Leaves from the Hours of Charles de Martigny

Jean Bourdichon

Artists

Talented and versatile, Jean Bourdichon (1457-1521) painted on panel as well as parchment. He succeeded his teacher, Jean Fouquet (1420-1481), as court painter in the early 1480s and served under four successive French monarchs: Louis XI, Charles VIII, Louis XII, and Francis I. Bourdichon was admired for his skill as a portraitist; his expansive landscapes and intimate interiors; his captivating night scenes with dramatic light effects; and his illusionistic frames and floral borders, creative adaptations of Italian and Flemish models. The high demand for Bourdichon’s works required the help of assistants and their involvement is evident in two of the miniatures from Charles de Martigny’s Hours, but the Mass of St Gregory, with its life-like portrait of the patron, was completed by the master.

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1
Detail of Christ and Judas’ faces under magnification (7.5x).
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2
Detail of Judas’ dark yellow robe under magnification (7.5x). The robe was painted with an arsenic sulphide pigment not found in the other two leaves.

Set in the Garden of Gethsemane, this miniature shows Christ, Judas, St Peter and other figures depicted half-length against a dark blue sky, with highlights in shell gold. This composition features in numerous manuscripts painted by Bourdichon and his workshop. The main protagonists were most probably painted by Bourdichon himself, while the rest of the image, lacking the master’s subtle modelling, was completed by his assistants.

The arch-topped miniature features a full border of pink and blue acanthus and red, blue and pink floral sprays on a gold ground with birds, a frog, and a monkey mounted on a dragon. Below are three lines of text, opening with a grey and white ornamental initial D, introducing Terce of the Hours of the Virgin. The letter is filled with gold on a pink ground, enclosing sprays of blue, yellow and white pansies. The text of Terce of the Hours of the Virgin continues on the reverse, which is decorated with a one-sided, vertical border in the outer margin, containing pink and blue acanthus and floral sprays on a gold ground with a bird. The page is further ornamented with small foliate initials in contrasting colours, one embellished with a fly, and another with an animal head. Line fillers take the form of white and gold foliate motifs on blue and maroon grounds, and tree branches rendered in brown and gold.