The Duc de Berry and the Très Riches Heures

The Duc de Berry really must have been someone to know in the fifteenth century, with his lands, castles, and an unerring eye for quality, craftsmanship and fabulous objects. He described himself as the son, brother and uncle of a king, and lived to the ripe old age of 76.

The Très Riches Heures of the Duc de Berry is a case in point as regards his recognition for exquisite skill and his support for artisans. He is painted here in the manuscript by the artists Herman, Paul and Johan – the Van Lymborch Brothers (previously Limbourg). Note the Duc’s well-dressed servants waiting at his table with one of them just about to carve chickens, his steward holds his stick of office and is calling people forward, and on the Duc’s table is a salt cellar in the form of a magnificent gold galleon with a gold bear at one end – one of the Duc’s symbols.

This close up of the Duc shows him wearing a thick fur hat with each hair painted individually and precisely, his plush deep ultramarine blue brocade robe has gold embroidery and decoration. It is lined with fur, very luxurious and it looks very thick and heavy; the fur also peeps out at his neck and forms cuffs on each wrist. He does, though, have surprisingly small hands. The Duc wears a thick gold collar from which hangs a medallion, and his two little lap dogs are on the table enjoying food from one of the gold plates.

The effigy on the Duc de Berry’s tomb shows a remarkable resemblance to his portrait in the Très Riches Heures with his downturned mouth and double chin. He is wearing here an elaborate headdress of what looks like a circlet of pearls or small silver balls, and large square cut and rounded gems all neatly held in place with clasps.

It is easier to see his coronet in this photograph. They are very large stones!

The Duc is wearing robes of regal ermine, with the black tips of the tails pushed through slits in the white fur and represented here by black curving shapes. At first it looks as if these were painted on the marble but in fact each one of black stone has been inset to the white marble with the greatest precision.

The Duc was very fond, and proud, of his castles and homes, and the Van Lymborch Brothers were very clever and inventive in incorporating them into their paintings in the manuscript. Here is a map of his châteaux and palaces linked to the various paintings in the miniatures.

It is difficult to appreciate the small size of many of the paintings by the Van Lymborch Brothers. This of the Zodiac Man is about the size of a quarto sheet of paper, and the detail is incredible.

Different parts of the body relate to the various Zodiac signs. This enlargement shows the partial bull of Taurus behind his neck, Cancer at the throat, Leo on his chest, and one of the Gemini twins peeping out from behind his arm. The head and blue robe of Virgo is just visible.

In some of the miniatures in the Très Riches Heures treasures belonging to the Duc de Berry are depicted such as this magnificent bejewelled gold cross, studded with exquisite pearls, rubies and sapphires.

And here is a very similar one painted in the Heures:

The stand out stars of the manuscript for many are the calendar pages, each double spread showing a full page miniature of the labours of the month, and on the opposite page the important religious festivals and saints’ day so they could be celebrated by the owner of the book in their own home, One after another they form a visual feast! Books of Hours being produced for lay people. Here is the one for April, the month for weddings, and indeed one is depicted here. In the semicircle at the top the ram of Aries is followed by the bull of Taurus.

There will be more posts on this book in due course. Meanwhile, here is the one for the calendar month of July.

July from the Très Riches Heures of the Duc de Berry

The Très Riches Heures of the Duc de Berry is an absolutely masterpiece. Created by the Van Lymborch Brothers (previously Limbourg), Herman, Paul and Johan, they consist of page after page of the most magnificent and exquisite paintings. This post focuses on the calendar page for July; there are other blogposts on this website.

July is the month for harvesting wheat and shearing sheep. Two men towards the lower half of the miniature are cutting wheat with sickles, and, as they do, the blue and red flowers are being revealed. At the bottom right a woman in a blue dress and a man are shearing sheep. This particular painting is interesting because the angles of the château in the upper part of the image are reflected in the diagonal stream and the edges of the field. The mountains left and right at the top echo the shapes and draw the eye down and into the page.

