Miraculous Miniatures

Master of Claude de France, Angels Holding the Crown of Thorns
and the Eucharistic Host
From Prayer Book of Claude de France
Frencg, ca. 1517
New York, Pierpont Morgan Library
MS M1166, fol. 51v-52r
Photo:  Schecter Lee

Among the amazing feats of human endeavor two things have always fascinated me.  One is the fine detail frequently found in ancient jewelry, as for instance in Greek and Roman gold jewelry.  Another is the staggering detail that can be found in illuminated manuscripts, details that must be painted with brushes no bigger than a single hair.  And some of the most astounding documents of the miniature painter’s art that I have ever seen are currently on display at the Morgan Library.  I visited the exhibition, called appropriately “Miracles in Miniature:  The Art of the Master of Claude de France”, some time ago, but have not been able to prepare this review till now.  Unfortunately, the exhibition closes on September 14, so there are just a couple of weeks left for you to see it, if you are in the New York area. 

If you are not able to make it the Morgan Library website does provide digital facsimiles of two of the primary volumes in the exhibition.  However, I urge you to get to the Library if you can.  Digital images are great; they allow you to get very close to the page, closer than you could possibly get in person.  But, like all photographs, they can also be deceptive.  Unless you see the actual book on display you will not believe it.

The works on display are primarily the work of a miniature painter currently known as the Master of Claude de France, as his or her name is as yet unknown to us.  Indeed, it is not such a long time since the hand of this master was identified by the manuscript specialist, Charles Sterling. Two of the works on display were commissioned by Claude, who was the daughter of King Louis XII and Queen Anne of Brittany.  She was Duchess of Brittany by inheritance from her mother and was married, at the age of 14, to her cousin, Francois de Valois, count of Angouleme and heir to her father's crown, thus succeeding her mother as Queen of France and uniting the Duchy of Brittany to the crown of France.  She died at the age of 24, in 1524.

The primary manuscript, the Prayer Book
of Claude de France, is displayed along

This photo, taken at the exhibition, offers some scale for the size of
the books.  However, they are even smaller than they appear to be.
The book seen in this photo is the Book of Hours of Claude de France.
Photo:  Emon Hassan for The New York Times

with two other books.
  

All three books fit into a case that is approximately 6 inches square!  The Prayer Book of Claude de France is, in fact, only 2-3/4 inches by 2 inches, smaller than a credit card, and the other books are only slightly bigger.







A sense of the scale can be gained from the image of the book being held in someone’s hands that appeared on the Morgan’s website.  Yet, within these extremely small pages, the Claude Master managed to paint scenes that rival full scale panel painting.  Truly these are miraculous miniatures!

Photo of the Prayer Book of Claude de France being held.
Photo:  Schecter Lee

All but one of the illuminations in the Prayer Book are contained within the borders of one leaf.  One image, of the Trinity, spreads over two pages, one of which it fills completely.  

The images surround the text on each page and the text is so small that it is amazing that the Queen of France was able to read the text of the prayers at all.  Surely, the painter did not do this work with the unaided eye!  He must have had access to artificial magnification.  One tends to forget that, although the microscope and the telescope were perfected during the seventeenth century, the simple magnifying lens was already known as early as the thirteenth century.   Magnifying spectacles must have been as essential to the Claude Master as were his brushes.  

Master of Claude de France
Angels Adoring the Trinity
From Prayer Book of Claude de France
French, ca. 1517
New York, Pierpont Morgan Library
MS M1166, fol. 25r
Photo: Schecter Lee

The incredible detail is best seen on the Morgan’s own website, where there is an online exhibition that permits you to zoom to the highest resolution possible.  Check out the detail in the angels at the top right corner of page 25, for instance here. 

Although the three tiny books at the heart of this show may look like charming toys for a queen they were intended, as was every illuminated book of hours or prayer book, as aids to prayer.  

Master of Claude de France, Jesus Purges the Temple and
the Agony in the Garden
From Prayer Book of Claude de France
French, ca. 1517
New York, Pierpont Morgan Library
MS M1166, fol. 6v-7r
Photo: Schecter Lee

They were a means of focusing the attention of the viewer on the stories they tell, whether from the Bible or from the lives of the saints.  The smallest book, the Prayer Book of Claude de France contains a complete illustration cycle for the Life of Christ and of the Life of the Virgin, including the tales of her conception and childhood, as well as illustrations from the lives of several of the Apostles.
  

