Rohan Book of Hours
Rohan Book of Hours or Grandes Heures de Rohan is the name for an illuminated Latin manuscript in the French National Library in Paris (ms. Lat. 9471). The book of hours is named after a later owner from the Rohan family . The commissioner for the manuscript, which was probably made in Paris between 1425 and 1430, was probably Jolanthe von Aragón (1384–1442), the wife of Ludwig II of Anjou.
description
content
A book of hours (French livre d'heures ) is a prayer book with liturgical prayers for the church hours . No two books of hours are alike, but they all have essential elements in common. The Rohan Book of Hours begins with a calendar followed by short sections from the Gospels , in the order John, Luke, Matthew and Mark. Fragments of the Passion story according to John, various prayers to Christ and the Virgin Mary and a text in memory of the “Five Sorrows of the Virgin” follow.
At the center of the book of hours are the Marian daily prayers, the Officium Parvum BMV (Beatae Mariae virginis) with the so-called small horizons (prime, third, sixth and non), with psalms and antiphons , readings and responsories , hymns and cantica , verses and prayers.
The following seven penitential psalms are followed by various litanies and prayers. Abbreviated hourly prayers of the cross ( Heures de la Croix ) and of the Holy Spirit ( Heures du Saint-Esprit ) and texts on the “Fifteen Joys of the Virgin” follow. The last liturgical text in the Rohan Book of Hours is, as in most books of hours, the Office of the Dead, a collection of psalms and readings that remind the reader of his mortality. The Suffrages ( Middle Latin suffragium "intercession"), short personal prayers to various saints, and the Stabat mater end the Grandes Heures de Rohan . The names of the saints invoked in the intercessions and the days of saints marked on the calendar indicate the manufacture or use of the Book of Hours in Paris.
layout
The parchment manuscript in the format 29 X 21 cm shows on 239 sheets 11 full-page, 54 half-page and 227 smaller miniatures framed by narrow sticks . Eight sheets of four sheets folded in the middle are connected in 31 layers . Some sheets with four of the original fifteen full-page illustrations were lost. The miniatures on half a page are taller than they are wide and take up roughly the space that is otherwise provided for a column of text. At the edge of each page without a full-page picture, scenes from the Old Testament are depicted in a small miniature , with a short explanatory text in Old French . These 227 small miniatures in their totality form an iconographic cycle that is unusual in a book of hours , a Bible moralisée . Except for the pages with a full-page miniature, a fine network of tendrils surrounds the text and images as an ornament.
Not only the Office of Mary is illustrated, but also the calendar, the Gospels, the Office of the Dead and the Suffrages are accompanied by miniatures. Some are influenced in their design by the Très Riches Heures , many also by the Belles Heures , both books of hours by the Limburg brothers for Jean de Berry .
Two unequally qualified scribes designed the texts in Gothic script . One was rather clumsy, the other formed a smooth and beautiful typeface. Only one of the two described the sides of the stacked sheets of paper. The less qualified scribe was at work in eight positions at the beginning and at the end of the manuscript. Only in one of these positions can you see two miniatures of the master on the two sheets of a sheet. His full-page miniatures all appear on the scribe's pages with the elegant script.
Emergence
Client
The client can only be determined by looking at comparable books, because there are no written sources for the creation of the book of hours. The name Heures de Rohan refers to a later owner.
A Bible moralisée , written and decorated in Italy, served the makers of the small miniatures in the Rohan Book of Hours as a template for the pictures and the accompanying text. This manuscript, very likely in the possession of the house of Anjou , is now called the Bible angevine (Paris, BN, ms. Français 9561).
The relationship between the Grandes Heures de Rohan and the Belles Heures of the Limburg brothers is palpable and undisputed. One can therefore assume that the painters in the Rohan workshop always had this book of hours to hand. Jolanthe von Aragon (1384–1442), the wife of Duke Ludwig II of Anjou, had acquired it in 1416 from the estate of the Duke of Berry.
Because of these clear connections between the Grandes Heures de Rohan and the Anjou house, research assumes that Jolanthe von Aragon was the commissioner for the book of hours. Marcel Thomas assumes that the manuscript was created between 1425 and 1430, Ingo F. Walther and Norbert Wolf date it a little later. Since the personal prayers are written for a man, it is believed that Jolanthe von Aragon had the book of hours made for one of her sons, probably for René († 1480).
Workshop
The difference in quality between the individual miniatures is so significant that there is no doubt about the involvement of several painters in the illumination of the manuscript. Research also agrees that the anonymous master, the so-called Rohan master , painted only a few of the miniatures himself, ten of the eleven preserved full-page and perhaps three half-page, believes Marcel Thomas. He was probably only involved in some; He drew the figures and left the painting to an employee in the workshop. Most of the 54 half-page miniatures come from a second painter, also very talented and original, but without the master's ingenuity. The portraits of the saints to the suffrages are almost all ascribed to a mediocre third painter, whose characteristic style of painting can be found in the Heures à l'usage d'Angers . The 227 small miniatures in the Bible moralisée show two or three different hands. Except for a few in the beginning, they are sketchy and imperfect; they were entrusted to subordinates, using the Bible angevine as a template.
Marcel Thomas found that the full-page miniatures ascribed to the master were influenced both in terms of subject matter and design by older masters and the work of other artists of his time, but not by the Belles Heures of the Limburg brothers, although they were used for the production the half-page miniatures played an important role. Thomas suspects that the illuminators didn't work side by side in a workshop. The composition of the manuscript allowed the individual plies or sheets to be exchanged between different studios, and considerations relating to the scribes make this likely. It is possible that the Rohan master was not the boss of the workshop named after him and was therefore not responsible for the conception of the manuscript. Marcel Thomas believes that one should rather see him as a renowned painter who perhaps also painted panel paintings, and who won Jolanthe von Aragon for some large miniatures. This hypothesis would give a satisfactory answer to the astonishing fact that it is difficult to find in any of the books of hours ascribed to his workshop a picture that can be compared in quality with the full-page miniatures of the Grandes Heures de Rohan .
owner
The coat of arms of the de Rohan family was painted over in the book of hours and gave the Grandes Heures de Rohan its name. The first owner was probably a son of Jolanthe von Aragon, probably René von Anjou . This was defeated in 1431 in the Battle of Bulgnéville by Antoine de Vaudémont , the father of Mary of Lorraine († 1455), who with Alain IX. de Rohan († 1462) was married. René of Anjou was captured and as part of the ransom that was imposed, the precious Grandes Heures de Rohan may have come into the possession of the House of Rohan.
It is not known how long the de Rohan family owned the Grandes Heures ; A note on the first sheet of the manuscript tells us that it was in a Jesuit library in Paris in the 18th century . At some point it came into the possession of the Duke de La Vallière, from whose collection it acquired the royal library. The successor to this royal library is the National Library in Paris, in which the manuscript is stored under the signature ms. lat. 9471 is located today.
literature
- Eberhard König: The Grandes Heures de Rohan. An aid to understanding the manuscript latin 9471 of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Pfeiler, Simbach am Inn 2006, ISBN 3-9810655-2-2 .
- Millard Meiss , Marcel Thomas (eds.): Les Heures de Rohan. Paris - Bibliothèque nationale. manuscrit latin 9471.Draeger , Paris 1973.
- Ingo F. Walther, Norbert Wolf: Codices illustres. The most beautiful illuminated manuscripts in the world. 400 to 1600. = masterpieces of illumination. Taschen, Köln et al. 2005, ISBN 3-8228-4747-X , pp. 306–309 and 479.
Web links
- Large book of hours by Rohan - digitized version