Turin-Milan Hours - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Turin-Milan Hours is an incomplete illuminated manuscript

Illuminated manuscript

An illuminated manuscript is a manuscript in which the text is supplemented by the addition of decoration, such as decorated initials, borders and miniature illustrations...

, despite its name not strictly a book of hours

Book of Hours

The book of hours was a devotional book popular in the later Middle Ages. It is the most common type of surviving medieval illuminated manuscript. Like every manuscript, each manuscript book of hours is unique in one way or another, but most contain a similar collection of texts, prayers and...

, of exceptional quality and importance, with a very complicated history both during and after its production. It contains several miniatures

Miniature (illuminated manuscript)

The word miniature, derived from the Latin minium, red lead, is a picture in an ancient or medieval illuminated manuscript; the simple decoration of the early codices having been miniated or delineated with that pigment...

of about 1420 by Jan van Eyck

Jan van Eyck

Jan van Eyck was a Flemish painter active in Bruges and considered one of the best Northern European painters of the 15th century....

, his brother Hubert van Eyck

Hubert van Eyck

Hubert van Eyck was a Flemish painter and older brother of Jan van Eyck. He was probably born in Maaseik, Flanders, now in Belgium....

, or artists very closely associated with them. About a decade or so later Barthélemy d'Eyck

Barthélemy d'Eyck

Barthélemy d'Eyck, van Eyck or d' Eyck , was an Early Netherlandish artist who worked in France and probably in Burgundy as a painter and manuscript illuminator...

may have worked on some miniatures. Of the several portions of the book, that kept in Turin

Turin

Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...

was destroyed in a fire in 1904, though black-and-white photographs exist.

History

The work was commissioned in about 1380 or 1390, perhaps by the person who later owned it, Jean, Duc de Berry, brother of Charles VI of France

Charles VI of France

Charles VI , called the Beloved and the Mad , was the King of France from 1380 to 1422, as a member of the House of Valois. His bouts with madness, which seem to have begun in 1392, led to quarrels among the French royal family, which were exploited by the neighbouring powers of England and Burgundy...

, and the leading commissioner of illuminated manuscript

Illuminated manuscript

An illuminated manuscript is a manuscript in which the text is supplemented by the addition of decoration, such as decorated initials, borders and miniature illustrations...

s of the day. The original commissioner was certainly a great person of the French court – Louis II, Duke of Bourbon

Louis II, Duke of Bourbon

Louis de Bourbon, called the Good , son of Peter de Bourbon and Isabella de Valois, was the third Duke of Bourbon....

, uncle of the King and Berry, has also been suggested. It seems to have been conceived, very unusually, as a combined book of hours, prayer-book and missal

Missal

A missal is a liturgical book containing all instructions and texts necessary for the celebration of Mass throughout the year.-History:Before the compilation of such books, several books were used when celebrating Mass...

, all parts to be lavishly illustrated. The first artist involved was the leading master of the period known as the Master of the Narbonne Parement

Master of the Parement

The Master of the Parement of Narbonne, often referred to more briefly as the Master of the Parement or Parement Master is the name given to an artist of uncertain identity who flourished in France in the late 14th century and early 15th century. He belongs to the period of medieval painting...

. There was another campaign by other artists in about 1405, by which time the manuscript was probably owned by the Duke of Berry, who had certainly acquired it by 1413, when the work, still very incomplete, was given to the Duke's treasurer, Robinet d'Estampes, who divided it. D'Estampes retained most of the actual book of hours, whose illustrations were largely complete, which became known as the Très Belles Heures de Notre-Dame de Duc Jean de Berry. This remained in his family until the 18th century, and was finally given to the BnF

BNF

BNF may stand for:In science:*Biological nitrogen fixation, a process that converts nitrogen in the atmosphere to ammonia*British National Formulary, the standard drug reference manual**British National Formulary for Children...

in Paris (MS: Nouvelle acquisition latine 3093) by the Rothschild family

Rothschild family

The Rothschild family , known as The House of Rothschild, or more simply as the Rothschilds, is a Jewish-German family that established European banking and finance houses starting in the late 18th century...

in 1956, after they had owned it for nearly a century. This section contains 126 folios with 25 miniatures, the latest perhaps of about 1409, and includes work by the Limbourg brothers

Limbourg brothers

The Limbourg brothers, or in Dutch Gebroeders van Limburg , were famous Dutch miniature painters from the city of Nijmegen. They were active in the early 15th century in France and Burgundy, working in the style known as International Gothic...

