
Gregory Clark and Elizabeth Moodey kindly
read a rst draft of this essay and offered very
useful suggestions for improvement.
1. Scot McKendrick, Reviving the Past:
Illustrated Manuscripts of Secular Vernacular
Texts, 1467 1500, in Illuminating the
Manuscript Painting in Europe, exh. cat.,
by Thomas Kren and Scot McKendrick (Los

Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003), 59.
2. Among the few exhibitions that have
achieved comparable inuence, I mention the
monumental exhibition of French illumination
by Franois Avril and Nicole Reynaud, Les
Manuscrits peintures en France, 14401520
(Paris: Bibliothque nationale de France,
1993), and for Flemish illumination, that
organized by L. M. J. Delaiss, La Miniature
amande: Le Mcnat de Philippe le Bon
(Brussels: Palais des Beaux-Arts, 1959).
3. Catherine Reynolds, The Exhibition at
the J. Paul Getty Museum and at the Royal
Academy of Arts (paper presented at
Illuminating the Renaissance: The
Colloquium, Courtauld Institute of Art,
London, February 21, 2004).
4. For related considerations, see Michaela
Krieger, Zum Problem des Illusionismus
im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert: Ein Deutungsversuch, Pantheon 54 (1996): 14 16.
5. In contrasting works of sacred and secular
content for the purposes of this discussion,
I do not mean to suggest that the genres are
neatly or denitively distinguished from each
other. There are also important areas of overlap between the two and instances of creative
cross-fertilization between the traditions, all of
which deserves to be studied in its own right.
For a recent study of the intersection of scientic and biblical illustration, for example, see
Bianca Khnel, The End of Time in the Order
of Things: Science and Eschatology in Early
Medieval Art (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner,
2003).
6. There is a vast literature on the structure of
different kinds of secular texts, many of which
do not follow simple linear schemas of the
type I refer to here, and on the complex ways
ostensibly narrative texts can protably be
studied. For a representative sample of studies
in these important areas, see Gabrielle M.
Spiegel, Genealogy: Form and Function in
Medieval Historical Narrative, History and
Theory 22 (1983): 43 53; Spiegel, Theory
into Practice: Reading Medieval Chronicles,
in The Medieval Chronicle: Proceedings of
the First International Conference on the
Medieval Chronicle, ed. Erik Kooper
(Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999), 1 12; and Sylvia
Huot, The Romance of the Rose and Its
Medieval Readers: Interpretation, Reception,
Manuscript Transmission (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993).
7. See, for example, Kumiko Maekawa,
Narrative and Experience: Innovations in
Thirteenth-Century Picture Books (Frankfurt
am Main: Peter Lang, 2000), or the contribu-
tions by C. Grifth Mann and Kelly M.

Holbert to The Morgan Picture Bible and
the Art of Narrative, in The Book of Kings:
Art, War, and the Morgan Librarys Medieval
Picture Bible, exh. cat., ed. William Noel and
Daniel Weiss (Baltimore: Walters Art Museum,
2002), 39 67, both with additional bibliography. For a brief discussion that focuses on
general considerations rather than particular
cycles of illustration, see Eberhard Knig,
Buchmalerei eine narrative Kunst, in
Mittelalterliche Literatur und Kunst im
Spannungsfeld von Hof und Kloster:
Ergebnisse der Berliner Tagung, 9.11.
Oktober 1997, ed. Nigel F. Palmer and HansJochen Schiewer (Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1999),
141 48.
8. I employ this abbreviated formulation here
to stand, pars pro toto, for the full range of
frequently complicated relationships between
cycles of images and the texts they illustrate.
To cite only two studies that focus on aspects
of these interpretive problems in French and
German traditions, see Stephen G. Nichols,
Ekphrasis, Iconoclasm, and Desire, in
Rethinking the Romance of the Rose: Text,
Image, Reception, ed. Kevin Brownlee and
Sylvia Huot (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1992), 133 66, and
Horst Wenzel and Christina Lechtermann,
eds., Beweglichkeit der Bilder: Text und
Imagination in den illustrierten Handschriften
des Welschen Gastes von Thomasin von
Zerclaere (Cologne: Bhlau, 2002).
9. See, for example, the analyses of some of
the picture cycles by the Limbourg brothers
in the Belles Heures of Jean de Berry: Millard
Meiss, French Painting in the Time of Jean
de Berry: The Limbourgs and Their
Contemporaries, 2 vols. (New York: G.
Braziller, 1974), 112 34.
10. San Marino, The Huntington Library,
HM 1174, for which see C. W. Dutschke,
Guide to Medieval and Renaissance
Manuscripts in the Huntington Library,
2 vols. (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington
Library, 1989), 526 28, g. 143.
11. For the traditions of the Fons pietatis and
the Fons vitae, see Maj-Brit Wadell, Fons
pietatis: Eine ikonographische Studie
(Gteborg: Elanders, 1969), and Ewald M.
Vetter, Die Kupferstiche zur Psalmodia
Eucaristica des Melchor Prieto von 1622
(Mnster: Aschendorff, 1972), 293340.
12. Lille, Muse des Beaux-Arts, inv. no.
P 832; see Wadell, Fons pietatis, 49 51, 119,
no. 76, pl. 41, and color reproduction in
James H. Marrow, Passion Iconography in
Northern European Art of the Late Middle
176
marrow
Ages and Early Renaissance (Kortrijk: Van

Ghemmert, 1979), 84, pl. v.
13. Paris, Bibliothque de lArsenal, Ms. 1185,
for which see Henry Martin, Les Heures de
Boussu et leurs bordures symboliques,
Gazette des Beaux-Arts 52 (1910): 115 38;
F. O. Bttner, Ikonographisches Eigengut
der Randzier in sptmittelalterlichen
Handschriften: Inhalte und Programme,
Scriptorium 39 (1985): 218 26, pl. 23; and
Bttner, Sehen versehen erleben: Besondere
Redaktionen narrativer Ikonographie im
Stundengebetbuch, in Images of Cult and
Devotion: Function and Reception of
Christian Images in Medieval and PostMedieval Europe, ed. Sren Kaspersen
(Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press,
2004), 104 12, 127 28, gs. 10 21.
14. For the problem, see Krieger, Zum
Problem des Illusionismus.
15. Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana,
Ms. Lat. I, 99, for which see Mario Salmi and
Gian Lorenzo Mellini, The Grimani Breviary,
Reproduced from the Illuminated Manuscript
Belonging to the Biblioteca Marciana, Venice
(London: Thames & Hudson, 1972), and
16. Much of this lore was associated by tradition with such classical artists as Zeuxis,
Apelles, and Pheideas and was transmitted
by such writers as Pliny, Quintillian, and
Plutarch. For a discussion of this topic focused
on early Netherlandish painting, see Rudolf
Preimesberger, Zu Jan van Eycks Diptychon
der Sammlung Thyssen-Bornemisza,
Zeitschrift fr Kunstgeschichte 54 (1991):
459 89. Elizabeth Moodey reminds me that
this striking example of trompe loeil on the
page with a portrayal of Saint Luke is the only
instance of this kind of illusionism found in
the Grimani Breviary. See also a small book
of hours illustrated by Simon Bening and
associates in Frankfurt, in which a dragony
is similarly portrayed with transparent wings
extending over text, decorated panel borders,
and part of the outer margin (Frankfurt,
Museum fr Kunsthandwerk, Ms. LM 56,
fol. 17). Signicantly, this occurs once again
on a page with a miniature of Saint Luke, and
it is again the only instance of this kind of
bravura trompe loeil involving text, decorated
border, and margin in the manuscript in which
it appears; see color reproduction in the catalogue of the exhibition at the Stdelsches
Kunstinstitut und Stdtische Galerie, Frankfurt
am Main: Jochen Sander, Die Entdeckung der
Kunst: Niederlndische Kunst des 15. und 16.
Jahrhunderts in Frankfurt (Mainz: P. von

Zabern, 1995), 172, g. 164, 198, no. 25.
17. See the discussion of related notions by
Robert G. Calkins, Sacred Image and Illusion
in Late Flemish Manuscripts, in Essays in
Medieval Studies: Proceedings of the Illinois
Medieval Association 6 (1989): 118, esp.
9 14.
18. For another example of play between text
and image that draws on implicit contrasts
between the two, see the miniature of the
Ascension of Christ added around 1485 by
Jean Colombe of Bourges to the Trs Riches
Heures of Jean de Berry (Chantilly, Muse
Cond, Ms. 65 [1284], fol. 184): Jean
Longnon, Raymond Cazelles, and Millard
Meiss, Les Trs Riches Heures du Duc de
Berry (London: Thames & Hudson, 1969),
pl. 128. On this page, Colombe contrasted an
image of Christ, hovering in the sky anked by
a choir of observing angels and above earthbound, kneeling apostles and other gures,
with a depiction of the text describing the
same event. In pointed contrast to Christs
gure, the text is portrayed not as selfsupporting or miraculously contravening the
laws of this-worldly realities, but as being held
up by supporting gures in the manner of a
banner. In other of the miniatures Colombe
added to the same book (fols. 57, 126, 164,
201; Les Trs Riches Heures, plates nos. 57,
102, 122, 139), he likewise depicted texts on
banners superimposed on miniatures, but
without supporting gures. Through the juxtaposition of visual and textual versions of the
Ascension on this page, Colombe distinguished
between the supernatural character of the
event and the different order of reality embodied in its description in mere words. I cite this
French parallel to developments in Flemish
illumination to stress that the issues I discuss
in this paper are not unique to the Low
Countries. See also Calkins, Sacred Image,
5, 9 10, g. 9, who focuses on other aspects
of Colombes illusionism on this page.
19. Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum,
Ms. Ludwig IX 18, for which see Kren and
414 17, no. 124, and Calkins, Sacred
Image, 2, 6, 12, 13, 14, g. 12.
20. For related notions, see the important
study of Victor I. Stoichita, The Self-Aware
Image: An Insight into Early Modern MetaPainting, trans. Anne-Marie Glasheen
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1997). Stoichita touches on works of late
Flemish illumination but traces developments
of pictorial reexivity and self-consciousness
(what he terms the self-aware image)
primarily in works of easel painting of the

early modern era. His study makes the essential point that developments in Flemish manuscript illumination of the type I have discussed
in this paper are not self-contained, but belong
to broader currents in the history of art.
c h a p t e r 14
One Hundred Years of the Study of Netherlandish Manuscripts
J o n a t h a n J . G . A l ex a n d e r
Within the extraordinary expansion of art-historical