Master of Claude de France, Assumption and Coronation of
the Blessed Virgin
From Prayer Book of Claude de France
French, ca. 1517
New York, Pierpont Morgan Library
MS M1166, fol. 23v-24r
Photo:  Schecter Lee

Some of the saints whose stories were included were of special importance to France and to the royal house of France.  These included:  St. Denis, St. Martin of Tours, St. Genevieve, St. Claude, St. Rene, St. Hubert and St. Louis.

Master of Claude de France, St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata
and St. Martin Preparing to St. Martin Preparing to Divide His Cloak
From Prayer Book of Claude de France
French, ca. 1517
New York, Pierpont Morgan Library
MS M1166, fol. 37v-38r
Photo: Schecter Lee

In addition, there are such popular saints as: Francis, Anthony of Padua, Anthony of Egypt, Gregory, Mary Magdalene, Veronica, Barbara, Catherine of Alexandria, Margaret of Alexandria, Helena and Ursula.

Master of Claude de France, St. Catherine of Alexandria
and St. Margaret of Alexandria
From Prayer Book of Claude de France
French, ca. 1517
New York, Pierpont Morgan Library
MS M1166, fol. 43v-44r
Photo: Schecter Lee

There are images of the mysteries of the Faith such as the Trinity and the Eucharist and the Communion of the Saints.

Master of Claude de France, All Saints
From Prayer Book of Claude de France
French, ca. 1517
New York, Pierpont Morgan Library
MS M1166, fol. 48v-49r
Photo:  Schecter Lee

In spite of its amazingly small size it is a powerhouse of assistance in prayerful meditation. 

The other books on display are also small masterpieces, though none are quite as tiny as the Prayer Book of Claude de France.  However, some of them are also intimately connected with her.

Master of Claude de France, Annunciation
From Hours of Claude de France
French, ca. 1517
Bibermuehle (Switzerland), Collection of Heribert Tenschert
Fol. 14v
Photo:  Ina Kettlehoven

 Her Book of Hours, on loan from a private collection, is on view, as is the prayer book of her mother, Anne de Bretagne, also Queen of France twice over, as the wife of first Charles VIII and then Louis XII.

Jean Poyer, Penitance
From Prayer Book of Anne de Bretagne
French, 1492-1495
New York, Pierpont Morgan Library
MS M50, fol. 10v
Here the penitent is Queen Anne herself.

Master of Claude de France, Pages from a Book of Hours
French, ca. 1515-17
Private Collection
Fol. 26v-27
It is suggested that this book may have been commissioned
for Renee de France, Claude's younger sister.

Other books and loose pages on display, some of them recently identified as the work of the Claude Master, are assembled together for the first time. 

The books in this exhibition stand at the very end of the great tradition of manuscript illumination that developed during the middle ages.  Beginning with occasional full page illustrations and smaller illustrations, sometimes single figures, sometimes whole scenes, in the capital letters and/or the margins, illumination had evolved by this time into a form that presented the natural world in very tiny scale.

Master of Claude de France, Agony in the Garden
Single Leaf from a Book of  Hours
French, ca. 1505-1520
New York, Pierpont Morgan Library
MS M1143.001r

By the time these images were painted, the art of illumination had become a luxury profession, practiced by specialized artists and no longer a natural part of producing books by hand.  Book publication had already assumed most of its modern characteristics with mass production by presses and illustration by hand had already been replaced by woodcut and print illustration.  When produced these small gems were already luxury goods for a tiny group of royal and aristocratic individuals.  And this show surely reflects this.

Master of Claude de France, Exposition of the Eucharist
From Prayer Book of Claude de France
French, 1517
New York, Pierpont Morgan Library
MS M1166, fol. 52v
Photo:  Schecter Lee

It would not be until the 19^th century that such lavishly decorated picture books would appear again, following advances in color printing processes.  Today this kind of illustration is primarily found in books intended for children.  So, seeing these incredible masterpieces of miniature painting, intended to assist an adult in prayer, is both an enormous treat and a reminder of how much life has changed in 500 years.

© M. Duffy, 2014

Everything Old Is New Again or Medieval Fashion, the Start of It All

Workshop of the Boucicaut Master, Delilah Shearing Samson's Hair
From a  Bible Historale
French (Paris), c. 1420-1424
New York, Pierpont Morgan Library
MS M 394, fol. 112r

Yesterday afternoon I got together with two of my best friends for a visit to the Morgan Library in midtown. We set out to see two of the Morgan’s current special exhibitions, both of which underline the word “elegance” in different ways. I’m going to discuss these exhibitions separately for the sake of the reader and because they inspired some entirely different thoughts.

