Tag Archives: Books of Hours

April in the Très Riches Heures of the Duc de Berry

April in the in the Très Riches Heures of the Duc de Berry April is the month for engagements in the Trés Riches Heures of the Duc de Berry, and shown here is a very elegant group dressed in rich fabrics with the happy couple giving and taking the engagement ring. The striking blue of the cloak of the man on the left, the woman sitting, that of the sky, and the semicircles above completely balances in the painting.

 

 

April heavens in the Très Riches Heures of the Duc de BerryAt the top of the image, as with all of these Labours of the Month in the Très Riches Heures, is a semicircle with repeated fine shell gold lines encasing two wide blue borders. The sun in its winged chariot and pulled by horses – picked out by shades of blue and highlights of gold – are in the inner one, and in the outer one are the astrological signs for the month – Aries the Ram and Taurus the Bull.

April in the Très Riches Heures of the Duc de Berry castleOn many such pages the Van Lymborch Brothers include one of the Duc de Berry’s castles and houses, and that is the case here. This time it’s the Château de Dourdan with it’s fine red tiled roof, high walls, and many conical towers.

Men fishingBelow the castle are the tiniest of boats, two of them, each containing a man rowing. Between them the floats for a net attached to each of the boats are shown by tiny dots, and to the left is what looks like a weir.

 

Walled gardenCarefully and exquisitely painted is the edge of a stone building with four diamond leaded light windows, and a walled garden with well-kept beds and fruit trees in blossom – appropriate for the month. Some plants are being trained up the back wall – espaliers – and there is a trellis separating parts of the garden.

 

 

 

But the main focus is the engagement with the four main figures in the foreground. Their clothes are rich and colourful, the ultramarine blue of the man on the right offering the engagement ring is particularly striking, especially in contrast to his gloriously plumed red hat! His bride-to-be looks suitably modest as she accepts the ring; she’s wearing a paler blue gown decorated with a regular deeper blue pattern, which so cleverly changes according to the folds lower down as she hitches up the skirt. Behind them are probably her parents, her mother in a rather sombre black dress but with bright red sleeves for contrast, looks as if she is encouraging her daughter to accept, and her father on the left, in a subdued grey gown with gold trim, is supporting his wife. His gown may be sombre but note that extravagant black hat and those red stockings!!

Two women one in a pretty pink dress clinched at the waist with a gold belt, her flaxen hair loose and falling in waves to her waist, wears a circlet of gold roses, on her head, and her companion, with a rather strangely shaped ultramarine blue hat decorated with pearls and a gold medallion, has a deep blue dress and a black and white over-tunic. It looks as if they may be picking flowers perhaps to create bouquets on such an auspicious day.

Yet again the Van Lymborch brothers have created a wonderfully joyful page, full of details and painted exquisitely.

For more Labours of the Month click on these links:  July, August, September, October, November, January, February and https://www.patricialovett.com/march-in-the-tres-riches-heures-of-the-duc-de-berry/

 

 

 

Memento mori – remember (that you have to ) die

DSCN6043-300x214Children dressing up as skeletons, skulls made out of sweet jelly and white chocolate bones are all part of Hallowe’en, but, as with so many of our customs, these sorts of symbols are not new. It was thought that the veil between heaven and earth was particularly thin on the night before All Saints’ or All Hallows’ Day, and so it was then timely for us to remember our own mortality and to consider our life on earth. All Saints’ /Hallows’ Day is, of course, November 1st, and the evening before that All Hallows’ Evening, or Hallowe’en. Nowhere are we encouraged more to think about the afterlife than with memento mori – remember you have to die. And this is particularly true with some tombs such as that for Dean Fotherby at Canterbury Cathedral in Kent, erected in the seventeenth century (see right).

TombStJohnsChester_mOn Dean Fotherby’s tomb, the bones are in complete disarray, however on the tomb of Diana Warburton at St John the Baptist Church in Chester, erected also in the seventeenth century, her skeleton is modestly draped revealing only her upper chest and head and then her feet, (although her feet do seem rather large for her body and look a little as if they’re wrapped in bandages).

 

 

 

9900350Mediæval Books of Hours also included a memento mori, as they contained, usually towards the end of the book, the Office of the Dead. This Office was recited before the Requiem or funeral Mass, and is a rather long section. The illustration to this Office in a Book of Hours usually depicted death or burial, with a shrouded corpse, or, as here, a draped coffin. The fact that Books of Hours were for lay people ensured that the owners would be familiar with the words of the Office which encouraged a reflection on mortality.

 

 

allegory_of_the_vanitiesDeath was also featured in some paintings. Dutch artist Harmen Steenwyck painted An Allegory of the Vanties of Human LIfe in about 1640 (now in the National Gallery). It is a very symbolic painting with the shell representing wealth, the musical instruments indicating the pleasures of the senses, books denoting human knowledge, the chronometer and lamp (which has just gone out) showing the frailty of human life, and all being dominated by the large skull in the foreground – a symbol of death. These paintings are called vanitas, after Ecclesiastes (Old Testament) ‘Vanity of vanities … all is vanity’ (‘Vanitas vanitatum … et omnia vantias’).