studies as a whole over the last fty years, the growth in the specialized area of
the study of illuminated manuscripts is especially remarkable. The huge critical
and public success of the exhibition Illuminating the Renaissance at both its
venues, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the Royal Academy of
Arts in London, and the scholarly achievement of its magnicent catalogue are
clear evidence of this. When the Royal Academy put on its great exhibition
Flemish Art, 13001700 in the winter of 1953 54, in the gloomy and impoverished atmosphere of the aftermath of the Second World War, the manuscripts
were no more than an appendix to the show.1 They were chosen and described
by Otto Pcht (1902 1988), and his extraordinary knowledge of collections in
the British Isles, both public and private, resulted in the showing of many manuscripts publicly for the rst time that had previously been unknown to scholarship.2 But a typical entry, even for a manuscript as important as the Douce
Hours of Engelbert of Nassau in the Bodleian Library, ran to only fteen lines.
At that time Pcht had only one scholarly rival in the study of Netherlandish book illumination. That was Friedrich Winkler, whose Flmische
Buchmalerei was published in 1925.3 But Winkler was in the main a scholar of
the monumental painting of the Netherlands and Germany. Pchts knowledge
was equally great in that area, but he chose in his long career to place the study
of illuminated manuscripts at least on an equal footing. If you look at his bibliography, manuscript illumination, almost from the beginning, absorbed his
main efforts.4 He liked to point out that for the earlier centuries of the Middle
Ages the history of painting could only be written by studying painting in
books. Throughout his career he sought to demonstrate that in the later Middle
Ages, too, illuminated manuscripts could help to ll the gaps caused by the nonsurvival of monumental artworks, enabling the reconstruction of lost masterpieces and contributing essential information to the study of iconography.5
Erwin Panofsky was a pioneer in considering manuscript illumination as part
of the broader eld of painting, but in 1953 when he published his Norton
Lectures, delivered originally in 194748, as Early Netherlandish Painting he
nevertheless saw illumination only as a prelude the soil, as it were, from
which panel painting sprung.6
For the rst half of the twentieth century the emphasis in manuscript
studies had been on the early Middle Ages and on Byzantine manuscript illumination. The major scholars in the eld Kurt Weitzmann, Carl Nordenfalk,
Hugo Buchthal, and Wilhelm Koehler were all engaged in the main in study
178 alexander
of the early period.7 With the expansion in manuscript studies, that too has
changed. In fact, it is true of the study of medieval art and architecture as a
whole that the main emphasis is now on later periods. In manuscript studies
an especially inuential gure in this development was L. M. J. Delaiss
(1914 1972), a great scholar and charismatic teacher who brought his enthusiasm to the United States, as a visiting scholar, and to England, where he settled in Oxford as a fellow of All Souls College from 1964 to 1972.8 Delaiss
started as a textual scholar in the Bibliothque royale de Belgique in Brussels,
with his work on the manuscript tradition of Thomas Kempis, and he contributed a highly salutary new direction to manuscript studies as he insisted on
the necessity of studying the book as a whole.9 His slogan archologie du
livre warned art historians of the dangers of treating miniatures as little panel
paintings divorced from their physical and textual context. For Delaiss the
careful description of the physical makeup of a book not only was the essential
prelude to study but also contributed invaluable evidence to help decide problems of date, origin, and attribution. He also, in his famous critique of Millard
Meisss aristocratic art history, warned of the dangers of neglecting manuscripts judged to be of lesser aesthetic quality.10 There could be no peaks in the
high mountains, as he liked to stress, unless there were lesser foothills to
support them.
I think one could also use the slogan archologie du livre in
another sense. Manuscripts are hard to nd and hard to access. They have to
be, as it were, excavated from the shelves and sometimes, to be frank, wrested
from the grasp of unwilling custodians. This task of physically nding the materials of our study has also made enormous progress in the last fty years. The
catalogue of the Bodleian collections, which Otto Pcht wrote in Oxford during the Second World War and for the publication of which I had the great good
fortune to be employed, was one landmark in that progress. In the last fty
years the constantly increasing number of exhibitions has played a major part
in this excavation of the unknown, as was clear in Illuminating the Renaissance.
That is as important a role, in my view, as providing the public with a chance
to see inaccessible masterpieces and scholars with the chance to compare originals at close quarters. Now the next generation of scholars can look forward
to a brave new world of virtual reality as illuminated manuscripts spread out
over the World Wide Web, thus offering access to all. Whether there may be
dangers as well as benets from this our successors will have to work out. One
enormous plus is the possibility of color reproduction on a scale so far
undreamt of, though that too, if reproductions are not checked against the originals, can be dangerously misleading.11
Pcht and the scholars on whose work he built and whom he admired,
notably Hermann Julius Hermann in Vienna and Georges Hulin de Loo in
Belgium, had the precious gift of a good eye. It may be that that is a natural
gift, just as some are better at sport than others. But without the training of the
eye and without the discipline of historical study, the good eye, invaluable as
it may be, is limited in its reach. Delaiss was right, in other words, to insist that
art historians of the medieval book must also be masters, or at least rely on the
mastery of others, in a whole range of specialties, both the wider disciplines,
such as medieval history and textual philology, and the more specialized ones,
such as paleography, heraldry, and diplomatic and liturgical studies.
chapter 14: one hundred years of the study of netherlandish manuscripts
Illuminating the Renaissance has shown the necessity of that training

of the eye. I think we might take up for our own special use the concept of
close looking. It would be analogous to the phrase close reading as used
by our colleagues in literary studies. Pcht in fact liked to insist on the art historians greater ability to dene style and to date works of art, pointing to the
literary critics difculty in establishing the canon of Shakespeares works. But
the two skills are very different, needing different training and expertise. Art
historians are sometimes put on the defensive by their failures for example,
in the matter of fakes or by their uncertainties and disagreements for
example, over the Hubert / Jan van Eyck problem. It may indeed be that certain,
even many, art-historical problems are insoluble. Nevertheless we cannot doubt
that we know more about Netherlandish book illumination than was known
even fty years ago, whatever problems remain.12 That has been the result of
fty years of close looking by a whole army of researchers. The sense of
camaraderie in our discipline, the willingness to share information, has been an
essential ingredient in our progress. The catalogue of Illuminating the
Renaissance was a tribute to as well as a justication of the value of close
looking. It is also admirable in its engagement with the kindred and equally
difcult task of putting what the eye sees into words.
I would like to close with a few remarks on future directions, including what I see as some dangers. I want to stress that future work needs something more than a commitment to interdisciplinary studies, however essential
that may be. It also needs to forge a theoretical basis for our studies in order to
create what in 1933 Hans Sedlmayr called a strenge Kunstwissenschaft, a rigorous art history, as Christopher Wood translates the phrase.13 A resistance to
theory an unwillingness, for example, to engage the implications of postmodernism can result only in our particular eld being reduced to a provincial
backwater. One danger of the emphasis on codicology, for example, is its positivist tendency to confuse counting and tabulation with analysis and interpretation. A noteworthy recent development has been the input of conservation in
our eld. Here I am struck by the way a new generation of conservators are
fully involved as art historians in controversy and hypothesis and do not take
refuge in a false appeal to science as a higher form of knowledge. Technical aids
have indeed proved of enormous benet to the task of close looking, but the
results still need interpretation.
Another danger that needs to be theorized is the pervasive legacy of
nineteenth-century nationalism in our discipline. We have to be very careful
about essentializing ethnic or racial difference in the past, not just because it is
historically unjustied but also because that kind of language has played an
important role in modern propaganda. A related danger is the commitment to
teleological narratives, with their triumphalist bent, again something with clear
connections to Western imperialism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Colleagues in other elds increasingly use the term early modern, while we art
historians cling to the term Renaissance. The dreaded R word occurs in the title
of the exhibition under discussion, but what is its meaning in the context of
Netherlandish painting? It may have been thought useful in appealing to a general public, but that seems a patronizing and impoverished reason for using it
in our context of manuscript studies.14 Another inherited classication ripe for
deconstruction is surely the distinction between ne and applied art. Many I
179
180 alexander
have spoken to found the exhibition at each venue totally overwhelming in the
extraordinary level of aesthetic quality. In fact, one of the major achievements
of the scholarship in the exhibitions catalogue has been to break down the
barriers between the painters and the illuminators and show them as porous in
both directions.15
Examining the relations of panel painters and illuminators brings
together in an exemplary way two of the skills I have been trying to emphasize
and shows how necessary they are in combination: the discipline of close looking, which makes attribution possible, and the historical study of records,
which gives us an insight into fteenth-century social and economic organization. In this context theory also necessarily plays its part. Thanks to the feminist movement, with its sophisticated understanding of cultural politics, we
have been forced to recognize our own neglect of women painters, even when
the evidence was there right in front of our noses.16
My last plea is that the project of attribution and classication should
not be allowed to take up all our energies and, in particular, that it should not
get in the way of the study of content. It is not just that, as Delaiss stressed,
these miniatures, borders, and initials embellish texts. That has clearly necessitated an openness to reception theory and an inquiry into how manuscripts and
their illuminations function for the reader, which has been a most valuable
aspect of recent manuscript studies. There is also the question of how images
encapsulate ideologies and aid in the construction of reality for their makers
and users. The task of interpretation is fraught with difculty when we seek
from our vantage point to disentangle the real from the represented, whether
more generally in terms of social or religious practices, for example or
more specicallyfor instance, in the detailed examination of clothing and
fashion. Even if such difcult and complex inquiries are, however, in the last
resort, doomed to failure, I still believe they must be undertaken if our projects
are not to become reductive and impoverished.
chapter 14: one hundred years of the study of netherlandish manuscripts
181
Notes
1. There were sixty-one manuscripts (nos.

555 626). The catalogue was an unassuming
paperback without illustrations and without
an index of the manuscripts. Thomas Kren
and Scot McKendrick, Illuminating the
Manuscript Painting in Europe, exh. cat. (Los
Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003), has
172 catalogue entries. The entry for the Hours
of Engelbert of Nassau (no. 18) lls two pages
and is accompanied by one black-and-white
and four color illustrations.
2. Signicant loans came from two private
collectors: C. W. Dyson Perrins, with eight
manuscripts, and Viscount Lee of Fareham,
with one. The only lender outside England and
Scotland was the Bibliothque nationale de
France in Paris, which lent six manuscripts.
3. Friedrich Winkler, Die mische
Buchmalerei des XV. und XVI. Jahrhunderts:
Knstler und Werke von den Brdern van
Eyck bis zu Simon Bening (Leipzig: E. A.
Seemann, 1925).
4. Jonathan J. G. Alexander, Otto Pcht,
1902 1988, Proceedings of the British
Academy (1991 Lectures and Memoirs) 80
(1993): 453 72. An incomplete bibliography
of Pchts writings can be found in his
Festschrift: Artur Rosenauer and Gerold
Weber, eds., Kunsthistorische Forschungen:
Otto Pcht zu seinem 70. Geburtstag
(Salzburg: Residenz, 1972).
5. Otto Pcht, Knstlerische Originalitt und
ikonographische Erneuerung, in Stil und
berlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes
(Berlin: Mann, 1967), 262 71.
6. Panofsky and Pcht were friends and correspondents. I have no doubt that Panofsky saw
the 1953 54 exhibition in London.
7. The two issues of the Gazette des beauxarts, 6 e pr., 62 (1963), edited by Otto Pcht
and Carl Nordenfalk in honor of Jean Porcher,
provide in effect a roll call of major scholars
working on manuscripts at the time. In addition to those already mentioned, it included
Hans Swarzenski, Otto Homburger, Florentine
Mtherich, Francis Wormald, and Millard
Meiss.
8. Lon Gilissen, In Memoriam L. M. J.
Delaiss (1914 1972), Quaerendo 2, no. 2
(1972): 82 86. Gloria K. Fiero, L. M. J.
Delaiss (1914 1972): An Appreciation,
Quaerendo 9, no. 1 (1979): 69 78. Delaisss
exhibition La Miniature amande: Le Mcnat
de Philippe le Bon: Exposition organise
loccasion du 400 e anniversaire de la fondation de la Bibliothque royale de Philipp II le
12 avril 1559 (Brussels, 1959) was another
epoch-making show. It contained 274 manu-
scripts borrowed from libraries throughout

Europe and the United States. It was crucial
for its new geographical mapping of the manuscript production of the southern
Netherlands and for its application of the term
ofcine to producers of manuscripts of certain
texts, for example, David Aubert. Delaisss
well-known insistence on the greater iconographical originality of illuminated manuscripts from the northern Netherlands came
later; see L. M. J. Delaiss, A Century of
Dutch Manuscript Illumination (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1968).
9. See L. M. J. Delaiss, James Marrow, and
John de Wit, introduction to Illuminated
Manuscripts: The James A. de Rothschild
Collection at Waddesdon Manor (Fribourg:
Published for the National Trust by Ofce du
Livre, 1977), 1320. L. M. J. Delaiss,
Towards a History of the Medieval Book,
Divinitas 11 (1967): 42336.
10. Review of Millard Meiss, French Painting
in the Time of Jean de Berry, pt. 1, The Late
Fourteenth Century and the Patronage of the
Duke (London, 1967), in Art Bulletin 52
(1970): 206 12.
11. Some form of policing to ensure acceptable
standards of color reproduction is highly desirable. Moreover, I do not see how a proper
codicological examination will ever be possible
without examining the manuscript itself. And
I doubt that such recent crucial discoveries as
those of John Lowden in the Bibles moralises
or Michelle Brown in the Lindisfarne Gospels
could have been made through access to a
Web site. See John Lowden, The Making of
the Bibles Moralises (University Park:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000),
and Michelle P. Brown, The Lindisfarne
Gospels: Society, Spirituality, and the Scribe
(London: British Museum, 2003).
12. The extent of our progress in attribution
was strikingly shown at the recent exhibition
at the Muse du Louvre, Paris, Primitifs
franais: Dcouvertes et redcouvertes (2004).
13. Christopher Wood, The Vienna School
Reader: Politics and Art Historical Method in
the 1930s (New York: Zone Books, 2000),
132 79, reprints the text in English translation. Sedlmayr begins by noting that the
antitheoretical scholar . . . overlooks the fact
that he too theorizes implicitly.
14. I plead guilty to a similar title in my exhibition The Painted Page: Italian Renaissance
Book Illumination, 14501550 (Royal
Academy of Arts, London, 1994). But in Italy
the term has a meaning in terms of the recovery of the antique, which was clear in the contents of the exhibition and in the text of the
catalogue. For a defense of the use of the term