The first exhibition is “Illuminating Fashion: Dress in the Art of Medieval France and the Netherlands” (running through September 4, 2011) and is a lot of fun to view. The topic is the development of medieval fashion from about 1325 through about 1515. The clues to the clothing are found in manuscripts from the Morgan’s extensive collection, especially in the Books of Hours that were a fixture of life for the literate medieval person. The walls of the gallery are decorated with enlargements of the details of some of the manuscript illumination and with a timeline of events in France and Burgundy. The timeline reminds us that more was happening in the period than fashion. Among the events were: the Black Death, the Hundred Years War, the capture of France’s King John I, the madness of the French King Charles VI, the Battle of Agincourt, England’s Occupation of France, Joan of Arc, the Reconquest of France by the French, the beginning of the Renaissance in France.

Emperor Otto III
From Gospels of Otto III
German (Reichenau), c. 1000
Munich, Bayerisches Staatsbibliothek,
MS Clm 4453, fol. 24r

As the witty exhibition wall and object cards note, prior to the early 14th century “fashion” was somewhat limited by garment construction. Most garments were constructed, as they had been for millennia, by being cut in more or less identical flat pieces, front and back, sleeves included, which were then stitched or pinned together, creating a somewhat flat garment, without too much of a distinctive shape (see illustration above). What spurred the development of “fashion” were two inventions: the set-in sleeve and the button.

Once upon a time I made all my own clothing and so I’m familiar with the different types of sleeve construction. The set-in sleeve (virtually the only kind of sleeve currently in use today) is more difficult to construct, involving as it does:  creating a gathered tube (the sleeve) which then has to be attached to another tube (the body of the garment). There are lots of problems that can arise during the process of attaching the one to the other, but it does give several advantages. One can move the arm more freely within the circle of the armhole without distorting the entire garment, one can play around with the gathers to create puffed sleeves, one can alter the fit by making the armhole tight or loose, etc. Once inset sleeves can also assume more complicated shapes, being draped, gathered, tight, full, cuffed, padded, etc. Other sleeve options (raglan, dolmen) are less versatile.

Alexander McQueen, Dress
from "Horn of Plenty" collection
Autumn/Winter, 2009-2010

We may think that odd shapes and extreme silhouettes, such as the dress by Alexander McQueen above, are something new in fashion, but they are not, as this exhibition eloquently demonstrates. From the male wasp waists of the second half of the 14th century to the high horned headdresses and turrets (also called hennins) of the fashionable 15th-century woman, the middle ages could teach the 21st century a thing or two about style. But here are a few observations of my own.



1. The exhibition makes a distinction between “clothing” and “costume”. “Clothing” is the contemporary clothing actually worn at any one point in time. “Costume” is the clothing not actually worn in contemporary life. Costume is applied to characters (literary or religious) and is used to make a point of separation from the present time, either for historical or moralizing reasons. Two examples will make this clear.

In the first, a page from a German Missal (the book containing the prayers of the Mass) from about 1381 an image of the Presentation of the Infant Jesus is used to fill a capital letter in the center of the page. The Biblical characters are simply dressed in timeless clothing.

Meister Bertram von Minden, The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple

From a Missal

German (Hamburg),  c. 1381

New York, Pierpont Morgan Library

MS M 892.3, fol.1r

 Meanwhile, the margins are filled with scenes from nature; some of them whimsical (for example, a bear, wearing a cloak and carrying a stick, abducts some ducks and appears to be trying to fool three others).

Detail

At the lower left margin, however, are scenes from contemporary daily life, a young nobleman and two women pursue hawking activities. The gentleman sports the fashion of the era, complete with padded torso, wasp waist, dagged hem, hip belt, dangling pouch and hooded chaperon hat with a long cornet (A tube of cloth attached to the crown of a chaperon).1 On his feet he wears fashionable shoes with cut-out straps, not unlike some 2011 gladiator sandals.

 



In the second, Morgan MS 342, the Epistolary and Apocalypse of Charles the Bold , illuminated in Bruges around 1470, the Whore of Babylon is shown in a mixture of exaggerated old and new fashions to signal her decadence and depravity (link to the image here).

2. The exhibition was enlightening on several points. I learned the answer to some questions that have perplexed me for years when looking at some of the illuminations from this era. I was delighted to learn, for example, about the existence of the chaussemble. 1  This is a man’s garment, a pair of woolen hose with leather soles attached. No longer will I think that the men in illuminations and paintings are walking around in their stockinged feet! I also learned that the shoe we now know as the “Mary Jane” was, in the 14th and 15th centuries, a man’s shoe, not a little girl or woman’s shoe. Women’s shoes were not covered in any detail in the exhibition.