.
Robinet d'Estampes appears to have sold the other sections, with completed text but few illustrations other than the borders, and by 1420 these were owned by John, Count of Holland, or a member of his family, who commissioned a new generation of Netherlandish artists to resume work. It is the miniatures of this phase that are of the greatest interest. Two further campaigns, or phases of decoration, can be seen, the last work being of near the mid-century. The art historian Georges Hulin de Loo distinguished the work of eleven artists – "Hand A" to "Hand K" – in the work. By this stage the manuscript appears to have been owned by, or at least was at the court of, Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy

Duke of Burgundy

Duke of Burgundy was a title borne by the rulers of the Duchy of Burgundy, a small portion of traditional lands of Burgundians west of river Saône which in 843 was allotted to Charles the Bald's kingdom of West Franks...

– another argument for the involvement of Jan van Eyck

Jan van Eyck

Jan van Eyck was a Flemish painter active in Bruges and considered one of the best Northern European painters of the 15th century....

who moved from the employment of the counts of Holland to the court of Burgundy, apparently taking the work with him.

Most of this part of the work, the prayer-book section, known as the Turin Hours, belonged by 1479 to the House of Savoy

House of Savoy

The House of Savoy was formed in the early 11th century in the historical Savoy region. Through gradual expansion, it grew from ruling a small county in that region to eventually rule the Kingdom of Italy from 1861 until the end of World War II, king of Croatia and King of Armenia...

, later Kings of Piedmont

Piedmont

Piedmont is one of the 20 regions of Italy. It has an area of 25,402 square kilometres and a population of about 4.4 million. The capital of Piedmont is Turin. The main local language is Piedmontese. Occitan is also spoken by a minority in the Occitan Valleys situated in the Provinces of...

(and subsequently Italy), who gave it in 1720 to the National Library in Turin

Turin

. Like many other manuscripts it was destroyed, or virtually so, in a fire in 1904. This portion contained 93 leaves with 40 miniatures. However the missal portion of the work, known as the Milan Hours, was bought in Paris in 1800 by an Italian princely collector. After the fire, this part, containing 126 leaves with 28 miniatures, was also acquired by Turin in 1935, and is in the Civic Museum there (MS 47). Eight leaves had been removed from the original Turin portion, probably in the 17th century, of which four, with five miniatures, are in the Louvre

Louvre

The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...

. Four of the five large miniatures are by the earlier French artists, with one from the later Flemish

Flanders

Flanders is the community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands. "Flanders" can also refer to the northern part of Belgium that contains Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp...

phases (RF 2022–2025). A single leaf with miniatures from the last phase of decoration was bought by the Getty Museum in 2000, reputedly for a million US dollars, having been in a Belgian private collection.

The miniatures and borders

The page size is about 284 x 203 mm. Nearly all the pages illustrated with miniatures have the same format, with a main picture above four lines of text and a narrow bas-de-page ("foot of the page") image below. Most miniatures mark the beginning of a section of text, and the initial is a decorated or historiated square. Often the bas de page image shows a scene of contemporary life related in some way to the main devotional image, or an Old Testament

Old Testament

The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...

subject. The borders, with one exception, all follow the same relatively simple design of stylised foliage, typical of the period when the work was started, and are largely or completely from the first phase of decoration in the 14th century. These would have been done by less senior artists in the workshop, or even sub-contacted out. In the pages completed in the earlier campaigns the borders are further decorated by the miniaturists with small angels, animals (mostly birds), and figures, but the later artists usually did not add these.

The single exception to the style of the borders is a destroyed page, with the main miniature a Virgo inter virgines by Hand H. The border here is in a richer and later 15th century style, from 1430 at the earliest, partly overpainting a normal border, which has also been partly scraped off. This is probably because the original border contained a portrait of a previous owner, of which traces can be seen.