Renaissance in the context of northern
European art of the fteenth century see
Marina Belozerskaya, Rethinking the
Renaissance: Burgundian Arts across Europe
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2002). It is, however, not so much the problem of extending the term geographically that
worries me. I have more in mind the problems
of periodicity that have been raised again
recently by Fredric Jameson, in A Singular
Modernity: Essay on the Ontology of the
Present (London: Verso, 2002), referring to
the dialectic of the break and the period
(33) and to the historicizing, narrative trope
of for the rst time (35). Jameson retains the
term Renaissance, however. I thank my colleague Jonathan Hay for referring me to
Jamesons book.
15. See the articles in Illuminating the
Renaissance by Thomas Kren and Maryan
Ainsworth, Artistic Exchanges and
Interrelationships, and by Catherine
Reynolds, Illuminators and the Painters
Guilds. See also Maryan Ainsworth,
Diverse Patterns Pertaining to the Crafts of
Painters and Illuminators: Gerard David and
the Bening Workshop, in Master Drawings
41, no. 3 (2003): 240 65.
16. Alain Arnould, De la production de miniatures de Cornelia van Wulfschkercke au couvent des carmelites de Sion Bruges (Brussels:
Vicariat Gnral des Dominicains, 1998). See
also Jeffrey Hamburgers work in Nuns as
Artists: The Visual Culture of a Medieval
Convent (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1997), and in Krone und Schleier:
Kunst aus mittelalterlichen Frauenklstern,
exh. cat. (Munich: Hirmer; Bonn: Kunstund Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik
Deutschland; Essen: Ruhrlandmuseum, 2005),
which accompanied the pathbreaking exhibition organized by Hamburger and Robert
Suckale.
182 appendix: scribe biographies
Figure A.1
Thierion Anseau, scribe. Vie, passion,
et vengeance de nostre seigneur Jhesu
Christ, ca. 1486 93. Paris, Bibliothque
de lArsenal (Ms. 5206), fol. 174.
Figure A.2
Etienne de Lale, scribe. Hours of Bona
Sforza, leaves, Milan, ca. 1490, and
Ghent, ca. 151721. London, British
Library (Add. Ms. 34294), fol. 61v.
appendix
Scribe Biographies
R i c h a rd G ay
The biographies of Flemish scribes included here are meant to supplement those appearing in the appendix of Illuminating the Renaissance: The
Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe. It is hoped that this body
of vitae will provide the impetus for a more systematic study of Flemish scribes
of the period from around 1467 to 1560, leading in turn to a better understanding of their place in book production.
Thierion Anseau (active ca. 1486 93)
The only known manuscript by Thierion Anseau is a collection of religious texts commissioned by Baudouin II de Lannoy (Paris, Bibliothque de
lArsenal, Mss. 5205, 5206). Illuminated by the Master of Edward IV in Bruges
around 1486 93, the manuscript, which was rebound in two volumes in the
eighteenth century, includes texts by Jacob van Gruytrode and Saint
Bonaventure, as well as Jean Mansels compilation based on the Vita Christi.1
The prologue of the manuscript states that Lannoy ordered the work
and that Thierion Anseau, son [Lannoys] trs humble et petit serviteur et
escripvain, a dilliganment gross ce prsent livre, appell Vita Christ, faicte et
compille par notable clerc nomm Jehan Mansel, homme lay, lors demourant
a Hesdin en Artois.2 It continues by explaining that other devotional texts
were added.
Anseaus elegant bastarda is pleasing to the eye and contains some
interesting characteristics (g. a.1). The vertical strokes of his s and f that
descend below the line are noticeably his broadest or thickest strokes. His letter l and the ascenders on his b and h frequently form distinct bows. The h
ascender at times loops downward to the right and back upon itself, creating a
bow that echoes the angle of the downward stoke of the letters hump, which
descends below the line and toward the left. Infrequently but distinctively when
located at the beginning of a word, the bow of the letter d remains extremely
open, the lower left stroke being nearly horizontal. Moreover, the addition of a
hairline stroke extends the open bow below the line. Overall the precise use of
lead-in and hairline strokes creates a regular appearance that remains legible
without difculty.
Etienne de Lale (active ca. 1517)
The household accounts of Margaret of Austria (1480 1530) record
payment on July 14, 1517, to Etienne de Lale for having written several parchment leaves to complete an Italian book of hours once belonging to the late
Bonne de Millan.3 That book is now identied as the Hours of Bona

Sforza.4 Approximately two years later Gerard Horenbout was hired to
complete the manuscripts decoration, and by 1521 he had engaged an
unnamed scribe in Brussels to supplement the book further.5
From the household account we learn that de Lale was a servant
to Jehan Lalemand, Margarets secretary, and that he received 20 livres for
his work, which included rewriting missing pages and perhaps collating
the manuscript. He also received 3 livres 10 solz as reimbursement for
parchment and other supplies. Bodo Brinkmann, in his discussion of the
manuscripts campaigns, notes that de Lales work appears to be that of a
chancellery clerk struggling with the formal script.6 Indeed, the texts on
the reverse of miniatures by Horenbout often lack the rhythmic spacing
and condent line expected of one procient with the script (g. a.2).
These qualities might perhaps also be the result of the scribe striving to
match the Italianate script already present in the manuscript.7
Figure A.3
Gratianus, scribe. Book of Hours, 1533.
New York, Morgan Library, Ms. M.491,
fol. 36.
Gratian (Gratianus; active ca. 1533)

Inscriptional evidence indicates that F. Gratian of Brussels transcribed a book of hours for Emperor Charles V now in the Morgan
Library: F. Gratianus Brux: Cap[ellanus]: haec scripsit.8 Illuminated by
the Master of Morgan m.491 and the circle of the Master of Charles V,
the manuscript is dated 15339 and perhaps was transcribed from the
prayer book made for Charles V that is now in Vienna (sterreichische
Nationalbibliothek, Ms. 1895). The manuscripts contain almost identical
texts in a nearly identical sequence.10 The even and somewhat rounded letterforms of the hybrida found in the Morgan manuscript provide a visually attractive yet easily readable script (g. a.3). Notable is the rather small ascender of
the letter d.
The manuscript includes an alleged portrait of Charles Vs chaplain
(fol. 35 v).11 It is assumed that Charles presented the manuscript to his chaplain
as a gift and that his portrait, shown in devotion opposite an image of the
Virgin and child enthroned, may have been added as an afterthought.12 Since
the inscription in M.491 uses an abbreviated form of the word capellanus, indicating that Gratian was a cleric working in the royal chapel in Brussels,13 it
seems possible that the depicted chaplain could actually be the books scribe.
Further examination of Charless correspondence may allow for more precise
identication of the scribe.14
Nothing further is known about Gratian. It is interesting, however,
that Philip II (15271598), the son and heir of Charles V, had a secretary
named Gracian. In a letter dated February 24, 1577, to Philip from Juan
de Zuniga in Rome, Gracian is mentioned has having sent information
to Zuniga.15 One might conclude that Charles Vs book of hours is an early
work by the man who later became Philips secretary or perhaps by one of
his relatives.
appendix: scribe biographies
Thin Descender Scribe (active ca. 1500 1520)

Named after a distinguishing element of his elegant bastarda
script,16 this anonymous scribe was active early in the sixteenth century. His work is identiable by characteristic letterforms; his v, d, and g
are distinctive (g. a.4).17 The rst two have gracefully arching elements: the initial stoke of the letter v (particularly when it begins a word
but inconsistently applied) and the somewhat pronounced and leftwardarching diagonal ascender of the d. The descender of the g provides the
elegantly thin and somewhat horizontal and lengthy stroke for which
the scribe is named. Of the three letters, the g most consistently displays
its distinctive trait. It is the combination of the three letterforms, however, that signals the scribes work, since these letterforms, especially the
v and the d, appear in scripts by other sixteenth-century scribes.
The scribes oeuvre consists of manuscripts associated with the
script of a book of hours illuminated by the Master of the David Scenes
in the Grimani Breviary produced around 1515 20 (Oxford, Bodleian
Library, Ms. Douce 112). Leslie Macfarlane attributed ve other manuscripts to the scribe of that manuscript, and Brinkmann six, but they
agree on only three: Ms. Douce 112; Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Ms.
78 B 15; and Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, Ms. 1058-1975.18 These
manuscripts are indeed by the same hand, and to them can be added, as
rightly noted by Macfarlane,19 the Hours of James the IV of Scotland
(Vienna, sterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Ms. 1897).20
Current scholarship indicates that the scribes actual name may
soon be conrmed. Macfarlane identied him as Iohannes de Bomalia, the
name written at the end of a prayer commemorating All Saints in the Hours of
James IV of Scotland.21 Confusion has arisen because of the existence of two
individuals of that name: an inquisitor and Dominican professor in Louvain
who died in 1477, well before the production of that manuscript around
1502 3,22 and a Dominican priest active in Bruges between 1489 and 1499.23
The latter is a possible candidate for the Thin Descender Scribe. Recently Lieve
de Kesel proposed a different identication for the scribe in her work on Berlin
Ms. 78 B 15, which MacFarlane, Brinkmann, and I attribute to the scribe under
discussion here.24 De Kesel implies that a Bruges scribe, Hanskin de Bomalia, a
Dominican who signed two books of hours (The Hague, Museum MeermannoWestreenianum, Ms. 10 E 3, and another formerly in the Rodocanachi collection), might be the scribe of Berlin Ms. 78 B 15.25 She recognizes small differences between the Berlin and Oxford manuscripts and acknowledges that
further study may permit the identication of the scribe of Berlin Ms. 78 B 15
with greater certainty.26
A localization of the scribe also presents challenges, but he was most
likely active in Ghent or Bruges, given that manuscripts by him were illuminated by artists linked with those cities. The Master of James IV, who illuminated the kings hours now in Vienna, is associated with Ghent. His likely
pupil, the Master of the David Scenes, can be linked to both cities,27 while the
Master of the Prayer Books of around 1500, the artist of Berlin Ms. 78 B 15, is
associated with Bruges. Bruges, however, seems the most likely locale given
that both Jan de Bomalia and Hanskin de Bomalia have been localized to
that city.28
185
Figure A.4
Thin Descender Scribe. Book of Hours.
Berlin, Staatliche Museen Preuischer
Kulturbesitz, Kupferstichkabinett Ms. 78
B 15, fol. 77.
Figure A.5
Francis Weert, scribe. Psalter and
Antiphonary, 1522. London, British
Library, Add. Ms. 15426, fol. 53.
Francis Weert (active ca. 1520 39)

