Les
Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry
The
Nativity scene is at the first hour of the day. The Virgin is shown kneeling
before her son at the threshold of the stable with beams of golden light direct
on to the child by God the Father in Heaven. The shaft of light is symbolic of
The Incarnation of the Word. The dove flying in the rays makes it a symbol of
the Trinity. The ‘oriental’ setting is suggested by Arabic lettering on
the Virgin’s mantle and Josephs is depicted wearing a peeked turban. The
shepherds look to the skies for the celestial singers proclaiming Peace
on Earth.
Geraldine
Barry and Sally Diserio of the Calligraphy Society of Victoria presented papers
and special works from the Society’s Library for a very special Spiritual Reading Group session, held in the
Carmelite Library on Tuesday the 16th of August. Geraldine very
kindly revisited her paper, at our request, and here are her words on late
medieval Books of Hours.
What I love
about the Books of Hours is that they were the precious, personal possession of
their owners. They date from the Middle Ages, and were produced roughly from
the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries in surprisingly large quantities. Some of
the most exquisite examples are now housed in museums, but many are still privately owned. Either
way, it is testament to their special place in the everyday lives of their
owners that they have been cherished and preserved. Christianity is a book-based
religion, and they have their place in the western Christian tradition.
The Books of
Hours were prayer books used by the laity for private devotion. Originally they developed from the Psalter
used by monks and nuns (psalter/ psalms) and then developed into an abbreviated
form of a breviary (the book of Divine Offices used in monasteries). Over time
they transformed into illuminated collections of texts, prayers and psalms. They
usually contained the Hours of the Virgin starting with the Hail Mary at 6.am
and were said at the eight canonical hours of the day. The very early ones were
written in Latin but gradually vernacular languages were interspersed with the
Latin and that increased over time. Also the content changed but generally the
story they told was either the Nativity, starting with the Annunciation, or
alternatively the Passion of Christ. Fairly typical contents would include: -
·
A
calendar of Church feasts
·
An
excerpt from the 4 Gospels
·
The
Little Office of the Virgin Mary
·
The
15 Psalms of Degrees
·
The
7 Penitential Psalms
·
The
Litany of Saints
·
An
Office for the Dead
·
Various
other prayers
The size of
these books varied; some were small and would have comfortably fitted into the
owner’s pocket for personal devotions; some were larger and were probably
intended for use in family chapels. Many were owned by women and sometimes
given as a wedding gift from the groom to his bride, and, as previously
mentioned, were frequently passed down through the family.
However, not
all books remained in the possession of the original owner. There are titillating
surviving examples of change of owner when circumstances or family fortunes
changed. For example, as spoils of war: King Henry VII after defeating King
Richard the third gave Richard’s Book of Hours to his own very devout mother,
Margaret Beaufort, who ‘personalised’ it with the inclusion of her name. Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII wrote loving notes
to each other during their courtship on the pages of her Book of Hours.
Writing in
them wasn’t only done by Royalty; the books contain examples of people using them for writing all
sorts of notes and lists including autographs of notable visitors to their
houses and alphabets to teach the children how to read (books in general being
in short supply before mechanical printing was established).[1]
Prior to the
advent of the printing press, all stages of book production were done by
skilled craftspeople. Unlike the ecclesiastical books, such as bibles, which
were produced by monks and nuns in monasteries, the Books of Hours were manufactured
in lay workshops. The text was written by scribes on pages made from parchment
or vellum, which were prepared from processed animal skins, usually sheep skins
and the more expensive calf skins. Pens were made from bird quills - commonly goose,
swan and crow. [2] Inks were made from a variety of natural pigments
and the common colours were black, brown, red and blue, depending on the
pigment and process.
Manuscripts
can be dated from the calligraphic hand used. By the 13th century the earlier scripts
were gradually replaced by the Gothic script. It generally replaced the earlier more rounded
scripts because it was quicker to write and more compact. (Maybe there was also
an element of saving to be considered as it was more economical because more
words could fit on a page and vellum and parchment were expensive to produce.)
Though the books
were not mass produced, there was an element of factory production going on by
employing specialist craftsmen for each component of the process. The
stationers often had template pages for the customer to select from. Pictures,
illumination, stories - this varied from quite sketchy drawings to magnificent
works of art – depending on the wealth of the patron. And a patron was always
needed because the books were made to order. From basic to grandest, every Book
of Hours was bespoke so each has something which makes it unique (true for most
of their history until the late fifteenth century introduction of the printing
press).
Essentially,
all Books of Hours were picture books. The pages and the miniature artworks
were ‘illuminated’–a term derived from the Latin ‘Illuminare’ meaning to
enlighten or illuminate and usually referring to decorating a manuscript with
luminous colours, particularly gold (also silver, but less so, because it
tarnishes). The application of gold - either leaf or raised gold - is known as
‘gilding’. In religious books gold was
used by the illuminators to enhance the ‘message’.