The detail in the sheep shearing scene can be seen in this enlargement. Both shearers are using large shears which are operated not from handles through which thumb and fingers go, but by pressing on the blades themselves held open by a circular spring. The wool coming off the sheep being sheared by the man is shown falling on to the ground where it is in a large pile. He is wearing a fashionable bucket hat with a piece of pink fabric hanging down to protect his neck from the sun, but his clothes are rather worn and ragged, the sleeves are frayed and the knees of his breeches are worn away. The woman has a glorious deep blue dress which looks in better repair, and a black hood again for protection from the sun. Relieved of their thick wool coats, the sheep are grazing peacefully.

The other workers in this miniature are the reapers the other side of a small reed-lined stream. One of them has succumbed to the heat and is wearing just a white shirt and underwear; his partner’s tunic is split up to his thigh. Both are wearing straw hats to protect them from the bright sun.

The Duc de Berry was very fond of his castles, palaces and châteaux, and the Van Lymborch Brothers often incorporated them in miniatures in his books. This is a depiction of the Château de Poitiers, an unusual triangular- shaped building with a raised wooden walkway on stone supports providing the entranceway over the moat.

This is shown in greater detail in this enlargement. It is not quite of a high enough resolution to make out the precise strokes used by the brothers to show the curve of the tower and turrets, the covered wooden walkway, and the steeply gabled windows in the roof.

At the top of each calendar miniature are Zodiac signs for that month, here Cancer the crab followed by Leo the lion are set in a dark blue sky with golden stars. The sun, stars and semi-circular lines and divisions are in shell gold which is applied with great precision. There will be other posts on the calendar months on this website.

Here is more on the Très Riches Heures and the Duc de Berry.

Glitterati of 2025

Another group of budding illuminators gathered in mid-May 2025 for this year’s Illumination course at Sevenoaks in Kent. In 2024 half were from overseas but this year they were all from the UK – it varies every year which makes it always very interesting. The day before everything was ready and the rooms set up; most of the tools needed were in the pink boxes – those who’ve been on my courses will be familiar with the wet and dry boxes – and the rest were carefully arranged around individual work stations! It takes quite a bit of time to prepare for the course, not just what is required for the course itself of course, but we also provide a light lunch of homemade soup, bread and dessert, as well as homemade biscuits and cake during each day – these being a very necessary sugar hit to keep us going!

It is a very full first day! Gesso is made, laid and gilded, quills are cut, vellum prepared for painting, and two miniatures prepared for gilding. Both images are transferred to vellum using home made Armenian bole paper – everyone gets to take home their own piece for future use.

The practice miniature is done first with a modern adhesive used to attach the gold.

Gesso is applied to the main miniature with a quill that each person on the course has cut themselves from a swan’s feather.

Then leaf gold is applied to the gesso and polished to a shine with a burnisher; after this the gold is cleaned up.

Finally the painting is done using the wonderful jewel colours as in the original being copied and applied with a very fine Kolinsky sable brush.

We learned many things on the course, not least that gesso needs to be thick enough to allow for scraping down to achieve a smooth surface, and that modern adhesive needs to be applied either quickly over the whole surface, or in tiny tiny strokes.

These are the results with comments by those on the course. The comments don’t necessarily match the miniatures.

I would do it again! Highly recommended course with an excellent tutor and lovely people.

Great explanations, very enjoyable and approachable for all questions. Great course! Perfect amount of time (longer would have been lovely too). Immersive and very educational!

Thank you for your clear explanations and demonstrations. The course is perfect for providing an introduction to illumination and painting. It has given me the motivation to continue with this.

I enjoyed the additional information as well as the essentials – all very well explained. It was wonderful; could have done five days.

Brilliant; thank you. I cannot believe how well my miniature turned out.

Excellent, clear description and explanation of materials, techniques and tools. Brilliant – pure and simple.

Such an interesting and engaging experience, thoroughly enjoyable and I felt I learned a great deal that will be put into practice at home. Patricia was unfailingly patient and good humoured, like being with a lovely family. Thank you!

Lovely, informative, very interesting and fun. Great!