Active in Louvain, the professional scribe Francis Weert
produced manuscripts for a number of inuential patrons, including Marcus Cruyt, abbot of Saint-Bernard-sur-lEscaut in
Hemiksem, near Antwerp. Around 1524 he transcribed for Cruyt
the luxurious Arenberg Missal, which is written in an elegant textura script and illuminated by an artist most likely active in
Antwerp, the associate of the Master of Cardinal Wolsey (private
collection).29 Around the same time, Weert also produced a prayer
book for the abbots personal use, which includes a portrait of
Cruyt and the abbots coat of arms (Bornem, Sint-Bernardusabdij,
Ms. 9). That prayer book, along with another manuscript, is mentioned in the abbeys chronicle as having been written by Franciscus
van Weert of Louvain around 1524.30
Weert also worked for at least two Premonstratensian
abbeys. For the rst, the Abbey of Tongerloo in Brabant, he produced in 1522 a two-volume Latin psalter and antiphonary
(London, British Library, Add. Ms. 15426 27; g. a.5).31 An
inscription identies the patron, Abbot Anthonius Tsgrooten de
Oesterwck (d. 1530), and informs us that Weert resided in
Louvain.32 A few years later, in 1525, he transcribed and signed a
processional for the Premonstratensian Abbey of Parc, near
Louvain.33 According to Jonathan Alexander and Elzbieta Temple,
Weert also transcribed for the abbey an epistolary (Oxford, Ms. Douce 200)
whose eighteenth-century binding displays the abbeys arms, albeit virtually
erased.34 For the abbeys twenty-fth abbot, Ambrosius de Angelis, a native of
Louvain, where Weert resided in 1522, the scribe produced at least three manuscripts: a missal dated 1521 (Oxford, Wadham College, Ms. A.7.8);35 a psalter
(Brussels, Bibliothque royale de Belgique, Ms. 11556);36 and a missal dated
1539 that may have been produced in Brabant (Brussels, Bibliothque royale,
Ms. II 2347).37
The colophon of the 1539 missal gives the scribes name as
Franciscum Montfordium a Weert.38 Today Ambt Montfort is a town eighteen miles southeast of Weert, both located in Limburg province, the
Netherlands. The scribe may have been from Montfort originally but relocated
and adopted the name of the larger city. The reference to Montfort appears
only in the 1539 inscription, however, suggesting that the scribes association
with that town may have occurred later in life, after he had lived in Louvain
in 1522.39
His evenly spaced textura is easily readable, with distinct separation
between words (see g. a.5). The letterforms, however, retain rather Gothic
characteristics, such as the rhythmic repetition of feet; broad, somewhat heavy
strokes; and an angularity in the letters with bows. This conservatism applied
to varying degrees seems appropriate given his clientele. It appears that Weert
specialized in works for religious houses that turned to professional scribes; all
of his identied manuscripts were produced for abbeys or for personal use by
their abbots.
187
Notes
Since the publication of Nicolas Spierinc's

biography in Thomas Kren and Scot
Getty Museum, 2003), 520 21, another manuscript by his hand has been identied by
Catherine Reynolds: a book of hours whose
illumination was inuenced by both Lieven
van Lathem and Simon Marmion (Christie's,
London, June 2, 2004, lot 14). The author
would like to thank Scot McKendrick,
Elizabeth Morrison, and Thomas Kren
for their guidance and assistance with
bibliography.
1. For more on the manuscripts contents, see
Scot McKendrick, in Kren and McKendrick,
Illuminating the Renaissance, 340 41, no. 97;
Henry Martin, Catalogue des manuscrits de la
Bibliothque de lArsenal, vol. 5 (Paris, 1889),
152 54.
2. Paris, Bibliothque de lArsenal, Ms. 5205,
fol. F, as cited in Martin, Catalogue des manuscrits, vol. 5, 154.
3. Matre Jehan de Marnix . . . nous vous
ordonnons que payez . . . a Etienne de Lale,
serviteur de nostre scrtaire maistre Jehan
Lalemand, la somme de xx livres . . . pour
payement et rcompense de sy payne et labeur
davoir . . . escript plusieurs fuilletz en
perchemin, servant nos heures, faictes a la
mode et a painctures ytaliques que avons eu
de feue madame Bonne de Millan. . . . Et payez
aussi au dict Estienne la somme de trois livres
10 solz quil nous a afferm avoir desbours
pour le parchemin servant ausdicts fuilletz,
pour la reiglure et coppure diceulx comme
appartenoit . . . Marguerite (Lille, Archives
dpartementales du Nord, srie B 19617, nos.
44063 64). The transcription here is abridged
from Mark L. Evans and Bodo Brinkmann,
The Sforza Hours, Add. Ms. 34294 of the
British Library, London (Lucerne: Faksimile
Verlag, 1995), 834 35. An excerpt of the
account was published by R. Flower,
Margaret of Austria and the Sforza Book,
British Museum Quarterly 10 (1935 36):
100 102. Flower credits Paul Wescher with
rst noting the domestic accounts associated
with the Sforza Hours.
5. Brinkmann, in Evans and Brinkmann,
Sforza Hours, 52122, 836.
6. Brinkmann, in Evans and Brinkmann,
Sforza Hours, 522.
7. I thank Scot McKendrick for this
observation.
8. New York, Morgan Library, Ms. M.491,

fol. 266 v; Kren and McKendrick, Illuminating
the Renaissance, no. 166.
9. The manuscript is dated on folio 18 v.
10. On the connections between the two manuscripts, see Elizabeth Morrison, in Kren and
495 98.
11. See Morrison, in Kren and McKendrick,
Illuminating the Renaissance, 498 n. 9. The
identication of the cleric with a member of
the Pot family has been questioned.
12. Morrison, in Kren and McKendrick,
13. See Capellanus, in J. F. Niermayer,
Mediae latinitatis lexicon minus:
Abbreviationes et index fontium (Leiden:
E. J. Brill, 1993), 13132.
14. Suggested by Scot McKendrick.
15. The link to the secretary Gracian is suggested in the notes on the manuscript held at
the Morgan Library. In the letter, Juan de
Zuniga mentions Despues que el secretario
Gracian me embio las cartas y papeles sobre lo
del tabernaculo, que ciertos mercaderes aqui
hizieron por un designo de Michael Angelo.
For a complete transcription, see Rudolf Beer,
cten, Regesten und Inventare aus dem
Archivo General zu Simancas, Jahrbuch der
Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des
Allerhchsten Kaiserhauses 12 (1891): cxcvii.
16. Morrison, in Kren and McKendrick,
17. Leslie Macfarlane, The Book of Hours of
James IV and Margaret Tudor, Innes Review
11 (1960): 16; Bodo Brinkmann, Die
Flmische Buchmalerei am Ende des
(Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), 323. Neither
Macfarlane nor Brinkmann identify the scribe
as the Thin Descender Scribe.
18. Macfarlane, Book of Hours, 16.
Macfarlane attributed to the scribe: Hours of
James IV of Scotland (Vienna, sterreichische
Nationalbibliothek, Ms. 1897); four other
books of hours (Oxford, Bodleian Library,
Ms. Douce 112; Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett,
Ms. 78 B 15; Dyson Perrins Ms. 105 [now
Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, Ms. 10581975]; and another one formerly in the
Durrieu collection [Paul Durrieu, La
Miniature amande au temps de la cour de
Bourgogne (14151530), 2nd ed. (Paris: G.
van Oest, 1927), pl. lxxxvii]). Brinkmann, on
the other hand, associates seven manuscripts
with the scribe: three books of hours (Oxford,
Bodleian Library, Ms. Douce 112; Berlin,
Staatsbibliothek, Ms. 78 B 15; and
Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, Ms. 10581975); the Prayer Book of Charles V (Vienna,
sterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Ms.
1859); Brussels, Bibliothque royale de
Belgique, Ms. IV 280; a manuscript that sold
at Sothebys in 1952; and Neuchtel,
Bibliothque publique et universitaire, Ms.
A.F.A.28 (Brinkmann, Flmische Buchmalerei,
text vol., 323).
19. Macfarlane, Book of Hours, 16.
20. Unfortunately I cannot make further
assessments of MacFarlane's and Brinkmann's
attributions, having no access to the manuscripts under discussion.
21. Macfarlane, Book of Hours, 16. Otto
Pcht and Jonathan J. G. Alexander
(Illuminated Manuscripts in the Bodleian
Library, Oxford [Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1966], vol. 1, no. 396) perpetuated this notion
and identied the scribe of Douce 112 as
Johannes de Bomalia as well.
22. Franz Unterkircher, Das Gebetbuch Jakobs
IV. von Schottland und seiner Gemahlin,
Margaret Tudor: Vollstndige Faksimileausgabe im Originalformat des Codex 1897
der sterreichischen Nationalbibliothek
Wien: Kommentarband (Vienna: Akademische
Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1987), 25; and Lieve
de Kesel, Almost Restored: The Hours of
Archduchess Isabella Clara Eugenia, Berlin,
Kupferstichkabinett, 78 B 15, Jahrbuch der
Berliner Museen 43 (2001): 114. I thank Scot
McKendrick for informing me of de Kesels
work on Bomalia. Unterkircher was unaware
that a second Bomalia was located in Bruges
and refuted MacFarlanes attribution.
23. Broeder Jan van Bomale, Heer Ian
Bommalia, and Heer Ian Bomalia, are
found in the Bruges records of 1489, 1492,
and 1499 (see W. H. James Weale,
Documents indits sur les enlumineurs de
Bruges, Le Beffroi 4 [1872 73]: 318, 322,
329, 332). These records are cited in detail in
de Kesel, Almost Restored, 113, no. 28.
24. De Kesel, Almost Restored, 113. De
Kesel refers to the scribe not as the Thin
Descender Scribe, but as the scribe responsible for the group of manuscripts under
discussion here.
25. De Kesel, Almost Restored, 113. Alfons
W. Biermann (Die Miniaturen-Handscriften
des Kardinals Albrecht von Brandenburg
[1514 1545], Aachener Kunstbltter 46
[1975]: 37, n. 147) identies Hanskin de
Bomalia as a Dominican located in Bruges.
26. De Kesel, Almost Restored, 113. De
Kesel also notes that similarities between the
scripts of Berlin Ms. 78 B 15 and of Brussels
Ms. IV 280 are obvious and numerous.
188
I have not had the opportunity to study the

Brussels manuscript.
27. See Thomas Kren, in Kren and
366 76, and Morrison, Kren and
383 84.
28. Biermann, Miniaturen-Handscriften,
37, 268 69 n. 147. See also de Kesel, Almost
Restored, 113 n. 28.
29. See Morrison, in Kren and McKendrick,
Illuminating the Renaissance, 509 10, and
The Jaime Ortiz-Patio Collection of
Important Books and Manuscripts, sale cat.,
Sothebys, New York, April 21, 1998, lot 186.
30. Bornem, Archief van de Abdif, Ms. 228,
p. 52, and Ms. 229, pp. 7 8. See M. Sabbe,
M. Lamberigts, and F. Gistelinck, eds.,
Bernardus en de Cistercinzerfamilie in Belgi,
10901990, exh. cat. (Louvain: Bibliotheek
van de Faculteit der Godgeleerdheid, 1990),
460 62; Maurits Smeyers and Jan Van der
Stock, eds., Flemish Illuminated Manuscripts,
14751550, exh. cat. (Ghent: Ludion Press,
1996), no. 15; and Jaime Ortiz-Patio
Collection, lot 186.
31. I thank Scot McKendrick for bringing this
manuscript to my attention. For an example of
the books illumination, see Scot McKendrick,
Flemish Illuminated Manuscripts, 14001550
(London: British Library, 2003), 142 43.
See also Andrew G. Watson, Catalogue of
Dated and Datable Manuscripts c. 7001600
in the Department of Manuscripts, the British
Museum (London: British Library, 1979),
vol. 1, 43, no. 130, vol. 2, pl. 907; John
William Bradley, Dictionary of Miniaturists,
Illuminators, Calligraphers, and Copyists with
References to Their Works and Notices of
Their Patrons from the Establishment of
Christianity to the Eighteenth Century (New
York: Franklin, 1958), vol. 3, 404 5; and the
British Library Manuscript Catalogue at
http://www.bl.uk /catalogues/manuscripts/HIT
S0001.ASP?VPath=c!/inetpub/wwwroot /mss/
data/msscat /html /12991.htm&Search=Add.+1
5426.&Highlight=F.
32. . . . istud Psalterium scribi fecit
Reverendus Pater Dns Anthonius Tsgrooten,
de Oesterwyck Abbas modernus hijus monasterii Tongerlensis ordinis premonstratensis.
Per franciscum weert scriptorem lovanii
residentem. Anno verbi incarnate mccccc
xxii. Mensis martii die xxii nit feliciter. As
cited in Bradley, Dictionary of Miniaturists,
vol. 3, 405.
33. Brussels, Bibliothque royale, Ms. IV 1253.
See Jaime Ortiz-Patio Collection, lot 186
(this manuscript was not part of the sale but is
cited in the catalogue). The processional sold

at Sothebys, London, July 3, 1984, lot 53.
34. Jonathan J. G. Alexander and Elzbieta
Temple, Illuminated Manuscripts in Oxford
College Libraries, the University Archives, and
the Taylor Institution (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1985), 82, no. 826. See also Pcht and
Alexander, Illuminated Manuscripts, vol. 1,
29, no. 391. The erasure of the arms probably
happened in 1829, when the abbeys library
was sold in Louvain. See also E. Van
Balberghe, Les Critres de provenance des
manuscrits de Parc, in Contribution lhistoire des bibliothques et de la lecture aux
Pays-Bas avant 1600 (Brussels: Bibliothque
royale, 1974).
35. Alexander and Temple, Illuminated
Manuscripts, 82, no. 826. There seems to be
some confusion about the manuscripts shelf
mark. It may be A.14.12 per les on record in
the Manuscript Department, J. Paul Getty
Museum.
36. Bernard Bousmanne, in Smeyers and Van
der Stock, Flemish Illuminated Manuscripts,
177.
37. Bousmanne, in Smeyers and Van der Stock,
Flemish Illuminated Manuscripts, 176 77,
no. 27.
38. Hanc missalis hiemalis partem scribi fecit
reverendus pater dominus Ambrosius de
Angelis, abbas huius monasterij Parchensis.
Per Franciscum Montfordium a Weert. Anno
xvc xxxix (Brussels, Bibliothque royale,
Ms. II 2347, fol. 1), as cited by Bousmanne,
in Smeyers and Van der Stock, Flemish
Illuminated Manuscripts, 176. Bousmanne
notes that the scribes name also appears frequently in the archives.
39. Scot McKendrick kindly informed me
that a Thomas Kempis manuscript in the
Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge sale catalogue
of May 18, 1874 (lot 3153), associates Weert
with Monfort: Thomas a Kempis De
Imitatione Christi: et S. Bonaventurae Liber
Aureus De Vita Christi, Scripti per Franciscum
Montfordiae de Weert, Lovanii, 1530 31
Devotissimus Libellus de Vita et Beneciis
Salvatoris Jesu Christi cum Meditationibus et
Gratiarum Actione, completus per me
Franciscum de Weert, 1555 De Modo preliandi contra octo Vicia principaliaArs
Moriendi Carmen in Laudem gloriosae
Virginis Mariae Carmen de venerabili
Sacramento. Manuscript with name of scribe
and date, calf extra, g.e. in the old style. Small
4to. Saec. xvi (1530 55). McKendrick suspects that the date 1555 was a misreading of
1535, but the manuscripts current location is
unfortunately unknown.
189
About the Contributors

