Bidspirit auction | BERRY (Jean de France, Duc

BERRY (Jean de France, Duc de). LES GRANDES Heures de Jean de France, Duc de Berry. Paris. 1971. - BERRY (Jean de France, Duc de) LES GRANDES Heures de Jean de France, Duc de Berry . Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. Ms. lat. 919. Introduction et légendes par Marcel Thomas, Conservateur en chef du Cabinet des Manuscrits, Bibliothèque Nationale. Paris: Draeger Frères / Vilo, 1971. XX pp., 110 ff., [12] pp.: il.; 430 mm. Facsimile edition in large folio of the illuminations of the Grandes Heures by Jean de France, Duc de Berry (BnF, ms. lat. 919), with introduction and captions by Marcel Thomas, then Chief Curator of the Manuscripts Department of the Bibliothèque Nationale. The Draeger edition of 1971 is considered one of the most faithful and beautiful reproductions of this manuscript. Jean de France, Duke of Berry (1340-1416), brother of Charles V of France, was the greatest patron and collector of illuminated manuscripts in medieval Europe, possessing at the end of his life about 300 manuscripts of the most varied genres. The Grandes Heures were commissioned around 1407 and completed in 1409, according to an inscription by his secretary Nicolas Flamel on the first flyleaf. The inventory of the Duke's library, drawn up in 1413, attributes the illumination to Jacquemart de Hesdin – a painter in the Duke's service between 1384 and 1413 – in collaboration with Pseudo-Jacquemart, the Master of Boucicaut, and the Master of the Duke of Bedford. Upon the patron's death, the manuscript was described as ”very large and very beautiful and rich Hours, very remarkably illuminated and historiated with great stories”. The large, full-page miniatures—approximately forty-five in total—were removed from the codex at an unknown date. Only one survives: the Portement de Croix de Jacquemart de Hesdin, acquired by the Louvre in 1930 (RF 2835). The manuscript today retains twenty-four miniatures of biblical allegories in the calendar, twenty-eight miniatures illustrating the text, five portraits of the Duke, and a richly decorated margin with the heraldic emblems of the patron—the bear, the swan, and the interlaced VE monogram. After the Duke's death, the manuscript passed to Louis XII of France and has been part of the Bibliothèque nationale since the Ancien Régime. Highly sought after. ⚑ Auto-translated via Google Translate