‘Illumino: a History of Mediæval Britain in Twelve Illuminated Manuscripts’ by Michelle Brown

Michelle Brown is a prolific author having written many books, but, having read most of them, I can say that every single book she produced is well worth reading. She is able to share her knowledge in the most user-friendly way, and her latest book ‘Illumin: a History of Mediæval Britain in Twelve Manuscripts’ is a case in point. It is slightly a misnomer though because it suggests that the book is about only those twelve manuscripts when in fact it covers so much more. It is a whirlwind tour of the history of Britain during that period including what was going on socially, the battles and wars, kings and queens, and all providing a backdrop and an introduction to not only the selected twelve manuscripts but so many more. I marked pages that I wanted to go back to look at and study again with coloured stickers – it is clear from the photograph how fascinating I found the book!

The books are: the Lindisfarne Gospels (as here), the Book of Cerne, Lives of St Cuthbert, Queen Emma’s Enconium, the St Albans Psalter, Topographia Hibernia, Chronica Majora, the Holkham Bible, the Luttrell Psalter, the Sherborne Missal, the Dictes and Sayings of Philosophers, and the Psalter of Henry VIII.

A number of these books have been studied before by Michelle with excellent publications as a result, but here each one is approached within the context of the events surrounding its production. As an example the chapter on the St Albans Psalter, shown here, picks up the death of Henry I’s son and heir with the ensuing civil war, Henry II’s quarrel with Thomas Becket and the latter’s murder, the Crusades, the influence of Arabic knowledge on the West, learning and teaching in Paris, glossed and the huge twelfth-century bibles, the Psalter itself and the life of Christina of Markyate, the Bury Bible and Master Hugo, sagas, romances and the Arthurian legend, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Marie of France, and even more. If this list suggests just that, a list, a name check of the long twelfth century then you would be much mistaken, the text is presented in not only an informative but also the most readable way, and it really is a page turner.

The last chapter on the King’s Psalter, the psalter for Henry VIII not only focuses on the manuscript itself, shown here, and Henry’s own handwriting in it, but emphasises the importance of this book and the significance with which Henry regarded it both in terms of his own behaviour as king and him regarding himself as being similar in many ways to King David in the Psalms, but also his relationship to Anne Boleyn.

The book ends with the first exhibition of manuscripts at the Burlington Arts Club in London, arranged by Sir Sydney Cockerell (his wife, Florence Kate Kingsford had trained with the great calligrapher Edward Johnston), and is brought up to date with a consideration of the ways in which manuscripts have inspired calligrapher, illuminators, letter designers and even how they have influenced modern technology in tablet design.

I do have one criticism, however, which is that the illustrations in the review copy I was sent are in black and white only. With over 100 of them, it is not surprising that costs had to be kept down, but one of the most important joys of manuscripts is their glorious colours and brilliant gold. This should not, though, detract from a wonderful book, very highly recommended.

Mediaeval decorated letters to colour

I’ve been lucky enough to have worked closely with the British Library for what is now decades. Many years ago I was helping the Education Department which had a lot of school visits. The problem always with such visits is how to occupy those who finish any set tasks quickly before the rest of the class. I suggested producing a series of outline drawings taken from illuminated and decorated mediæval manuscripts that could be coloured in, and then produced six of them.

Having a clear-out recently, I came across them again, and thought that they could be shared with a wider audience, hence this blogpost. They are copyright, but free for personal and educational use, simply click on the picture/link below for a high resolution pdf to print out; they’re sized for A4.

I’ve copyrighted them because they mustn’t be used by anyone or an institution to print out or use in a publication and make money from them.

Please, though, feel free to print these outline letters for your own use, for children and grandchildren, for courses, and for classes.

As the British Library’s website, including the digitised manuscripts, is still not completely available, colour images are here if possible, otherwise black and white photos or similar images are posted.

Copy the original colours if you wish, or go freestyle – they’re your letters to colour, so your choice.

The first is the magnificent letter B from the Ramsey Psalter (BL Harley 2904).