Jonathan Alexander is Sherman Fairchild Professor of Fine Arts at the Institute of
Fine Arts, New York University, where he teaches medieval art history. His special
area of interest is manuscript illumination of the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
His most recent books are Studies in Italian Manuscript Illumination (2002)
and The Towneley Lectionary Illuminated for Cardinal Alessandro Farnese by
Giulio Clovio (1997). He is now working on a book tentatively titled Italian
Renaissance Illumination c. 1450 1600.
Chystle Blondeau received her Ph.D. in the history of art from the University of
Paris X (Nanterre) in 2003 with a dissertation on representations of Alexander the
Great at the Burgundian court. She specializes in secular iconography, issues of
patronage, and the links between art and power. She teaches medieval art history
at the University of Paris X (Nanterre) and elsewhere.
Stephanie Buck received her Ph.D. from the Freie Universitt Berlin in 2000, and
is currently adjunct professor at FU-BEST, Berlin, and a Getty fellow at the FriedrichAlexander Universitt Erlangen-Nrnberg. She has contributed to a critical catalogue of fifteenth-century Netherlandish drawings in the Kupferstichkabinett,
Berlin (2001), and to an exhibition of fteenth- and sixteenth-century German
drawings at the Graphische Sammlung, Stdel, Frankfurt am Main (2004).
Lorne Campbell is George Beaumont Senior Research Curator at the National
Gallery, London. His many publications include National Gallery Catalogues: The
Fifteenth Century Netherlandish Schools (1998) and Renaissance Portraits (1990).
Gregory T. Clark is professor of art history at the University of the South in
Sewanee, Tennessee. He has published numerous studies on French and southern
Netherlandish manuscript illumination of the fifteenth century. His most recent
book is The Spitz Master: A Parisian Book of Hours (2003).
Richard Gay is assistant professor of art history at the University of North
Carolina, Pembroke. Formerly assistant curator of manuscripts at the J. Paul Getty
Museum, he helped prepare the exhibition and contributed to the publication of
Europe (2003). His special interest is French manuscript illumination, and he has
published previously on Flemish scribes.
James H. Marrow is professor emeritus of art history at Princeton University,
senior research associate at the Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books at
the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, and Honorary Keeper of Illuminated
Manuscripts at The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. He has worked extensively on the art of the Low Countries and Germany during the late Middle Ages,
with particular focus on illuminated manuscripts and questions of meaning in
works of religious art.
190
Elizabeth Morrison is associate curator in the Department of Manuscripts at

the J. Paul Getty Museum. She is a specialist in French Gothic and Flemish
Renaissance manuscript illumination, has curated numerous exhibitions at the
Getty Museum, and is a contributor to Illuminating the Renaissance. She is currently working on French history manuscripts in the vernacular.
Catherine Reynolds, formerly a lecturer in art history at the universities of
Reading and London, is currently a consultant on manuscripts for Christies,
London. Her publications include contributions to Illuminating the Renaissance
and to other books on Robert Campin, Jan van Eyck, and Hans Memling.
Margaret Scott first studied classics at the University of Glasgow, and then the
history of dress at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, where
she specialized in dress in northern Europe in the fifteenth century. Between
1999 and 2004 she taught at the Courtauld; she now works freelance. She
has published books and articles on late medieval dress, and has recently completed a book for the British Library on dress in illuminated manuscripts.
Nancy K. Turner is associate conservator of manuscripts in the Department of
Paper Conservation at the J. Paul Getty Museum, where she has cared for the
collection since 1984. Her areas of special interest include the technical study
of painting techniques and materials of Western illuminated medieval and
Renaissance manuscripts. Among her publications is an essay on the painting
techniques of Jean Bourdichon in A Masterpiece Reconstructed: The Hours of
Louis XII (2005).
Jan Van der Stock is director of Illuminare: Centre for the Study of the
Illuminated Manuscript at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. He has
organized several major exhibitions on manuscript illumination, including
Flemish Illuminated Manuscripts 1475-1550 (St. Petersburg, Florence, and
Antwerp, 1996 97) and Medieval Mastery: Book Illumination from
Charlemagne to Charles the Bold (8001475) (Leuven, 2002). His publications
focus primarily on printmaking.
Dominique Vanwijnsberghe is project leader at the Royal Institute for Cultural
Heritage in Brussels and a member of Illuminare Center for the Study of the
Illuminated Manuscript (Leuven). He is a specialist of late medieval art in the
Southern Netherlands. His book on miniature painting in Tournai at the time
of Robert Campin (1380 1430) is in press.
Lieve Watteeuw is scientific collaborator in the conservation graphic documents
at the Royal Institute for the Study and Conservation of Belgiums Artistic
Heritage, Brussels; and Illuminare: Centre for the Study of the Illuminated
Manuscript, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium.
191
I n d ex
Note: Page numbers in italics refer to
Aurispa, Giovanni, 29
Bomalia, Hanskin de, 185, 186, 187n.25
illustrations.
Averbode Abbey, 119
Bomalia, Iohannes de, 185
Abel, 157
Baillet, Laurence, 140
Bonaventure, Saint, 183
acrostics, 1
Baltimore, Walters Art Museum:
books of hours. See also specic books
Bomalia, Jan de, 186
Afonso (prince of Portugal), 119 20
Ms. w.172 (Hours of Jan Eggert), 13
parchment used for, 75 76
Ahab, 157
Ms. w.435 (book of hours), 137, 138
restoration of, 79
Aimon de Varennes, 28
Banquet of the Peacock, 36, 37
Alexander the Great, 27 39
Banquet of the Pheasant, 35
Borluut family, 5
dress of, 48
Beauneveu, Andr, 108
Bosch, Hieronymus, 157
in Faicts et conquestes, 28, 30, 3137, 32,
Belle, Catharina, 7n.11
Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum:
33, 34, 36, 37
Belle, Yolande, 1
with undecorated margins, 13 14
Ms. 4 (book of hours), 144, 144
in Philip the Goods collections, 27 29
Bellegambe, Jean, 167, 167
Boulogne, Hue de, 87
religious views of, 35, 38, 42n.58
Bening, Simon, 69, 70, 71, 77, 78
Boulogne, Jacqueline de, 136, 136
in tapestries, 27, 29, 31, 31, 38, 38 39, 39,

41n.28
Altenburg, Germany, Staatliches LindenauMuseum:
inv. no. 186 (miniature from a book of
hours), 158, 159, 160
in Grimani Breviary, 153
Boulogne, Jean de, 87
in Hennessy Hours, 76 77, 77, 78
Boussu Hours, 168, 168, 169
materials used by, 76 77
Bouts, Dirk, 5
in Munich-Montserrat Hours, 70, 71
Brethren of the Common Life, 119
in Prayer Book of Cardinal Albrecht,
breviaries. See also specic breviaries
68 71, 69
Amiens, 147n.48
vs. Simon the Illuminator, 121
Andrew, Saint, 35, 41n.51, 152, 152
technique of, 57, 68 72
parchment used for, 75 76

restoration of, 79
Brievere, Anne de, 1
Angelis, Ambrosius de, 186
Berlaymont Hours, 63, 63
brocading, 45, 54n.11
animals
Bruges
in Chroniques de Hainaut, 94, 95, 96

fur of, in clothing, 48, 51, 52
in Hours of Engelbert of Nassau, 113 14
skins of, for parchment, 75 76, 83n.5
Kulturbesitz, Kupferstichkabinett:
Ms. 78 b 12 (Hours of Mary of Burgundy
and Maximilian), 53, 53
Ms. 78 b 14 (book of hours), 104, 104 5
Annales Hannoniae (Guise), 32
Ms. 78 b 15 (book of hours), 185, 185 86
Anseau, Thierion, 182, 183
Fourteen Male Heads (Master of the First
Anthony of Burgundy, 15
Prayer Book of Maximilian [?]), 108,
Antiochus, 155
11113, 112
Antipater, 31
Antwerp, Museum Mayer van den Bergh:
inv. 946 (Mayer van den Bergh Breviary),
76, 79, 80, 81
The Visitation (Lorenzo Monaco), 105, 106

Confraternity of Saint John in, 120, 140,

142, 143
Markant in, 135, 140, 145
Master of Edward IV in, 141, 143, 144
Thin Descender Scribe in, 185 86
Bruges, Cathedral of the Holy Savior:
Saint Hippolytus Triptych (Goes), 4, 5
Brukenthal Breviary, 150 51, 151, 161n.7 8
brush strokes
by Bening, 69, 71
Kulturbesitz, Staatsbibliothek:
by David, 64
Ms. a 74 (Liber Picturatus), 106, 107
by Eyck (Jan van), 58 59
Bernardus, Goswin, 119
by Marmion, 62 63
on collaboration, 117 21
Berthe, 88
by Master of James IV, 66
on drawing, 105, 107
Berthoz, Hippolyte de, 4, 5
materials and, 77
on materials preparation, 78
Bible
archival sources
on restoration, 79 82
Hours of Engelbert of Nassau and, 113
Arenberg Missal, 186
Master of the David Scenes and, 149 60
Arthurian legends, 27 28
restoration of, 81
attribution
Biblia Pauperum, 151, 162n.45
collaboration and, 117 18
bindings, restoration of, 79 81
of drawings, 109 13
Blackburn, Blackburn Museum and Art
focus of research on, 179, 180

Aubert, David, 14, 16 17, 28, 40n.8
Gallery:
Hart Ms. 20884 (Blackburn Hours),
140 41, 141
by Weyden, 95 96
Brussels
plan of, 100
Weyden in, 87 88
Brussels, Bibliothque royale de Belgique:
Ms. 7 (Histoire de Charles Martel), 14, 14,
15 16
Ms. 9242 (Chroniques de Hainaut), 88, 88,
89, 89 100, 90, 91, 93, 94, 96
192
index
Ms. 9243 (Chroniques de Hainaut), 9, 10,

14 15
Ms. 9392 (Epistre dOtha), 16, 17, 18
Ms. 10958 (Vie et miracles de Saint Josse),
11, 11, 16, 19
Ms. ii 158 (Hennessy Hours), 76 77, 77,
78, 84n.15
Ms. ii 7605 (book of hours), 137 38, 139,
146n.1
Brussels, Muse dArt ancien:
Job Altarpiece (Orley), 149
materials used in, 76, 83n.12
Damian (bookbinder), 121
Weyden (Rogier van der) in, 88, 88, 89,
Daret, Jacques, 87
89 100, 90, 91, 93, 94, 96
David, Gerard, 64, 65
Chroniques de Jrusalem, 81, 88 89
in Grimani Breviary, 153
Church of Our Lady (Antwerp), 79, 119
in Hours of Margaretha van Bergen, 64,
Church of Sainte Marguerite (Tournai), 87