After the
‘establishment’ of Christianity under the emperor Constantine in the early
fourth century A.D, it became the accepted Universal religion in the West. And
the ‘message’ was a new message that required a new artistic depiction. Thus a
new way of looking at pictures developed because the Christian message required
a style of artistic representation better suited to the Christian narrative.
Gradually the classical forms from the ancient Greco-Roman pagan world were mainly
dispensed with. Therefore when you look at mediaeval artworks, including the miniature
illuminations in the Book of Hours, the notion of a subjective view point is discarded.
They were looked at as individual scenes and one detail to another, never as a
‘totality’. Very often the events in the picture could not have taken place in
the same historical timeframe and sometimes the patron of the art work appears
in them as part of the ‘action’. The spiritual world and the real world
co-existed in works of art, as it did in the daily lives of the people. Their
understanding of what constituted the supernatural world and the natural world
led logically and appropriately to, say, inclusions of the Holy Spirit or
people who had died. These would not have seemed strange or out of place.
In addition
to the religious motifs, from the fourteenth century onwards decorated borders
were added usually painted with flowers and plant designs; complete with their
own symbolism. It was understood that plants expressed God’s beautiful
creations and therefore appropriate that that they should accompany devotional
texts- especially in Books of Hours.
Once the
Church established beyond dispute the text for the Bible –the canon of
scripture[3]
- all other apocryphal gospels (the ‘unaccepted’ books) were banned: the
Faithful had to abide by the Canon of the New Testament, but the apocryphal
gospels remained the source for many of the details of Jesus’ early life and
his ancestry and provided a rich source of details for works of art[4].
The illuminations in the Books of Hours incorporate many details derived from
these ancient sources though some are incomprehensible to us now. However, examples
from these apocryphal gospels, familiar to us today are in the Christmas crib
scene: the ox and the ass; the three kings; the shepherds ‘adore’ the child;
celestial light in the stable.
Alongside
the direct representations of Jesus, Mary and the Saints there developed a lot
of indirect imagery in paintings and other art forms. Symbol and iconography [5]were
used because it was useful for explaining very complex ideas to a largely
illiterate population; it helped the people to understand difficult concepts
such as the Holy Trinity. God the Father is very often depicted as a venerable
old man, God the Son is shown in human form on the cross and the difficult one,
God the Holy Ghost or Spirit is represented by a dove, bathed in celestial
light. The iconic white and red roses among thorns represent the Virgin and the
blood of the martyrs. Mary’s robes are blue, because she is the Queen of
Heaven. Some of the iconography we can still understand, but the meaning of
quite a lot is not so clear to us now therefore the deeper meaning in some of
the details in artworks including those in the illuminations in the Books of
Hours, are missed.
I can’t help but feel that the popularity of
the Nativity in the books is bound up with what people knew from their own
experiences and could feel they had in common with God such as the birth of a
child, childhood, joy and sorrow and love. One of my favourite illuminations is
in an English Book of Hours dating from the fourteen century (need I say it is
derived from the ‘banned books’?) It depicts Jesus in a very human way- behaving
as a very naughty boy. He is turning the local children into pigs, and he
doesn’t always turn them back into children in some versions of the story! It
is not an isolated depiction of Jesus’ ‘bad behaviour’ in the childhood of
Jesus from these sources). Undoubtedly people did feel close to the Holy
Family; in a metaphysical sense the Holy Family was their family. They were
intensely interested in the genealogy of Jesus; character from his genealogical
table feature in many of the Nativity scenes (some of the ‘ancestors’ listed we
would not easily recognise now) but their interest is reminiscent of our
current trend in researching our own family trees.
The Middle
Ages was a violent period, perhaps not the most violent in history but it experienced its share of misery
including four Crusades, the most devastating manifestation of the bubonic
plague[6]
, The Hundred Years’ War, high, early mortality, and ‘heretics’ were dealt with
brutally. It was also a deeply religious age.
Religion permeated the whole of life, nothing was ‘neutral ‘, there were
no ‘shades of grey’, things were right or wrong, God or the Devil. Society was
hierarchical: the Church and the State were two constituents ordained by and
leading to God (in reality the powerful church controlled most of society). The
vast majority of art produced was religious art, which is not really surprising
because there was little demarcation between sacred and secular works: symbolism
and representational conventions were deemed to be the obvious function of art
during this period; the visual image was to teach by delighting, and
inculcating a love of Christ by the image.
One of the
most famous examples of a Book of Hours is ‘Les Très Riche Heures du Duc de Berry’. It was commissioned by Jean
Duc de Berry around 1413. He was one of the greatest patrons of the arts and
very rich; he could afford the best of everything –and he did. Painted on very
fine vellum the book is made from two
hundred and six bound sheets. The size of the book is roughly 29x21cm. It is
one of the treasures in the Musée Condé, Chantilly in France. Unfortunately the name of the scribe is
unknown, however the painters of the illuminations are known; they were the three
Limbourg brothers, renowned painters from Nijwegen in Germany.
