Description
This refined leaf portrays an unusual subject, Christ (as God the Father) appearing to Saint James the Lesser. According to Corinthians I 15:7, after the Resurrection Jesus appeared “to James, then to all the apostles.” An episode in the Golden Legend expands on the biblical text. James vowed to eat nothing until the Resurrection, after which Jesus came to him, blessed some bread, and gave it to him, saying: “Rise, my brother, and eat, because the Son of Man has risen.” The leaf comes from an important Book of Hours, where it illustrated the Suffrage to Saint James the Lesser, a section of the manuscript placed just before the Hours of the Virgin.
The Bute-Soissons Book of Hours, from which this leaf comes, was once part of the distinguished collection of the Marquess of Bute, acquired in 1983 by Hans P. Kraus and dismembered. Twenty-three full-page illuminations, all on inserted leaves, are attributed here to the workshop of the Master of the Morgan Life of Saint Margaret. Only a few of these leaves have resurfaced: an opening initial in the Cleveland Museum of Art (inv. 2005.203), several text leaves (Bloomsbury, London, July 6, 2021, lot 35), and two other full-page miniatures: Adoration of the Magi (Private Collection) and the Visitation (Les Enluminures). Written for the rare liturgical use of Soissons (hence the “Bute-Soissons” Hours), the deluxe parent manuscript must have been a special commission for someone of significant status, for example, Enguerrand VII de Coucy, Count of Soissons (1367–1397) or his daughter Marie I de Coucy, who succeeded him (1398–1404).
The scene is set on a thin strip of land against a rich diaper background. The elongated figure of Christ as God the Father holding a globe appears on the left, gesturing toward Saint James who is seated on a burnished golden throne on the right. The throne bursts out of the frame, as is typical of miniatures in this manuscript, combining the Gothic International Style for the figures with “northern realism” for the compositions. Both faces are modeled on a colored ground, the facial features suggested with thick brushstrokes of red and white pigment and thin strokes of black ink. These stylistic characteristics can be recognized in the slightly earlier Prayer Book and Life of Saint Margaret in the Morgan Library and Museum (MS M. 947). In the Morgan manuscript, the historiated initials display comparable features in the drawing of the swirling draperies, the soft application of colors, and the painterly modeling of the faces. The Morgan Life and the text leaves of the Bute-Soissons Hours share the same extravagant borders, with a dense network of ivy leaves, associated with tight swirls of black ink. As suggested in the preceding biography, the origins of this dramatic and moving style should be sought in the fertile artistic experiments in the North and South Netherlands around 1400.
We are grateful to Elliot Adam for his expertise.
provenance
(?) Enguerrand VII de Coucy, Count of Soissons (1367–1397) or his daughter Marie I de Coucy, who succeeded him (1398–1404);
John Crichton-Stuart (1847–1900), third Marquess of Bute, or John Stuart (1713–1792), third Earl of Bute, or his namesake and heir John Stuart, first Marquess (1744–1814);
recorded in the Bute library catalogue of 1896 for St. John’s Lodge, Regent’s Park, London, as MS 128 (G. 23);
sale Sotheby’s London, Catalogue of the Bute Collection of Forty-Two Illuminated Manuscripts and Miniatures, June 13, 1983, lot 6;
Hans P. Kraus (1907–1988), New York, acquired at the Bute sale and dismembered;
Private Collection, France.
literature
Published:
Parent manuscript published in Sotheby’s 1983, lot 6;
Ferrini, Bruce P., Sandra Hindman, and Michael Heinlen, eds. Important Western Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts and Illuminated Leaves. Akron, 1987, no. 73.
Fliegel, Stephen. The Jeanne Miles Blackburn Collection of Manuscript Illuminations. Cleveland, 1999, no. 20.
Related Literature:
Panofsky, Erwin. Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character. Cambridge, 1953
Meiss, Millard. French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry. 2 vols. London, 1967
Delaissé, L. M. J. A Century of Dutch Manuscript Illumination. Berkeley, 1968;
Vanwijnsberghe, Dominique. “Moult bons et notables”: L’enluminure tournaisienne à l’époque de Robert Campin (1380–1430). Leuven, 2007, 213, figs. 342–43;
Vanwijnsberghe, Dominique, and Erik Verroken. A l’Escu de France: Guillebert de Mets et la peinture de livres à Gand à l’époque de Jan van Eyck (1410–1450). 2 vols. Brussels, 2017, vol. I, no. 93.2007, 111.
learn
Master of the Morgan Life of Saint Margaret, France, Thérouanne (?), active c. 1400
The Master of the Morgan Life of Saint Margaret takes his new eponymous name from a manuscript in the Morgan Library, likely a fragment of a Book of Hours of seventy-five folios with two full-page illuminations, six historiated initials, and many full borders (New York, Morgan Library and Museum, MS M.947). Little known in the literature apart from publications by Dominique Vanwijnsberghe, this manuscript was probably illuminated in Northern France, perhaps in Thérouanne, by an artist with tendencies “toute flamande” related to the artist Jean Semont. Vanwijnsberghe compared the leaves of the Bute-Soissons Hours with two illuminated devotional manuscripts of around 1400 for the use of Thérouanne (Arras, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 822; Warsaw, Biblioteka Narodowa, MS Boz 29). To the “Thérouanne Group” should be added the leaves from the Bute-Soissons Hours, but they are more inventive than those in the Morgan volume. Earlier scholars Millard Meiss, Erwin Panofsky, and L. M. J. Delaissé referenced many of these anonymous illuminators around the year 1400 as representatives of the International Style, who brought northern realism to France—to Arras, Rouen, Paris—and who translated the style of pre-Eyckian painters like Melchior Broederlam into illumination. Whether this artist was local to the Arras region or a migrant from further north remains an open question. The figures that burst out of the frame, for example in the Adoration of the Magi (f. 74v) or in Saint George and the Dragon (f. 16) in the Bute-Soissons manuscript recall Dutch illumination of the same period, such as the Master of Margaret of Cleves in the Hours of Margaret of Cleves and the Biblia Pauperum (Lisbon, Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, MS LA 148 and London, British Library, Kings MS 5). Further systematic study of related compositions with panel paintings and illumination in Northern Europe around 1400 is essential. Unfortunately, the complete destruction of Thérouanne, ordered by Charles V in 1553, does not facilitate our understanding of manuscript illumination in what was once an affluent town.