The Paris Très Belles Heures probably originally contained 31 instead of the current 25 illustrated pages,, which when added to 40 in the original Turin portion, 28 in the Milan-Turin portion, 5 in the Louvre and 1 in Malibu, gives a total of at least 105 illustrated pages, a very large number, approaching the 131 illustrated pages of the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry

Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry

The Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry or simply the Très Riches Heures is a richly decorated book of hours commissioned by John, Duke of Berry, around 1410...

, which also took many decades to complete.

The artists

The French art historian Paul Durrieu fortunately published his monograph

Monograph

A monograph is a work of writing upon a single subject, usually by a single author.It is often a scholarly essay or learned treatise, and may be released in the manner of a book or journal article. It is by definition a single document that forms a complete text in itself...

, with photographs, on the Turin Hours in 1902, two years before it was burnt. He was the first to recognise that the Turin and Milan Hours were from the same volume, and to connect them with the van Eyck brothers. Georges Hulin de Loo, in his work on the Milan portion published in 1911 (by which time the Turin portion was already lost), made a division of the artists into "Hands" A–K in what he thought was their chronological sequence. This has been broadly accepted – as regards the lost Turin portion few have been in a position to dispute it – but the identification of them has been the subject of great debate, and Hand J in particular is now sub-divided by many. Hands A–E are French, from before the division of the work, Hands G–K are Netherlandish from after it, and Hand F has been attributed to both groups.
Hand G is universally agreed to be the most innovative; Hulin de Loos described his miniatures as "the most marvelous that had ever decorated a book, and, for their time the most stupifying known to the history of art. For the first time we see realized, in all of its consequences, the modern conception of painting... For the first time since antiquity, painting recovers the mastery of space and light" Hulin de Loos thought these the work of Hubert van Eyck, who, like most art historians of the time, he also thought the main artist of the Ghent Altarpiece

Ghent Altarpiece

The Ghent Altarpiece or Adoration of the Mystic Lamb is a very large and complex Early Netherlandish polyptych panel painting which is considered to be one of Belgium's masterpieces and one of the world's treasures.It was once in the Joost Vijdt chapel at Saint Bavo Cathedral, Ghent, Belgium, but...

. He thought the less exciting, but similar, Hand H might be Jan van Eyck. Since then art historical opinion has shifted to see both Hand G and most of the Ghent Altarpiece as the work of Jan; Max J. Friedlaender, Anne van Buren and Albert Châtelet

Albert Châtelet

Albert Châtelet was a French politician and scientist. Châtelet received his teaching degree from the École Normale Supérieure in 1908. After earning a doctorate in 1913, Châtelet became a lecturer at École centrale de Lille and a professor at Université de Lille, rising to the rank of ...

were among the proponents of this view. More recently, some art historians see Hand G as a different but related artist, in some ways even more innovative than the famous brothers. The dating of the Hand G miniatures has been placed at various points between 1417 and the late 1430s.

Hands I–K are all working in a similar Eyckian style, perhaps following underdrawing or sketches by Hand G, and are usually seen as members of Jan's workshop, although many now think work continued after Jan's death, which was by 1441 (Hubert had died in 1426). Many iconographical

Iconography

Iconography is the branch of art history which studies the identification, description, and the interpretation of the content of images. The word iconography literally means "image writing", and comes from the Greek "image" and "to write". A secondary meaning is the painting of icons in the...

, as well as stylistic correspondences have been noted with other manuscripts and painting produced in Bruges

Bruges

Bruges is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located in the northwest of the country....

from the 1430s on, and it seems clear that the manuscript was located there at this time. Numerous suggestions have been made as to their identities, mostly as anonymous illuminators named after a particular work. Hand K is the latest and generally the weakest of the later group, working up to about 1450, and "probably painting outside the workshop environment"; he is often identified as, or linked with, the Master of the Llangattock Hours

Master of the Llangattock Hours

The Master of the Llangattock Hours was a Flemish manuscript painter active between 1450 and 1460. He is one of at least eight artists who contributed to a Book of Hours, the Llangattock Hours, now in the J...

