Grandes Heures of Anne of Brittany
The Grandes Heures of Anne of Brittany (Les Grandes Heures d'Anne de Bretagne in French) is a
Description
The book is large for a book of hours at 30.5 cm by 20 cm, and consists of 476 pages including 49 full-page
There is a
The book is also remarkable for its realistic representations of 337 plants in the borders that most text pages are given.[9] There are flowers, cultivated and wild, shrubs, some trees and among the plants a wide variety of insects and small animals of the countryside. The plants include Cannabis sativa on f. 90v, and the major cereal crops of the day on ff. 94–96. The insects represented are butterflies and moths, dragonflies, grasshoppers, caterpillars, beetles, flies, carpenter bees, crickets, earwigs, bees and beetles. The small animals represented are snakes, lizards, slow worms, frogs, turtles, squirrels, snails, rabbits, monkeys and spiders. The style borrows from the elaborate and realistic borders of natural life developed in the preceding decades by Flemish illuminators, but unlike them Bourdichon generally treats only one species on a page, and often shows roots and bulbs, and labels each page with the plant's name in Latin and French, in the manner of a florilegium or a herbal (a book on medicinal plants).[10] In most pages the border is a single panel to the outside of the text, but in others it surrounds the text on all four sides. The plants are shown as if laid out on a plain coloured surface, upon which they cast a shadow. In 1894 Giulio Camus wrote an account of the plants in the work, and a full modern facsimile was published in 2008. There are 395 images from the book available online through the BnF.[note 3]
Commission
Anne of Brittany was the last
Jean Bourdichon had already been the artist of the
According to a letter from the queen written in March 1508, Jean Bourdichon, who was one of the main artists regularly working for the court, was paid the sum of 1500
In art history
The book comes very late in the history of the illuminated manuscript, and the conception of the full-page miniatures as resembling a series of individual panel paintings, complete with frames, has seemed to many art historians a prophecy of the direction art was to take, and something of an abdication of the distinct needs of book illustration. Anthony Blunt noted that "Many of his designs – for instance the 'St Sebastian' – look in reproduction like altarpieces rather than miniatures; and to this extent his art represents the decay of true illumination".[15] However, royalty and the grandest other patrons continued to commission manuscripts for several further decades, and in some cases well after that, and the miniatures of the Grandes Heures are integrated with the texts of the book in the traditional ways. For example, the borders opposite miniatures are often co-ordinated with them in terms of colour.[16] By Anne's day printing was well established, with Paris as one of Europe's leading centres, and she also patronized printed books and their authors.[note 5]
Gallery
-
The Flight into Egypt, f. 76v
-
SaintMatthew the Evangelist, f. 87
-
The Holy Trinity, f. 155v
-
Folio 195v
-
Calendar March, f. 6r
-
Opening words of the Gospel of St. John, f. 17r
-
Onion, f. 143
-
Cucurbita pepo subsp. texana, f. 161[17]
Notes
- ^ The name means "The Large Hours" as opposed to her "Small Hours" and "Very Small Hours"; the mixed French and English of the name is usual in English sources.
- ^ For another example, see File:Bnf059.jpg from Jean Marot, Le Voyage de Gênes (Voyage to Genoa), Tours, around 1508, BnF MS Fr. 5091.
- ^ See external links for the facsimile and the online images.
- ^ This may have been to encourage the use of the books as heirlooms that would be used by descendants, including males.
- ^ See Brown in further reading, throughout.
References
Citations
- ^ Harthan, 128
- ^ Walther & Wolf, 409/
- ^ Harthan, 128; Blunt, 18; Walther & Wolf, 409
- ^ Harthan, 128; Walther & Wolf, 409
- ^ Blunt, 18–19
- ^ Harthan, 128
- ^ Harthan, 132; Walther & Wolf, 408–409
- ^ Harthan, 128
- ^ Harthan, 133; Walther & Wolf, 409
- ^ Harthan, 133; Blunt, 18
- ^ Harthan, 128–129
- ^ Harthan, 37
- ^ Walther & Wolf, 410–411
- ^ Harthan, 85
- ^ Blunt, 19; Harthan, 132; Walther & Wolf, 410
- ^ Harthan, 132; Walther & Wolf, 410
- PMID 16687431.
Sources
- Blunt, Anthony, Art and Architecture in France, 1500–1700, 2nd edn 1957, Penguin
- Harthan, John, The Book of Hours, 1977, Thomas Y Crowell Company, New York, ISBN 0690016549
- Walther, Ingo F. and Wolf, Norbert, Masterpieces of Illumination (Codices Illustres), 2005, Taschen, Köln; ISBN 382284750X
Further reading
- Brown, Cynthia Jane, The Queen's Library: image-making at the court of Anne of Brittany, 1477–1514, 2010, University of Pennsylvania Press, ISBN 0812242823, 9780812242829, google books
- Hermant, Maxence (2020). "Les Grandes Heures d'Anne de Bretagne". Art de l'Enluminure (in French). 75: 4–30. Retrieved 30 December 2020.
External links
- BnF, Mandragore database enter "Latin 9474" in "Cote" box Archived 2009-02-28 at the Wayback Machinefor 395 "Images" (in French)
- Digital facsimile of the entire manuscript on Gallica
- Le Monde