Votive Masses
Texts and Images
The Votive Masses for major feast days open with images of the relevant feast, saint or object of veneration. Masses written during the original campaign received small miniatures, while those added in the 15th century were illustrated with images of varying sizes and formats.
Deposition (Votive Mass for Good Friday)
This miniature represents the characteristic style of the Master of the Coronation Book of Charles V – dry and linear by comparison with that of his colleagues. The protagonists have the idiosyncratic physiognomy typical of this artist's works: the eyes set far apart and the broad, flat, strongly highlighted base of the nose that endow the faces with vacant, mask- or beast-like expressions. The Master of the Coronation Book of Charles V is also the only 14th-century illuminator in the manuscript to favour bright yellow hues, which he obtained with lead-tin yellow. He mixed this same pigment with indigo in green areas, unlike his colleagues who chose orpiment as the yellow component in green mixtures.