.

Often the bas-de-page and main miniature are by different artists, as in the Getty's leaf, and also the borders and historiated initial

Historiated initial

A historiated initial is an enlarged letter at the beginning of a paragraph or other section of text, which contains a picture. Strictly speaking, an inhabited initial contains figures that are decorative only, without forming a subject, whereas in a historiated initial there is an identifiable...

The style of Hand G

Hand G who, as described above, may or may not have been Jan van Eyck, paralleled the achievement and innovation of that artist's panel painting

Panel painting

A panel painting is a painting made on a flat panel made of wood, either a single piece, or a number of pieces joined together. Until canvas became the more popular support medium in the 16th century, it was the normal form of support for a painting not on a wall or vellum, which was used for...

s in the miniature form, firstly in the technical development of the tempera

Tempera

Tempera, also known as egg tempera, is a permanent fast-drying painting medium consisting of colored pigment mixed with a water-soluble binder medium . Tempera also refers to the paintings done in this medium. Tempera paintings are very long lasting, and examples from the 1st centuries AD still exist...

medium to achieve unprecedented detail and subtlety, with much use of glazes, and also in his illusionistic realism, especially seen in interiors and landscapes – the John the Baptist

John the Baptist

John the Baptist was an itinerant preacher and a major religious figure mentioned in the Canonical gospels. He is described in the Gospel of Luke as a relative of Jesus, who led a movement of baptism at the Jordan River...

page illustrated shows both well.

Only three pages at most attributed to Hand G now survive, those with large miniatures of the Birth of John the Baptist
Nativity of St. John the Baptist
The Nativity of St. John the Baptist is a Christian feast day celebrating the birth of John the Baptist, a prophet who foretold the coming of the Messiah in the person of Jesus and who baptized Jesus.-Significance:Christians have long interpreted the life of John the Baptist as a preparation for...

, the Finding of the True Cross
True Cross
The True Cross is the name for physical remnants which, by a Christian tradition, are believed to be from the cross upon which Jesus was crucified.According to post-Nicene historians, Socrates Scholasticus and others, the Empress Helena The True Cross is the name for physical remnants which, by a...

– not accepted by all – (both shown above), and the Office of the Dead (or Requiem Mass), with the bas-de-page miniatures and initials of the first and last of these. Four more were lost in 1904: all the elements of the pages with the miniatures called The Prayer on the Shore (or Duke William of Bavaria at the Seashore, the Sovereign's prayer etc.), and the night-scene of the Betrayal of Christ (which was already described by Durrieu as "worn" before the fire), the Coronation of the Virgin
Coronation of the Virgin
The Coronation of the Virgin or Coronation of Mary is a subject in Christian art, especially popular in Italy in the 13th to 15th centuries, but continuing in popularity until the 18th century and beyond. Christ, sometimes accompanied by God the Father and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove,...

and its bas-de-page, and the large picture only of the seascape Voyage of St Julian & St Martha. Examination under infra-red light has shown underdrawing for a different composition in the Birth of John the Baptist, who was the patron saint

Patron saint

A patron saint is a saint who is regarded as the intercessor and advocate in heaven of a nation, place, craft, activity, class, clan, family, or person...

of John, Count of Holland. The unique and enigmatic seashore subject seems to illustrate an episode from the ferocious internal politics of the family, who can be clearly identified by the arms on a banner. Châtelet suggests the Peace of Woodrichem in 1419, when John succeeded in wresting control of her inheritance from his unlucky niece Jacqueline, Countess of Hainaut

Jacqueline, Countess of Hainaut

Jacqueline of Wittelsbach was Duchess of Bavaria-Straubing, Countess of Hainaut and Holland from 1417 to 1432...

. The bas-de-page shows another landscape, of flat Dutch countryside, looking forward to the Dutch Golden Age painting

Dutch Golden Age painting

Dutch Golden Age painting is the painting of the Dutch Golden Age, a period in Dutch history generally spanning the 17th century, during and after the later part of the Eighty Years War for Dutch independence. The new Dutch Republic was the most prosperous nation in Europe, and led European trade,...

of the 17th century.

