Boqueteaux master

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A book illuminator in Paris in the Middle Ages who worked there after 1350 is referred to as the Master of the Woods or Boqueteaux Master ( fr. Maître aux Boqueteaux ) .

Boqueteaux master (master of the groves): Illumination from the book of hours of Philip the Bold, around 1370, Paris

Naming

The Boqueteaux master , who is not known by name , got his emergency name from the typical representation of umbrella-like trees that are typical for him and his employees and are grouped together in sparse groups of trees as small forests. That is why the master is referred to in English as the Master of the Umbrella Trees . The artist's representation of the forest can also be interpreted as a symbol, a typical Gothic phrase of wilderness and danger.

The Master of the Woods or Boqueteaux Master is often listed in German-language specialist literature under his French name Maître aux Boqueteaux .

Workshop

The Boqueteaux master presumably operated a larger workshop and manuscripts he painted often also contain works by other hands. This does not always make the exact delimitation of the pictures created by himself from the pictures by his employees possible without any doubt. A forest motif, which is clichéd for Gothic painting, was previously used by the master of Remède de Fortune around 1350 and was then taken up by employees of the Boqueteaux master’s workshop and other Parisian illuminators; It is therefore suggested that the Boqueteaux master should better be called Master of the Bible of Jean de Sy after one of his main works .

Among the many works of the Boqueteaux master and his collaborators, the most famous works are for example

  • the Bible of Jean de Sy , one of the oldest manuscripts from the workshop of the Boqueteaux master
  • the book of hours of Philip the Bold , Duke of Burgundy, from 1370, in which the master painted the scenes of the calendar and ten of the eleven large miniatures and another employee of his workshop contributed the other somewhat less artful pictures
  • a luxury copy of the Grandes Chroniques de France , a copy of this history book from around 1380 for Charles V. which also includes works by four other painters
  • a painting of Titus Livius

meaning

With Jean Pucelle and the Brothers of Limburg and then the Rohan and Bedford masters as well as the later painters Jean Fouquet and the Franco-Flemish master of Mary of Burgundy, the Boqueteaux master belongs to the group of outstanding, “ingenious” illuminators who from the end of the 14th century established the reputation and importance of French Gothic book illumination through special artistry and originality in the interpretation of the pictorial theme and continued it for more than a hundred years. The Boqueteaux master and a few others of these masters also laid the foundations of medieval book production in the city in collaboration with copyists and editors in Paris. According to some experts, the generations of Parisian illuminators that followed the Boqueteaux master then took up his preparatory work and turned it into a skilful book production that no longer necessarily shows the artistic individualism of its predecessors and some contemporaries, but strives for a wider and faster dissemination of works .

identification

It is suggested that the Boqueteaux master was Jan Bondol (also known as Jean de Bruges ), a Flemish illuminator from Bruges who was demonstrably active in Paris from 1368 to 1381, including at the court of Emperor Charles. V. , and that Bondol was the operator of the larger Parisian painting studio known today under the name of the Boqueteaux Master .

literature

  • Henry Martin: La miniature française du XIIIe au XVe siècle. G. van Oest, Paris et al. 1923.
  • Gerhard Schmidt : Gothic sculptures and their masters. Böhlau, Vienna et al. 1992, ISBN 3-205-05284-6 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Maître aux Boqueteaux (Master of the Umbrella Trees). In: Jane Turner (Ed.): The Dictionary of Art. Volume 20: Mächtig to Medal. Macmillan, London 1996, ISBN 1-884446-00-0 .
  2. ↑ B. Schütz: The forest in art. In: Forstwissenschaftliches Centralblatt combined with Tharandter forstliches Jahrbuch. Vol. 113, No. 1, December 1994, ISSN  0015-8003 , pp. 35-64, doi : 10.1007 / BF02936683 .
  3. ↑ z. B. Gerhard Schmidt: Gothic sculptures and their masters. 1992.
  4. ↑ Paris, Bibl. Nat., Ms. fr. 15397.
  5. ^ Grandes Heures de Philippe le Hardi. Cambridge Fitzwilliam Museum FS Ms. 3-1954.
  6. ^ André Masson: Le Tite-Live de Bordeaux et l'atelier du "Maître aux boqueteaux". In: Trésors des bibliothèques de France. Vol. 21, 1936, ZDB -ID 1036128-5 , pp. 11-33.
  7. ^ Pierre Rézeau: Les Prières aux saints en français à la fin du Moyen Age. Volume 1: Introduction. Les prières à plusieurs saints (= Publications Romanes et Françaises. Vol. 163, ISSN  0079-7812 ). Droz, Geneva 1982, p. 4.
  8. ↑ see Patrick M. de Winter: The Grandes Heures of Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy: The Copyist Jean L'Avenant and His Patrons at the French Court , in: Speculum 57.4 (1982) 786-842.