Church of Saint James (Brussels), 87 88
Church of Saint James (Ghent), 81
64 65, 65
technique of, 57, 64 65, 69, 72, 74n.27
The Virgin and Child (oil), 64 65, 65
clothes. See dress
Desbat dhonneur (Milot), 29, 39
cloths of gold, 45 52
Le Dialogue de la duchesse de Bourgogne
coats of arms, 1, 3, 7n.6
Jsus Christ (Finet), 45, 45
Bryde, Joos, 1
codicology, 164, 179
Dialogue of the Dead, 29
Bryde, Roeland, 1, 7n.9
collaboration
dogs, 94, 95, 96
archival sources on, 117 21
Donche, Jacques, 14 15
Cain, 157
by Markant, 145
doublets, 48
Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum:
by Master of Fitzwilliam 268, 123, 132
drapery, 58 60, 62, 64, 66, 109
Ms. 268 (book of hours), 123, 130, 130,

131, 131 32
Colombe, Jean, 176n.18

colors
drawing (technique), 103 14

meanings of term, 103
Campin, Robert, 87
availability of, 77 78
Candace (queen of Macedon), 31
in images of dress, 48 50, 51
Casus, Jan, 119, 120
in technique, 58, 60, 61 62, 66, 69
attribution of, 109 13
Catalogus abbatum Bertiniensium, 12, 13
undecorated margins and, 13 14
combined with illuminations, 104, 113 14
Cennini, Cennino, 105, 107
in work of Weyden (Rogier van der), 92
as illuminations, 104, 105 8
underdrawing, 60 61, 103, 104 5

drawings, 103 14
Csar, Jean, 140, 146n.13
Commynes, Philippe de, 43, 48, 52
as models, 104, 108 13
chalk, 76, 83n.6
Confraternity of the Holy Cross, 87 88
preservation of, 103
Chapter of Our Lady (Antwerp), 81
Confraternity of Saint John the Evangelist,
Charlemagne, 16, 27
Charles V (Holy Roman emperor), 120, 136,
184
Charles the Bold (duke of Burgundy)
120, 140, 142, 143

conservation
archival sources on, 75 82
and modern research, 179
techniques of, 103

dress
cost of, 43, 51
gold in, 44 53
in image of Charles the Bold, 43 53
Alexander the Great and, 27
Constantinople, fall of, 35
du Clercq, Jacques, 48
in Chroniques de Hainaut, 89, 90, 92, 95,
Contentio de presidentia (Aurispa), 29
du Pret, Eleuthre, 87
96, 96
death of, 147n.32
dress in image of, 43 53
marriage of, 3, 51
Military Ordinance of Charles the Bold,
Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek:

Ms. Gl. Kgl. Saml. 1605 4 (book of hours),
157 59, 158, 159
Ms. Gl. Kgl. Saml. 1612 4 (book of hours),
43 44, 44
Edinburgh, University Library:

Ms. d. b. iii. ii (missal), 142, 143
Edward IV (king of England), 15
Eeckhoute, Jean d, 23
Cornelis de costere, 81
egg white, 76, 79, 95
Cotteron, Philippe, 81
Elizabeth (biblical gure), 153
Crescentius, Petrus, 123
embroidery, 48, 55n.19
Scaghe (Jan van der) and, 5
Cro, Guillaume de, 136
Enseignements paternels (Lannoy), 45, 46
undecorated margins and, 9, 14, 15, 26n.37
Cro, Jean de, 15
Epistre dOtha (Christine de Pizan), 15 18,
48 50, 49, 52, 123, 132

Prayer Book of Charles the Bold, 7n.24, 19,
21, 45, 128 29, 129
Chastellain, Georges, 50
Cro, Philippe de, 15
chemists, 77 78
Crusade, 33, 35, 39
Epitaphier de Flandre, 3, 3
Chevrot, Jean, 89, 92, 93, 93, 95
Cruyt, Marcus, 186
epitaphs, 3, 3
Christine de Pizan, 16, 17, 17 19
Curtius Rufus, Quintus, 48, 49, 51
Eyck, Hubert van, 19, 20
17
Eyck, Jan van, 20, 59, 60, 61
Chroniques de Hainaut
cloths of gold in, 45
Daliwe, Jaques, 106, 107
Arnolni Portrait, 67
margins of, 9, 10, 25n.37
damask, 45, 54n.11
Ghent Altarpiece, 19, 20
index
Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata,

58 60, 59, 60
technique of, 57 61, 67, 72
Ezra, 156
fabrics
cost of, 43, 51
gold in, 44 53
Goes, Hugo van der, 4, 5
Histoire dAlexandre, 39
Gog, 34, 35
Histoire de Charles Martel (Aubert), 14, 27
gold
Histoire de la Toison dOr (Fillastre), 47
in clothing, 44 53
Hollanda, Antonio, 120
in Master of Fitzwilliam 268s works, 126
Hollander, Willem de, 120
undecorated margins and, 13
Hollandere, Cornelis de, 122n.13
Golden Fleece, Order of the. See Order of the

Golden Fleece
193
Holy Ghost, 129

Horenbout, Gerard, 84n.22, 184
Golden Legend, 149, 152 57, 160
Hospice Comtesse, 140
(Wauquelin), 28, 30, 31 37, 32, 33, 34,
Gratian, F. (Gratianus), 184, 184
Hours of Bona Sforza, 182, 184
36, 37
Gregory, Saint, 157
Hours of Engelbert of Nassau, 113, 113 14,
Faicts et conquestes dAlexandre le Grand
feminism, 180
Grenier, Pasquier, 29
Fernandes, Rodriques, 119
Grimani Breviary
Fillastre, Guillaume, 47
Finet, Nicolas, 45
Fitzwilliam Master. See Master of Fitzwilliam
268
Master of the David Scenes in, 153 57,

154, 155, 156, 160
Maximilian in, 170, 171
aking, 79, 92
Master of James IV in, 153, 170, 172
Fleur des histoires (Mansel), 32
pictorial devices in, 170 72, 171, 172
Florimont, 28
grisaille, 13 14
Fort Carbonnire, 31 32, 32
ground
114, 181n.1
Hours of James the IV of Scotland, 185
Hours of Jan Eggert, 13
Hours of Jan van der Scaghe and Anne de
Memere, 1 6, 2
Hours of Joanna of Castile, 149 50, 150,
161n.7, 162n.41
Hours of Kaetzart van Zaers, 13
Hours of Margaretha van Bergen, 64, 64 65,
65
fountains, 167 68
application of, 76
Hours of Marie Mussart, 137, 137
Frederick III (Holy Roman emperor), 52 53
degradation of, 83n.10
Hours of Mary of Burgundy, 18, 19, 46, 47,
fur, 48, 51, 52
for drawing, 105, 108

Gruutere, Jacob de, 5
128, 131
Hours of Mary of Burgundy and Maximilian,
Gast, Jan, 85n.27
Gruytrode, Jacob van, 183
Gavere, Antoine de, 79 80, 85n.26
Guild of Saint Luke, 118 19
Hours of Philip the Good, 12, 13
Gavere, Guillaume de, 85n.26
guilds, 118 19, 120, 140
Hoyqueslot, Franois Van, 140
Genova, Palazzo del Principe:
Guillaume de Deguileville, 11, 80
Hugheyns, Elisabeth, 4, 5
Guillaume de Hainaut, 28
Huth Hours, 161n.7
Alexander tapestries, 31, 31, 38, 38 39, 39

geometry, 92
Guise, Jacques de, 10, 32
Gheet, Cornelis de, 122n.3
gum arabic, 74n.37, 76, 78, 79, 95
Ghent, 1, 5, 185
gypsum, 76
Ghent, Museum voor Schone Kunsten:

Portrait of Livina de Steelant (Master of
James IV), 67, 68
Ghent, St-Baafskathedraal:
Ghent Altarpiece (Hubert and Jan van
Eyck), 19, 20
Ghent, Universiteitsbibliotheek:
Ms. g. 12925 (Epitaphier de Flandre), 3, 3
53, 53
illusionism, 169, 172, 174

infrared analysis, 60 61, 61, 104, 104 5
Inghelsche, Jehan d, 5
The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek:

Ms. 76 f 2 (Hours of Philip the Good), 12,
13, 16
initials, 9, 13, 19
inscriptions, 87
Isabeau de Cond, 142
hangings. See tapestries
Isabella of Aragon, 119
Hannibal, 29
Isabella of Bourbon, 44, 44
Hapsburgs, 141
Isabella Breviary, 161n.24, 162n.30
Hastings Hours (London), 113

hatching, 60 61, 64, 66, 95, 96
Janss, Steven, 120
hats, 52, 53, 55n.26
Le Jardin de vertueuse consolation, 45, 50
gilding, restoration of, 79 81, 85n.27, 85n.32
Hemsbrouck, Margaretha van, 5
Jean, Dreux, 13, 45, 87 89
Giovanni da Milano, 105
Hennecart, Jean, 45, 46
Jean le Nevelon, 31
Girart de Roussillon, 50, 51, 88 89
Hennessy Hours, 76 77, 77, 78, 84n.15
Jerusalem, siege of, 154 56, 162n.35
glair, 95
Henry VII (king of England), 142
jewels, on clothing, 51, 52, 53
glazes, 60, 63, 64 65, 71, 74n.26
Hermann, Hermann Julius, 178
Jezebel, 157
Godevaard (illuminator), 121
Hesdin, Jacquemart de, 107
Joanna of Castile, 149 50
Ghent Associates of the Master of Mary of

Burgundy, 2, 6, 53
194
index
Joao II (king of Portugal), 119 20
in Lille, 143 44, 145
Joes, Gillis, 92, 102n.29
Master of Edward IV and, 143 44,
John the Baptist, Saint, 153
148n.57
John of Burgundy, 28
restoration by, 85n.32
John the Fearless (duke of Burgundy), 27, 31
undecorated margins of, 9, 14, 14, 15, 17
John II of Oettingen, 141 42
London, Sothebys, Dec. 1, 1987, lot 58

(Hours of Marie Mussart), 137, 137
London, Victoria and Albert Museum:
Salting Ms. 1221 (Salting Hours), 123 26,
125, 126, 130 32
Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum:
Lille
Joseph (biblical gure), 157
Banquet of the Pheasant in, 35 37
Ms. 3 (Munich-Montserrat Hours), 70, 71
Jouffroy, Jean, 87
Lidet (Loyset) in, 143 44, 145
Ms. 30 (Les Visions du chevalier Tondal),
map of, 142

knives, 76
Markant in, 135 45

Master of Edward IV in, 141 44
La Baume, Guillaume de, 5

Lale, Etienne de, 182, 183 84
Lille, Muse des Beaux-Arts:

Fons pietatis (Bellegambe), 167, 167
Lalemand, Jehan, 184
Liroppe, 31, 32
La Marche, Olivier de, 48, 51
Lisbon, Museu Calouste Gulbenkian:
Lannoy, Baudouin II de, 15, 141 42, 183

Lannoy, Guillebert de, 46
Lathem, Jacob van, 119 20
Lathem, Lieven van, 21, 37, 45, 129
Ms. la 144 (book of hours), 124, 126, 127,

128 32
Livre des fais dAlexandre le grant (Quintus
Curtius Rufus), 14, 48, 49
62, 62 63
Ms. 37 (Prayer Book of Charles the Bold),
7n.24, 19, 21, 45, 45, 128 29, 129
Ms. 67 (miniature from the Turin-Milan
Hours), 58 61, 59, 60, 61
Ms. Ludwig ix 18 (Spinola Hours), 66,
66 68, 67, 172 74, 173
Ms. Ludwig ix 19 (Prayer Book of Cardinal
Albrecht of Brandenburg), 68 71, 69
Louis XI (king of France), 39
Louis of Gruuthuse, 15
age of, 120, 122n.15
Livre des profts ruraux (Crescentius), 123
Louis of Male, tomb of, 88
Alexander the Great and, 28, 37
localization, 117, 119 20
Loyet, Grard, 5, 55n.26
in Faicts et conquestes dAlexandre, 37, 37
London, British Library:
Lucena, Vasco da, 14, 49
margins in works of, 15

