Description
This lyrical illumination illustrates the Triumph of David; it probably prefaced the beginning of the Seven Penitential Psalms in a Book of Hours. Painted in pastel colors against an atmospheric landscape, the Israelite women sing and play musical instruments before the city gate as they greet the victorious David: “Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands” (Samuel 18: 6–7). David is outfitted as a young shepherd boy, bearing the head of the slain Goliath aloft on his sword. The armies of the Israelites and the Philistines are faintly visible in the atmospheric background from which emerge the soft outlines of a town, while the high empty sky forms a remarkable illusion of infinite space rising upward.
Whether the artist responsible for the Triumph of David is the Berlin or the Vienna Master, he certainly exhibits thorough familiarity with models from the closest circle of the Master of Mary of Burgundy. Compare the same scene of David advancing toward the women of Israel with the head of Goliath on the tip of his sword in the delightful Hours of Engelbrecht of Nassau, lieutenant of Burgundy under Maximilan, probably painted around 1480–1490 (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 219). A rare model sheet of the same subjects in Paris (École nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts, Mas. 2235) shows in the specimen initial David and Goliath in the same poses as they appear in the background of the Triumph of David. The figures appear again, similarly posed, in the miniature of this subject in the Berlin Hours (f. 190v). In the lower right of the Paris sheet, the vignette of David with the women of Israel is nearly identical to our miniature in practically the smallest of details.
Other features of the Triumph of David relate it very closely to the artist responsible for the Berlin Hours. A similar effect of the atmospheric landscape and the high empty sky with light on the horizon is achieved by the artist in his miniature of Saint Apollonia in the Berlin Hours (f. 338v). Likewise, the portrayal of the Israelite women in their fashionable costumes and headdresses are like Susannah (f. 340v) also in the Berlin Hours. In the same manuscript (f. 190v), David and Goliath come into the foreground, posed just as they are in the background of the Triumph of David (and in the Paris model sheet), and even the contours of the architecture in the townscape are the same, if portrayed with greater clarity.
Alas, we have not yet found a Book of Hours from the Master of Mary of Burgundy group that lacks its miniature of the Seven Penitential Psalms. But the recovery of the present miniature offers fodder for the debate about attribution while strengthening the association between the two hands.
provenance
Ambroise Firmin Didot (1790–1876), Paris, France, Catalogue des livres précieux, manuscrits, et imprimés faisant partie de la Bibliothèque de M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot, June 10–14 June, 1884, through descent;
Les Enluminures, 1999;
James E. and Elizabeth J. Ferrell, Kansas City, MO, 1999–2017;
Sandra Hindman, The Art Institute of Chicago, on deposit, 2018–2024; exhibited 27 January to 28 May 2018.
literature
Published:
de Hamel, Christopher, and Matthew Westerby. The Medieval World at Our Fingertips: Manuscript Illuminations from the Collection of Sandra Hindman. London, Turnhout, 2018, no. 13, 144–55;
Related Literature:
Pächt 1948;
König, Eberhard von, Fedja Anzelewsky, Bodo Brinkmann, and Frauke Steenbock, eds. Das Berliner Stundenbuch der Maria von Burgund und Kaiser Maximilians: Handschrift 78 B 12 im Kupferstichkabinett der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin Preussischer Kulturbesitz. Berlin, 1998.
Kren, Thomas, and Scot McKendrick, eds. Illuminating the Renaissance: The Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe. Los Angeles, 2003.
learn
The Master of Mary of Burgundy, Southern Netherlands, likely Ghent, c. 1470-1485
The Master of Mary of Burgundy was originally named after two manuscripts: a manuscript in Berlin (Kupferstichkabinett, MS 78 B 12) made for the young Mary of Burgundy and her husband Maximilian I between c. 1477 and 1482, and another manuscript in Vienna also made for Mary of Burgundy c. 1470–1475 (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 1857). As far as we know, these are the only two manuscripts she owned. Mary was the only child of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, and when her father was killed in battle in 1477, she became a wealthy, sought-after heiress, who in that same year at the age of nineteen married Maximilan of Austria, heir to the Holy Roman Empire. At the age of twenty-five, while hunting on horseback, she fell from her horse and died, an event that is foreseen in an uncanny way in a disturbing scene in her Berlin Hours. Otto Pächt in 1948 devoted a classic monograph to the artist, who opened an “entirely new chapter in the history of Flemish illumination” with his illusionistic borders and miniatures. Scholars have subsequently distinguished between the styles of the Berlin and Vienna manuscripts, and in 1998, Bodo Brinkmann separated the artist’s work into two groups which he identified as the Berlin and Vienna Masters of Mary of Burgundy, taking their names from the two eponymous manuscripts. Unresolved issues remain about the roles, as well as the oeuvre, of these two illuminators and related artists, and “we might still after all be dealing with a single personality” (de Hamel 2018, 147). Generally, work by the Vienna Master is regarded as more atmospheric with richly textured detail and composed with more delicate draftsmanship. The Berlin Master in his frequent use of designs of the Vienna Master is considered a fine colorist who achieved sparkling light effects. Both artists were most probably active in Ghent and are associated with Netherlandish painters, the Berlin artist with Hugo van der Goes and the Vienna Master with Joos van Ghent.