Their
subject matter in the miniature illuminations in ‘Les Très Riche Heures du Duc de Berry’ was artistically ground
breaking in the content of the calendar (a series of the year’s seasons). These
miniatures depicted life in contemporary France in the early fifteenth century,
never before seen like this in a work of art. The Duke, his court and his rural
workers, the architecture of his castles all appears in the illuminations. It
is a very fine example that epitomises the concern pictures played in private
prayer and the aesthetic enjoyment they added to the devotional content of the
books.
There is
something ‘fairy tale’ like and yet coherent about the pointed Gothic script,
the tall, pointed, lacy architecture, the slim elegant figures dressed in their
theatrical clothes, the idyllic rural settings and the air of courtly gentility
contained in the artwork in Books of Hours. The Middle Ages, with its courtly code
of chivalry and artifice of courtly love, was not as ‘idyllic’ as it was
painted, but the spirit of the age was most memorably expressed in the building
of the glorious Gothic cathedrals. Who could not be impressed by the religious fervour
that collected the money and laboured to build them (often taking eons to
complete)?
As the
fledgling printing industry became established and the output increased, paper
printing drastically reduced the use of parchment and thus the diminution of
calligraphers, illuminators and allied crafts. Initially the printers adopted
the Gothic script and letters appeared in black type. [7]
Some early printed books were a hybrid version of manuscript books, with spaces
left for illuminations and decorated capital letters. But by the late fifteenth- early sixteenth centuries
printed Books of Hours were readily available and a cheaper option to a handmade
book; this meant that many more people could own one. A thriving export
business had developed, particularly in France and the Netherlands, which supplied the growing demand. There are many surviving
examples of printed books from that period.
In a small
way the rise of a printing industry is illustrative of the social and economic changes
happening in western society: literacy had increased and more people could
afford to buy books, indicative of the weakening of the mediaeval feudal system
that was gradually being replaced by a growing dependency on a cash economy.
Also a different artistic momentum was gathering pace, foreshadowing the period
we call the ‘Renaissance’, which introduced the ‘rebirth’ of the classical view
of art works, long disregarded during the Middle Age.
The history
of the Books of Hours eventually turned full circle when, by the mid sixteenth century,
only the wealthiest members’ of society
could afford to commission the books in manuscript form - written by a scribe on
vellum and richly illuminated and bound within costly covers. One of the last
known surviving examples was commissioned by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese in
1546.
Throughout
their long history the Book of Hours seem to fit gracefully into their
historical time frame. That so many of these little gems have survived is
surely testament to the enduring pleasure and spiritual comfort their owners
must have drawn from them and seen them as significant enough to want them to
be handed down through the generations.
References
·
The
Social History of Art Volume 2
Arnold Haus. Published by Routledge 1989
·
The
World of the Book
Des Cowley Clare
Williamson. The Miegunyah Press
State
Library Victoria
·
Gothic Architecture
Sculpture Painting
Editor Rolf Toman. Publisher
Ullmann & Könemann
·
Calligraphy
and Illumination
Patricia Lovett. The British Library
London
______________________________________________________
Books
Borrowed from the Calligraphy Society of Victoria’s Library and provided as
examples for the talk and discussion at the August 16th Spiritual
Reading Group meeting
·
The
Mediaeval Flower Book.
Celia Fisher. The British
Library
·
The
Illuminated Page: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Painting
in the British Library .
Janet Backhouse. University of Toronto Press. 1998
·
An
illumination: The Rothschild Prayer Book and Other works from the Kerry Stokes Collection
c. 280-1685
Australian Capital Equity
·
Les
Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry
Musée Condé, Chantilly. Thames and Hudson. Paperback
edition 1989
[1]
Gutenberg’s printing press was in operation around 1453.
[2] Contemporary calligraphers who have made
their own quill pens often express a preference for writing with a quill rather
than the modern dip pens.
[3]
Codex Sinaiticus (4th C. AD)
[4] These
details originated in the early traditions in a period when Christianity was
just a collection of very disparate sects.
[5] A
symbol is a concept that has no reality in a visual, physical shape. It is a
sign for a Divine Reality in the Christian sense. Iconography is the study of
the form of visual symbols (iconology, the study of their meaning).
[6]
The Black Death in 1348 decimated towns and villages throughout Europe. It was
one of the contributing factors in the relaxing of the rural feudal system.
[7]
Eventually the Gothic script was replaced by the upper case letters derived
from Roman lettering and lowercase letters from the Humanist script based on
the earlier Carolingian script and provided the basis for scripts used today.
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