Master of Fitzwilliam 268 and, 128 29
in Prayer Book of Charles the Bold, 7n.24,
19, 21, 45, 45, 128 29, 129
son of, 119 20
Lazarus, 157
lead white, 76 77
Le Duc, Louis, 87
Lee, Joos van, 85n.27
Leeu, Gheraert, 121
Le Fvre, Roland, 8n.32
Le Fran, Guillaume, 120
Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek:
Ms. bpl 224 (Hours of Kaetzart van Zaers),
13
Add. Ms. 7970 (Le Dialogue de la duchesse

de Bourgogne Jsus Christ), 45, 45
antiphonary), 186, 186
Add. Ms. 18851 (Isabella Breviary),
161n.24, 162n.30
Add. Ms. 18852 (Hours of Joanna of
Castile), 149 50, 150
Add. Ms. 24189 (The Travels of John
Mandeville), 107, 107
Add. Ms. 34294 (Hours of Bona Sforza),
182, 183 84
Add. Ms. 36619 (Military Ordinance of
Liber Picturatus, 106

librariers, 79 80, 84n.21, 132
Libro dellarte (Cennini), 105
Lidet, Huchon, 143 44
Lidet, Loyset, 14, 17, 49
dress in works of, 48, 49
Ms. Res. 191 (book of hours), 138, 139

Ms. Vit. 25-5 (Voustre Demeure Hours),
110 11, 111
Madrid, Patrimonio Nacional:
The Crucixion (Weyden), 92, 97, 100
Magog, 34, 35
Mansel, Jean, 32, 183
Margaret of Austria, 183 84
Margaret of York, 3, 15, 48, 51
Markant, Jean, 135 45, 136, 137, 138,
Add. Ms. 54782 (London Hastings Hours),
145, 146n.2
Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional:
132
le Rue, Jean de, 87
Liber Floridus, 11
Madien of Babylon, 28
Charles the Bold), 48 50, 49, 52, 123,

Add. Ms. 38126 (Huth Hours), 161n.7
Le Sauvage Hours, 135 40, 136, 137, 138,
Luke, Saint, 170, 176n.16
Add. Ms. 15426 27 (psalter and
le Peletier, Arnould, 140

le Sauvage, Jean, 135 36, 136
Lucian of Samosata, 29
113
London, British Museum:
The Holy Family at the Inn (Vienna Master
of Mary of Burgundy), 108 11, 110, 111
London, National Gallery:
The Magdalene Reading (Weyden), 87, 95,
96 97, 97, 98, 99
London, Sir John Soanes Museum:
Ms. 4 (Soane Hours), 19, 21, 149, 161n.2
139, 141
in Le Sauvage Hours, 135 40, 136, 137,
138, 145
Master of Edward IV and, 140 45
production method of, 145
Marmion, Simon, 62, 63
in Berlaymont Hours, 63, 63
inuence in Valenciennes, 142
The Lamentation (oil), 62, 62 63, 63
Master of Fitzwilliam 268 and, 123
in Salting Hours, 124, 133n.8
index
technique of, 57, 61 63
Master of the Houghton Miniatures, 112 13
Minos, 29
in Les Visions du chevalier Tondal, 62,
Master of James IV of Scotland, 66, 67, 68,
minutes (trials), 16 17, 28, 40n.8
62 63
172, 173
Miracles de Nostre Dame, 13, 16
Martinache, Jeanne, 140
Bible stories used by, 149
Miscellanea Alchemica XII, 78, 84n.20
Mary of Burgundy, 46, 47, 53, 147n.32
in Grimani Breviary, 153, 170, 172
mobility, of artists, 119 20
Master of Antoine Rolin, 142, 168, 169
Portrait of Livina de Steelant, 67, 68
models, drawings as, 104, 108 13
Master of the Berlin Crucixion, 58 61, 59,
in Spinola Hours, 66, 66, 67, 67, 172 74,
Molinet, Jean, 50
60, 61
173
Master of Cardinal Wolsey, 186
technique of, 57, 65 68, 69, 71 72
Master of Charles V, 19, 184
Thin Descender Scribe and, 185
Master of the David Scenes, 149 60, 150,

151, 152, 154, 155, 156, 158, 159, 160
Master of Jean de Wavrin, 28
Monaco, Lorenzo
The Visitation, 105, 106
Munich-Montserrat Hours, 70, 71
Mussart, Marie, 140
Master of the Joseph Sequence, 162n.44
in Brukenthal Breviary, 150 51, 151
Master of Margaret of York, 45, 50
Naboth, 157, 159, 162n.45
in Grimani Breviary, 153 57, 154, 155,
Master of Mary of Burgundy, 109, 116n.31.
nationalism, 179
156, 160
in Hours of Joanna of Castile, 149 50, 150
Thin Descender Scribe and, 185
Master of the Dresden Prayer Book, 104
See also Vienna Master of Mary of
Negker, Joost de, 117 18
Burgundy
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art:
Master of Morgan m.491, 184

Master of the Prayer Books, 185
Master of Edward IV and, 141
Master of the Soane Hours, 19, 21, 149
Master of Fitzwilliam 268 and, 123 24,
Master of Wauquelins Alexander, 28, 30, 31,
126, 128, 132

underdrawing by, 104, 104 5
Master of Edward IV, 23, 136, 137, 138, 139,
141, 142
32, 32, 33, 33 35, 34, 36, 37

Master of Wavrin, 11
Maximilian of Austria, 5, 8n.32, 117, 147n.32
Mayer van den Bergh Breviary
Anseau and, 183
attribution of, 84n.22
identity of, 144
condition of, 79, 80, 81
Lidet (Loyset) and, 142 44, 148n.57
materials used in, 76
Mazerolles, Philippe de, 123, 124, 132
Markant and, 140 45
media
in Le Second Mariage et espousement, 23

Maximilian, 112, 112 13, 153, 170, 171
Master of Fitzwilliam 268, 123 32, 124, 125,
of panel vs. manuscript painting, 57
The Lamentation (Marmion), 62, 62 63,

63
The Virgin and Child (Bening), 71, 71
New York, Morgan Library:
Ms. m.232 (Livre des profts ruraux), 123
Ms. m.491, 184, 184
Nicholas of Lyra, 153, 154, 156, 157,
162n.30, 162n .35
Nockart, Simon, 32
e Hours, 1 6, 2
Nov Rs
e, Premonstratensian Abbey of
Nov Rs
e:
Nov Rs
Ms. 10 (Hours of Jan van der Scaghe and
Anne de Memere), 1 6, 2
in work of Eyck (Jan van), 58
Noyelles, Eugne de, 142, 147n.38
in work of Weyden (Rogier van der), 95
Noyelles, Jean de, 147n.38
meerseniers (merceniers), 77, 84n.17

Memere, Adriaan de, 3
Obededom, 153
collaboration by, 123, 132
Memere, Anne de, 1 6, 2, 3
Oesterwck, Anthonius Tsgrooten de, 186
dating of works of, 131 32
Memere, Catharina de, 3
Old Testament, and Master of the David
Lathem (Lieven van) and, 128 29
Memere, Jan de, 1
Marmion (Simon) and, 123
Memere, Marie de, 3
Olympia, 28, 31
Master of the Dresden Prayer Book and,
metal
Order of the Golden Fleece, 5
126, 127, 130, 131
123 24, 126, 128, 132

Master of Margaret of York and, 50
in Military Ordinance of Charles the Bold,
49, 50, 123, 132
origin of name, 123
Vrelant (Willem) and, 123, 124, 126, 128
Master of 1482, 15, 26n.37
Master of the Ghent Privileges, 13
Master of Girart de Roussillon, 50, 51, 88 89
Master of the Golden Fleece, 47, 47
195
Scenes, 149 60
in clothing, 52
dress and, 47, 47, 51, 52
restoration of, 79, 84n.24, 85n.27
Philip the Good in, 39
metalpoint drawing, 105

Michael (archangel), 128
Milot, Jean
on Alexander the Great, 29, 39
margins in works of, 16 19
Vie et miracles de Saint Josse, 11, 11, 16
Military Ordinance of Charles the Bold,
48 50, 49, 52, 123, 132
in work of Weyden (Rogier van der), 89, 91,

92 93
Orley, Bernard van
Job Altarpiece, 149
Oxford, Bodleian Library:
Ms. Douce 112 (book of hours), 152, 152,
153, 155, 156, 161n.14, 161n.17
196
index
Ms. Douce 219 20 (Hours of Engelbert of

Nassau), 113, 113 14, 114
Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art:

inv. no. 45-65-2 (Pembroke Psalter-Hours),
153 56, 154
painting techniques, 57 72
of Bening, 68 72
Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata (Jan

van Eyck), 58 60, 59, 60
rebinding, 79 81
receivers, 3, 5 6
regilding, 79 81, 85n.27, 85n.32
restoration, during fteenth and sixteenth
centuries, 79 82
of David, 64 65, 69, 72, 74n.27
Philip II (king of Spain and Portugal), 184
vs. drawing, 103
Philip the Bold (duke of Burgundy), 27
Rolin, Nicolas, 89, 93, 93, 95
of Eyck (Jan van), 57 61, 67, 72
Philip of Cleves, 15, 17
Roman dAlexandre, 38, 41n.28
of Marmion, 61 63
Philip the Fair, 119 20, 136
Roman de Florimont, 28
of Master of James IV, 65 68, 69, 71 72
Philip the Good (duke of Burgundy), 3
Ruple, Guilbert de, 3, 3, 5, 6, 7n.15
materials in, 76 77
panel painting
Roi Modus et reine Ratio, 25n.37
Alexander the Great under, 27 39

on Bryde (Roeland), 1
Saint-Bertin, chronicles of, 12, 13
techniques of, 57 72
dress of, 45
Saint-Omer, Bibliothque de lAgglomration:
and undecorated margins, 19 22
Hours of, 12, 13
Panigarola, Johanne Pietro, 52
restoration under, 84n.25
parchment
Ruple (Guilbert de) and, 3
drawing on, 105

vs. paper, for manuscripts, 11
production of, 75 76, 83n.6, 83n.14
Paris, Bibliothque de lArsenal:
undecorated margins and, 9, 11, 13 16,

25n.37
in work of Weyden (Rogier van der),
89 90, 92, 93, 94, 100
Ms. 755 (Catalogus abbatum

Bertiniensium), 12, 13
San Marino, The Huntington Library:
Ms. 1149 (book of hours), 138, 139, 141,
141
Ms. hm 1131 (Hours of Margaretha van
Bergen), 64, 64 65, 65
Ms. 1185 (Boussu Hours), 168, 168, 169
Philip II of Macedon, 28, 31
Ms. hm 1173 (Berlaymont Hours), 63, 63

Ms. hm 1174 (book of hours), 166,
Ms. 348394 (Perceforest), 28, 40n.7 8
pictorial devices, 169 74
Ms. 5104 (Enseignements paternels), 45, 46
pictorial realism, 169
Ms. 5205, 5206 (collection of religious
pictorial syntax, 174
Saul, 151
Picture Book of Madame Marie, 11
Scaghe, Elisabeth van der, 5
pigments, preparation of, 77 78
Scaghe, Jan van der (father), 5
Poitiers, Alinor de, 51, 52
Scaghe, Jan van der (son), 1 6, 2
Portinari, Tommaso, 51
Scipio, 29
Portugal, 119 20
scribes
texts), 182, 183

Paris, Bibliothque nationale de France:
Ms. fr. 1026 (Le Jardin de vertueuse consolation), 45, 50, 54n.7
Ms. fr. 9342 (Faicts et conquestes
dAlexandre), 30, 31, 32, 32, 33, 33 35,
Pots, Peter, 81
34, 36, 37
Poulet, Andries, 142
Ms. fr. 22547 (Livre des fais dAlexandre le

grant), 48, 49
Ms. nouv. acq. fr. 16251 (Picture Book of
Madame Marie), 11
Paris, Muse du Petit-Palais:
Ms. Dutuit 456 (Faicts et conquestes
dAlexandre), 30, 31, 36, 37, 37
167 68
biographies of, 183 86

and undecorated margins, 16 17
Poulet, Haquinet, 142
scumbling, 62 63
Poulet, Matheus, 142
Sebilla, 28
Poulet, Quentin, 142
Le Second Mariage et espousement
Prayer Book of Cardinal Albrecht of

Brandenburg, 68 71, 69
Prayer Book of Charles the Bold, 7n.24, 19,
21, 45, 45, 128 29, 129
(Eeckhoute), 23
semigrisaille, 13
Sforza, Francesco, 29
Sforza family, 29
Paston, John, III, 43
printed books, margins of, 22
sgrafto, 95
patterns, in textiles, 44
Private collection (Arenberg Missal), 186
shading, 58, 64, 66
Pausanias, 31, 31
Proudekin, Dierick, 118
Sibiu, Romania, Museu Brukenthal:
peacock, 36, 37, 37
Provoost, Jan, 84n.22
Plerinage de la vie humaine (Guillaume de
pumice, 76, 83n.6
Deguileville), 11, 80
Pythagorean ratio, 92
Pembroke Psalter-Hours, 153 56, 154

