Book of hours of Jean de Boucicaut
The book of hours by Jean de Boucicaut, Marshal of France established a typical Parisian style that was picked up, passed on and processed by illuminators of the first half of the 15th century.
description
- Liturgy of Paris . France , Paris, around 1405–1408. 27.4 x 19 cm; 242ff.
- 44 miniatures
- Musée Jacquemart-André , Paris, ms. 2
Executive artist
The Master of Boucicaut , which this prayer book illuminated for this outstanding soldier, whose name it bears, was a gifted landscape painter who in the Illumination unprecedented effects of light and aerial perspective achieved. He was identified in 1905 by Paul Durrieu as Jacques-Coene, a painter from Bruges who had settled in Paris.
Outstanding examples of his style are the visitation and the flight into Egypt in the lauds and vespers of the Marian Office , which complement each other in design, but are lightened in different ways. In the Visitation the light streams down from above the picture onto the heads of Mary and Elizabeth. In its flight to Egypt, the rising sun, a golden sphere surrounded by three orange rings, sends its rays up into the blue sky. In both pictures, the sky transfers its luminosity to the earthly landscape.
By 1400, the market for illuminated manuscripts of all kinds in Paris was so large that demand exceeded supply. It is strange that the master of Boucicaut apparently failed to get a job at court . Meiss lists more than fifty manuscripts that are associated with this master.
Marshal Jean de Boucicaut
- → Main article: Jean de Boucicaut
Boucicaut has been portrayed by his biographer as almost superhumanly pious. He spent several hours a day in prayer, heard mass twice a day, fasted on Fridays, and wore black. The fact that his prayer book begins with twenty-seven large miniatures of saints related to his life suggests special devotional practices . The first is St. Leonhard , patron saint of the prisoners, who is chained to two kneeling figures ( Johann, Count von Nevers and himself), memory of Boucicaut's successful escape in Nikopol.
Individual evidence
- ^ Millard Meiss: French painting in the time of Jean de Berry. The Limbourgs and their Contemporaries. Thames and Hudson et al., London 1974, p. 69 ( The Franklin Jasper Walls Lectures ZDB -ID 198652-1 ).
- ↑ JE Michaud, JJF Poujoulat (ed.): Le Livre des faicts du bon Messire Jean le Maingre, dit Boucicaut. In the Nouvelle collection des mémoires relatifs à l'histoire de France depuis le 13e siècle jusqu'à la fin du 18e siècle. 2, 1881, ZDB ID 276214-6 .
literature
- Book of hours by Marshal Jean de Boucicaut. In: John Harthan: Books of hours and their owners. German translation by Regine Klett. Herder, Freiburg (Breisgau) et al. 1977, ISBN 3-451-17907-5 , pp. 70-73.