Châtelet contrasts the Turin miniatures with those of the Limbourg brothers

Limbourg brothers

, which favour faces in profile, with the clothes barely modelled onto the bodies, and the figures not integrated into the space of the miniature. In the Hand G images the figures are fully modelled, as are their clothes, shown from a variety of angles, and are rather small, not dominating the space of their setting. Chiaroscuro

Chiaroscuro

Chiaroscuro in art is "an Italian term which literally means 'light-dark'. In paintings the description refers to clear tonal contrasts which are often used to suggest the volume and modelling of the subjects depicted"....

modelling gives depth and realism to both figures and setting. For Friedlaender "The local colours are adjusted to the dominant tone with inexplicable confidence. The gliding of shadows, the rippling of waves, the reflection in the water, cloud formations: all that is most evanescent and most delicate is expressed with easy mastery. A realism that the entire century failed to reach seems to have been achieved once by the impetus of the first attack". Kenneth Clark

Kenneth Clark

Kenneth McKenzie Clark, Baron Clark, OM, CH, KCB, FBA was a British author, museum director, broadcaster, and one of the best-known art historians of his generation...

, who thought Hand G to be Hubert, agreed: "Hubert van Eyck has, at one bound, covered a space in the history of art which the prudent historian would have expected to last over several centuries. .... The tone of the landscape has a subtlety hardly observed again until the nineteenth century..." Of the seashore scene he says: "The figures in the foreground are in the chivalric style of the de Limbourgs; but the sea shore beyond them is completely outside the fifteenth-century range of responsiveness, and we see nothing like it again until Jacob van Ruisdael's beach-scenes of the mid-seventeenth century." Margarita Russell, historian of marine art

Marine art

Marine art or maritime art is any form of figurative art that portrays or draws its main inspiration from the sea. Maritime painting is a genre that depicts ships and the sea—a genre particularly strong from the 17th to 19th centuries...

, describes the Hand G marine scenes as "capturing the first true vision of pure seascape" in art. Some (but not all) of the miniatures in the Limbourg brothers' Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry

Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry

The Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry or simply the Très Riches Heures is a richly decorated book of hours commissioned by John, Duke of Berry, around 1410...

, which is contemporary or slightly earlier, contain innovative depictions of reflections in water, and these are taken further in the Hand G miniatures.

As Thomas Kren points out, the earlier dates for Hand G precede any known panel painting in an Eyckian style, which "raise[s] provocative questions about the role that manuscript illumination may have played in the vaunted verisimilitude of Eyckian oil painting". Otto Pächt emphasized the "spacial conflict" that affected illusionistic manuscript miniatures, sharing the page with text, in a way that did not affect panel paintings: "the necessity of having to look into the page of the book, however cleverly contrived, meant that from now on the book housed a picture as an alien body on which it no longer had any formal influence".

Facsimiles

Facsimile

A facsimile is a copy or reproduction of an old book, manuscript, map, art print, or other item of historical value that is as true to the original source as possible. It differs from other forms of reproduction by attempting to replicate the source as accurately as possible in terms of scale,...

editions have been published of the surviving Turin section (1994:980 copies), accompanied by a large commentary, and separately of the BnF "Très Belles Heures de Notre Dame", and of the Louvre leaves (which includes photographs of the burnt Turin pages). The 1902 volume of Durrieu has also been republished (Turin 1967), with new photographs from the original negatives, and a new introduction by Châtelet. The quality of the photos, or their reproduction, have been criticised in both editions.

External links

Images of eight pages from the facsimile
Facsimile
A facsimile is a copy or reproduction of an old book, manuscript, map, art print, or other item of historical value that is as true to the original source as possible. It differs from other forms of reproduction by attempting to replicate the source as accurately as possible in terms of scale,...

edition.
2 more facsimile images, enlargeable in two stages.
The Office for the dead – facsimile
Pentecost miniature
Black-and-white photos from L'Institut royal du Patrimoine artistique, Brussels: Trinity, Crucifixion full page, Madonna and Child, Agony in the Garden, Pentecost, St Peter delivered from prison, Coronation of the Virgin