Book of Hours, Use of Chartres ca. 1487

I have been meaning to digitize this manuscript from my collection for some time, and finally got to it today.  It is a Book of Hours from Chartres France, and made around 1487.  There are three surviving miniatures, all in varying degrees of degradation, while numerous others have been snipped out by a previous owner. 


Usage
The localization is based on a few factors: the calendar, the late Erik Drigsdahl's CHD index, as well as an inscription at the end of the MS that has been partially transcribed.

The Calendar has numerous Saints specific to worship in and around Chartres:

Illumination
The three surivivng miniatures are all of a poor state of preservation.  They include The Visitiation, The Annunciation to the Shepherds, and King David in Prayer


There are some similarities to other surviving Books of Hours from Chartres.  Les Enluminures recently sold BOH 229, and they connected their illumination with that of BNF MS Lat 1406 as well, though i'm not necessarily convinced of a common hand between the three:



Provenance

The most interesting aspect of this MS in my mind is the inscription at the end, which offers a glimpse into the life of a family in 15th century France.  The following images are illuminated with black light to allow for easier reading:





Thanks to the help of Rob C Wegman, I have a transcription of the top paragraph of the 2nd page, as well as names and dates of the other entries:

L’an mil iiij.c. iiij.xx et huit, le mardi feste sainct Simon et sainct Jude, xxviij.e jour d’octobre, fut née ma fille neuve Magdalene, à heure de sept heures de matin ou environ, et fut christianée a sainct Nicolas de sainct André de Chartres, et fut le parrain maistre Jehan Fille<ul?>, scelleur de Monseigneur de Chartres, et les marraines Jehanne, veufve de feu Regnault Chautant, et Mauroydy Fiere [?], fille de Jehan des Freuz.

On Tuesday 28 October 1488, the feast of Sts Simon and Jude, was born my new daughter Magdalene, at seven in the morning or thereabouts, and she was christened at [the altar of] St Nicholas in [the church of] St André of Chartres; and the godfather was Master Jehan Fille<ul?>, Sealer of My Lord of Chartres, and the godmothers [were] Jehanne, widow of the late Regnault Chautant, and Mauroydy Fiere [?], daughter of Jehan des Freuz.

 Names and dates of the other entries are as follows:

Right page, 1st paragraph: Daughter Magdalene, born 28 October, 1488 (see entry above)

Right page, 2nd paragraph: daughter Jehanne, born November 13, 1489 and baptized at St. Andrew's

Right page, 3rd paragraph: daughter Bienvenue, born November 11, 1490

Left page, 1st paragraph: son Jehan, born Palm Sunday March, 1491

Left page, 2nd paragraph: name illegible, baptised on Wednesday after Easter,1493

Left page, 3rd paragraph: son Estienne, born April 5, 1494

Professor Wegman also points out that the writer signs his name Bel or Bele following some of these entries.  These are then preceeded by a rebus which could represent a heart, so perhaps Bellecoeur.  Upon reflecting on it writing this blog post, perhaps it is meant to be a flower, and so possibly Bellefleur?


The illumination also offers us a bit of a provenance hint.  Amdist all of the border illuminations are three love knots, often used to celebrate unions at this time.  Perhaps this Book of Hours was a wedding present to a couple whose first names were J and G:


Based on the fact that the first name of the couples first son was Jehan, perhaps he was named after his father who also could have had a "J" as his first name.  If so, that would leave us with the original owner being Jehan Bel, Jehan Bellecoeur, or possibly Jehan Bellefleur

It can also be noted that the binding itself references no name of the sort.  On the cover is the name Nicollas, and the rear board is Londaul[t]



Browsing through Hathitrust, I discovered a reference to Nicollas Landault, from 1600: 

Honorable man Nicollas Londault, controller of the domayne de Dreux and one of the gaigiers and churchwardens of the work and manufactures Sainct-Pierre de Dreux, residing in the village Dreux, at the age of fifty-two or about...

Clearly this binding can not be original as Nicollas was born around 1550, 70 years or so after this MS was created.  One wonders how this Book of Hours came into his hands -- perhaps he was the son or grandson of "Jehan Bels" daughters who took their husbands name of Londault?  The MS stayed in the Londault family through the 18th century as there is an ownership inscription for Louis Londault in 1786






















Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anonymous Lombard Illuminator of around 1310-1320

Image
Edit: thanks to Dr Milvia Bollati for providing the Initial S from the former Longari collection below and confirming the attribution of my initials. In 2024 I purchased two clippings from a small auction house in Brooklyn.  They had been crudely pasted together by a previous owner, with faux gold leaf covering the seam in parts.  There appeared to be loss of paint, primarily to the flesh tones of the faces and arms, but the over all quality seemed quite nice despite that and I decided to go for them. After purchasing, I discovered that these two initial I's were from a known set of clippings held at numerous institutions and private collections.  A 2015 auction at Koller in Zurich , with notes to Lot 158 written by Gaudenz Freuler provided the greatest amount of help.  16 initials were known at the time of the Koller sale.  The two I's my brooklyn purchase increases the total to 18. Digital Photos Available (see below): Initial I - Jesus fasting in the de...
Read more

Initial I for a Martyred Saint - Master of the Montepulciano Gradual

Image
Recently, this clipping of a Saint being martyred failed to sell at an auction in Germany.  I was able to obtain it in a post-sale offer. As luck would have it, I reached out to Dr. Bryan Keene to ask their opinion of it and to my surprise, Bryan had previously written about the artist while working as an associate curator at the Getty Museum in LA and was even familiar with the leaf in question. A blog post on the Getty's website does a better job of explainig the history of this artist than I can, but for a TL;DR version, the artist has historically been associated with the Master of the Antiphonary of San Giovanni Fuorcivitas but many recent scholars including Keene believe it is by a different hand and have began naming the artist Master of the Montepulciano Gradual. Below is a list of sister clippings taken from the Getty post, followed by images of the different clippings I have managed to track down.  One thing I find interesting about the grouping is the distinct bord...
Read more