3. It is also evident from this exhibition that 21st-century men have considerable catching up to do to equal the sartorial splendor of their many times great-grandfathers of the 14th and 15th centuries.

The Vow of the Peacock

From Vows of the Peacock by Jean de Longuyon

Flemish (Tournai), c. 1345-1350

New York, Pierpont Morgan Library

MS G 24, fol.24v

The earliest clothing in the period isn’t too extravagant, although the combination of colors might seem startling to most 'darks and neutrals' 21st-century men.

However, between the beginning and middle of the 15th century the human peacocks became the equivalents to the peacocks and birds-of-paradise of the avian world. The houpeland, described as “a full outer garment, worn by men and women; the man's with gores inserted in the skirt; made full-length, calf-length or very short”1 and, later in the century the gown, gave plenty of room for extravagant interpretations and luxurious fabrics.

Josephus Master and the Bedford Master, Giving Instructions to the Huntsmen

From the Livre de la Chasse by Gaston Phoebus,

French (Paris), 1406

New York, Morgan Library

MS M 1044, fol. 42v

A fantastic houpeland in a 1406 copy of the Livre de la Chasse by Gaston Phoebus, one of the most famous secular books of the late middle ages, features an elegantly dressed gentleman, echoing the noblemen of the contemporary Très Riches Heures of the Duke of Berry.

The Limbourg Brothers, May

From the Tres Riches Heures of Jean, Duc de Berry,

Flemish, ca. 1410-1416

 Chantilly, Musee Conde

MS 65, fol. 5v

4. However, in the medieval period women were by no means relegated to the role of dull peahen. They had their own amazingly fantastic styles. Their houpelands were worn with extravagant horned and veiled headdresses. Starting as the actual dressing of their own hair, as two coils on either side of the face, it grew and grew into an elaborate structure covered in fabric or jewels, encasing the braids, sometimes topped with veiling supported by a wire frame.

Ladies and Gentlemen Watch a Joust

From Ordnances of Chivalry

English (London), c. 1450s

New York, Morgan Library

MS M 775, fol. 2v

By the end of the 15th century it had been superseded by the high conical turret 1 or hennin, which sometimes grew to extravagant heights as well. Another mystery was cleared up for me by the note pointing out that the cone was supported by a templet 1 of metal worn on the woman’s head. Our hair bands are distant echoes. I had often wondered how that high pointed hat had remained in place. Nonetheless, there must have been many aching necks and backs in the 15th century!

Very helpful were the four reconstructed garments, two men’s and two women’s that occupy the center of the gallery. It’s one thing to see garments in the manuscripts or in the enlarged details that decorate the walls. It’s another thing entirely to be able to walk up to a mannequin, to see the fabric and to be able to walk around the figure. Well constructed with modern materials, they can give us some idea of how a person actually looked.

Replica garment, From the Romance of Tristan
French, c. 1468
New York Morgan Library,
MS M 41, fol. 24v

Replica Garment
From Vows of the Peacock
(cited above)

Replica Garment
From the Hours of Catherine of Cleves
Utrecht, c. 1440
New York, Morgan Library,
MS M 917, fol. 25r

Replica Garment
From the Livre de la Chasse
(cited above)

It may be a coincidence, and it certainly is a happy one, that this exhibition of medieval clothing is running concurrently with the much more widely known retrospective of the work of Alexander McQueen at the Met. One wonders if Mr. McQueen had similar images in mind when one sees some of the garments in the Met’s selections.

Alexander McQueen, Evening Dress
Widow of Cullodon collection,
Autumn/Winter 2006

Alexander McQueen,
Evening Dress,Sarabande
Collection, Spring/Summer
2007

Alexander McQueen, Coat and Dress,
Girl Who Lived In the Tree Collection,
Autumn/Winter 2008-2009

One area on which I would have liked more information within the Morgan’s exhibition (it may perhaps be addressed in the catalogue, which I did not purchase) is how “designs” spread in the Middle Ages. There were no fashion designers as we know them, just tailors and dressmakers. Many people made their own clothing or had them made by their own servants. There may have been “pattern books” of course. These would be books with drawings of garments or garment details (nothing like a 2011 Vogue or Simplicity pattern book, of course). Presumably royalty and the high nobility were the fashion leaders, but communications were relatively slow. Judging by the documents on display, styles changed fairly quickly, though more slowly than they do today. One wonders what mechanism drove the change.

© M. Duffy, 2011

1.  Definitions may be found on the Glossary page of the Morgan's online exhibition
http://www.themorgan.org/collections/works/IlluminatingFashion/glossary/default.asp