Perceforest, 27 28, 32, 40n.8
pheasant, 35
Philadelphia, Philadelphia Free Library:
Ms. 108, 144, 148n.60
Ms. 761 (Brukenthal Breviary), 150 51,

151, 161n.7 8
silver, in clothing, 52
silverpoint drawing, 105, 108
Ramsen, Antiquariat Heribert Tenschert:
Simon the Illuminator, 121
(book of hours), 124 26, 126, 128,
sins, seven deadly, 157 58
130 32
realism, 95, 114, 116n.44, 169
skins, animal, 75 76, 83n.5

sleeves, 48, 51
index
Soane Hours, 19, 21, 149, 161n.2
Valenciennes, 142
in Fitzwilliam Hours, 129
Spierinc, Nicolas, 9, 17, 18, 116n.44
Valenciennes, Bibliothque municipale:
in Gulbenkian Hours, 126, 128
Spinola Hours
painting techniques in, 66, 66 68, 67
pictorial devices in, 172 74, 173
Ms. 243 (Le Second Mariage et espousement), 15, 22, 23

vellum. See parchment
stained glass, 9, 162n.44
velvet, 45, 47, 48, 50
Steene, Henric Vanden, 81
Vengeance Alixandre (Jean le Nevelon), 31
Stuyvaert, Lievin, 81, 85n.34
Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana:
subcontracting, 118 19, 132

support, in drawing vs. illumination, 103
Symmen, Hendrick van, 121
Tailly, Martin de, 100
tann, 47, 50, 54n.14
tannins, 75
tapestries
Alexander the Great in, 27, 29, 31, 31, 38,
38 39, 39, 41n.28
industry in Tournai, 147n.48
Tavernier, Jean, 12, 13
techniques, drawing, 103. See also painting
techniques
tempera, 75, 78
text
relationship between image and, 166 74
in Weydens works, 87
Thin Descender Scribe, 185, 185 86
Thomas Kempis, 178
Titus, 155
Ms. Lat. i 99 (Grimani Breviary), 153 57,

154, 155, 156, 160, 170, 171, 172, 185
vermilion, 76 77
tapestry industry in, 147n.48

trade, international, 75, 7778, 83n.1
The Travels of John Mandeville, 107, 107
Trier, 48, 52
Triomphe des dames, 24n.2
trompe loeil, 169, 172, 176n.16
Turin-Milan Hours, 58 61
Ms. 8 (Epistre dOtha), 16, 16 17

Wale, Christiaan de, 3, 7n.11, 7n.12
washes, 67
Wauquelin, Jean
Faicts et conquestes, 28, 30, 31 37, 32, 33,
(le Peletier), 140

Vie et miracles de Saint Josse (Milot), 11, 11,
16, 18
Vienna, Albertina:
Saint Paul (after Jan van Eyck), 60, 61
Vienna, sterreichische Nationalbibliothek:
Ms. 1857 (Hours of Mary of Burgundy),
18, 19, 46, 47, 128, 131
Ms. 1897 (Hours of James the IV of
Scotland), 185
Ms. 2549 (Girart de Roussillon), 50, 51
Vienna, sterreichisches Haus-, Hof- und
Staatsarchiv:
Ms. 2 (Histoire de la Toison dOr), 47, 47
Vienna Master of Mary of Burgundy, 46, 109,
111, 113, 114
The Holy Family at the Inn (drawing),
Tournai Cathedral, 144
Waddesdon Manor:
Chroniques de Hainaut, 90
Tournai
Master of Edward IV in, 141 42, 144
126, 128, 130

undecorated margins of, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15
Vie du Christ-Vengeance de Notre-Seigneur
Ghent Associates of, 2, 6
Markant in, 135, 140, 145
Master of Fitzwilliam 268 and, 123 24,
Vespasian, 155
tools, in drawing vs. illumination, 103

map of, 142
108 11, 110, 111

in Hours of Engelbert of Nassau, 113,
113 14, 114, 116n.44
in Hours of Mary of Burgundy, 46,
116n.31, 128
34, 36, 37
Girart de Roussillon, 50, 51
Weert, Francis, 186, 186
Wells-next-to-the-Sea, Holkham Hall, Earl
of Leicester:
Ms. 311 (Eclogae, Georica, and Aeneid),
123, 124, 125, 128, 130 32
Weyden, Rogier van der, 87 100, 88, 89, 90,
91, 93, 94, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100
Bladelin Triptych, 92
Braque Triptych, 87
brush strokes of, 95 96
in Chroniques de Hainaut, 88, 88, 89,
89 100, 90, 91, 93, 94, 96
Columba Triptych, 93
The Crucixion (oil), 92, 97, 100
The Magdalene Reading (oil), 87, 95,
96 97, 97, 98, 99
The Virgin and Child with Six Saints,
92 93, 100
Wiesbaden, Hauptstaatsarchiv:
Ms. 3004 b 10 (miscellany of religious
texts), 108, 108
Master of Edward IV and, 141
workshops, collaboration in, 118 19
in Voustre Demeure Hours, 109 11, 111
writing. See text
Virgil, collected works of, 123, 124, 125, 128,
Wyncle, Jacqueline van de, 5
130 32
Les Visions du chevalier Tondal (Marmion),
62, 62 63
X-ray uorescence (xrf), 58, 59, 73n.9, 76,

83n.12
Voeux du Paon, 37
unblended technique, 58 59
Voustre Demeure Hours, 109 11, 111
underdrawing, 60 61, 103, 104 5
Vrelant, Willem, 10, 30, 36, 44
Utenhove family, 5
Alexander the Great and, 28 29, 30, 31,

41n.21
Ypres, 1 3
Zacharius, 153
Zaers, Kaetzart van, 13
Vademecum, 107
collaboration by, 123, 132
Zierix, Digne, 118
Valencia, Spain, Serra Algaza Collection:
dress in works of, 36, 37, 43 44, 44
Zuniga, Juan de, 184, 187n.15
The Virgin and Child (David), 64 65, 65
197
198
Photograph Credits
Most of the photographs in this book were
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
provided by the institutions cited in the
The Friedsam Collection, Bequest of
captions. Additional photograph credits are
Michael Friedsam, 1931: g. 5.31.
as follows.
Photograph 1988; The Metropolitan

Museum of Art, Robert Lehman Collection.
Altenburg, Germany, Staatliches LindenauMuseum: g. 12.11

Antwerp, Belgium, Museum Mayer van den
Bergh, Antwerpen collectiebeleid:
g. 6.3
Baltimore, The Walters Art Museum:
g. 11.6
Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Kupferstichkabinett
/ Art Resource, Inc.: g. 4.10
Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum:
g. 11.14
Brussels, Bibliotque royale de Belgique,
Photograph 1982: g. 5.9

Norfolk, Collection of the Earl of Leicester,
Holkham Hall, Norfolk: g. 10.1
Oxford, Bodleian Library, University of
Oxford: gs. 8.11, 8.12, 12.3, 12.4
Paris, Bibliothque nationale de France: gs.
3.1, 3.4 3.8, 4.7; Photothque des muses
de la ville: gs. 3.2, 3.9, 3.10
Philadelphia Museum of Art, John G. Johnson
Collection, 1917. Photo by Lynn
Rosenthal: gs. 5.3, 5.4; Philadelphia
Museum of Art: The Philip S. Collins
Bruxelles: gs. 2.1, 2.2; Brussels, Muse de
Collection. Gift of Mrs. Philip S. Collins in
la Ville de Bruxelles-Maison du Roi:
memory of her husband. Photo by Graydon
g. 7.26
Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, University
of Cambridge: Figs. 10.10 10.12
Copenhagen, Det Kongelige Bibliotek,
Fotogrask Atelier: gs. 4.1, 12.9, 12.10
Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Library,
Division of Special Collections: g. 11.13
Ghent, Museum of Fine Arts: g. 5.24: SaintBaafs Cathedral. Photo Reproductiefonds
Vlaamse Musea NV: g. 2.9
Lisbon, Calouste Gulbenkian Museum. Photo
by Catarine G. Ferriere, 1999: gs.
10.6 10.8
London, The British Library: gs. 8.05, 12.1,
Wood, 2000: g. 12.6

Rome, Arti Doria Pamphilj SRL: gs. 3.11,
3.12
San Marino, Calif., Henry E. Huntington
Library and Art Gallery: gs. 5.11, 5.13,
11.8
Valenciennes, France, Bibliothque municipale
de Valenciennes. Photo by F. Leclercq:
g. 2.12
Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana:
g. 12.5, 12.7, 12.8, 13.5, 13.6.
Vienna, Albertina: g. 5.6; A.N.L., Picture
Archives: gs. 4.5, 4.9
Waddesdon Manor, James A. de Rothschild
a.2, a.5; The Trustees of Sir John Soanes
Collection, The National Trust. Photo by
Museum: g. 2.11; Conway Library,
Mike Fear: g. 2.6
Courtauld Institute of Art: g. 11.3;

Trustees of the Victoria & Albert Museum:
gs. 10.2 10.5, National Gallery:
g. 7.18
Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum. Photos
by Christopher Foster, 2002: gs. 2.10, 4.2,
5.18, 5.20 22, 5.25, 10.9, 13.7
Madrid, Laboratorio Fotograco de Biblioteca
Nacional: gs. 8.8, 11.9; Patrimonio
Nacional: g. 7.18

Flemish Manuscript Painting in Context

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Flemish Manuscript Painting in Context

Flemish Manuscript Painting in Context

Based on symposia held at

the j. paul getty museum, los angeles

This publication is based on selected papers presented at two symposia, one at

2006 J. Paul Getty Trust

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

of Philip the Good

chapter 5. The Suggestive Brush: Painting Techniques in Flemish Manuscripts from

chapter 6. Flemish Manuscript Production, Care, and Repair: Fifteenth-Century Sources

chapter 7. Rogier van der Weyden and Manuscript Illumination

chapter 8. On Relationships between Netherlandish Drawing and Manuscript

Illumination in the Fifteenth Century

chapter 9. Flemish Illuminated Manuscripts: Assessing Archival Evidence

Jan Van der Stock

Part 4: Directions for Further Research

chapter 13. Scholarship on Flemish Manuscript Illumination of the Renaissance:

Remarks on Past, Present, and Future

chapter 14. One Hundred Years of the Study of Netherlandish Manuscripts

About the Contributors

While working on the catalogue for Illuminating the Renaissance: The

revision of their colleagues papers. Maryan Ainsworth offered helpful counsel

This page intentionally left blank

One of the most beautiful revelations of the Getty

chapter 1: jan van der scaghe and anne de memere

Annes brother, Adriaan de Memere, and their sister Catharina died

chapter 1: jan van der scaghe and anne de memere

The receivers general of all the nances, including Guilbert de Ruple,

chapter 1: jan van der scaghe and anne de memere

This essay could not have been written

Recherches des antiquitez et noblesse de

Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde te Gent, n.s.,

McKendrick, Illuminating the Renaissance,

35. A. Pinchart, Inventaire des archives des

The Undecorated Margin:

Many illuminated manuscripts have undecorated margins.

chapter 2: the undecorated margin

chapter 2: the undecorated margin

Tradition was perhaps deliberately evoked in books like the chronicles

not make the convention widespread for elaborate liturgical or quasiliturgical

chapter 2: the undecorated margin

chapter 2: the undecorated margin

chapter 2: the undecorated margin

chapter 2: the undecorated margin

chapter 2: the undecorated margin

1. Thomas Kren and Scot McKendrick,

(Amsterdam: B. M. Isral, 1987), 9192;

Blicke in verborgene Schatzkammern, exh. cat.

chapter 2: the undecorated margin

ronde, 2728 fvrier 1995, ed. Brigitte

manuscrits, nos. 261, 270; Bousmanne et al.,

and 128 C 5 (paper), Master of Antoine Rolin

des ducs de Bourgogne, 154 63); the Cit de

Pizans Epistre dOtha: Painting and

A Very Burgundian Hero:

Ever since the groundbreaking book by Johan Huizinga,

chapter 3: a very burgundian hero

as much stylistic as iconographic, further suggest that it was executed after

a very burgundian hero