The Belles heures de Jean, duc de Berry (Cloisters, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) is thought to have been completed latest in 1409/10. On one miniature added on a single leaf in a small gathering at the end of this manuscript a group of riding nobles is hesitating before a castle showing the blue and golden bands of Burgundy. It is a picture illustrating a prayer for a safe journey and has been interpreted to refer to the time when arrangements were made trying to reconcile the dynasties of Burgundy and Orléans after that John the Fearless’s soldiers in 1407 had murdered the king’s brother Duke Louis of Orléans.

This miniature introduces something new in the Belles heures, a scene with contemporary persons acting together. One man riding at the right flank on a white horse seems to be dressed as a French prince and may be meant to show the from time to time insane King Charles VI. Another man riding in the first row is probably Jean, Duke of Berry, here represented with moustache and beard, as he is known to have appeared during some periods. There are of course earlier in the Belles heures representations of the Duke and the Duchess in prayer, but these pictures of a youthful Jean and on the verso of Jeanne of Boulogne with a crown on her head are not very realistic. In the Duke of Berry on a Journey we find not only the representation of a real contemporary event, also the style is different with a new clearness and freshness. And the artist is keen to demonstrate his unusual ability in painting the intricately arranged twisting horses.

In the Très riches heures de Jean, duc de Berry (Musée Condé, Chantilly), the perhaps most admired of all the illuminated works that were part of the inheritance after the book-collecting Duke of Berry, the idea of representing interacting real persons was practiced with masterly force in four remarkably beautiful miniatures of courtly festivities. They are part of the opening Calendar and illustrate the months January, April, May and August. They are usually thought to have been painted by one of the Limbourg brothers, either Pol, who is interpreted to have been the most talented of them, or Jean. There are, however, also other contributors than the Limbourgs to this book, and not even all the famous Calendar miniatures are by the same hand. In 1416, the year when both the Duke and the three Limbourgs died, the book was still unfinished. Completing Calendar paintings are interpreted to have been added by an unidentified artist as late as around 1438-42. Ultimately finished this book was not until in the 1480s by the artist Jean Colombe.

The Très riches heures opens with the quite magnificent miniature of January showing a great many elegant nobles lively arranged around a courtly laid out table in a splendid palace. Nearly all are so skilfully portrayed that the artist must have known most of them very well. It is a masterly composed scene that seems to catch a dramatic moment of a meaningful happening. A group of newcomers is just arriving from the cold into the richly decorated salon, some of them warming their hands before the fireplace. As it is possible to identify not only Jean of Berry but also some of the other nobles with reasonable probability, this is of help when trying to understand more precisely which event it was that the commissioner of the painting wanted to have remembered. History has fortunately preserved knowledge of several firm dates in the lives of Duke Jean and other French nobles, e g at which places they stayed at different times during the early years of the fifteenth century, so full of wars and dramatic historic events. Other documents even tell who the most prominent guests were at some of the courts on certain days.

Jean of Berry is represented as the prominent person he certainly was. He is easy to recognize thanks to his detailed painted pug-nosed profile, a not very admirable characteristic that opens to doubting if he really - as has always been guessed - should have been the commissioner of this painting. Honoured to be placed next to him in the sofa is an obviously very distinguished tonsured prelate, dressed in purple. It has been suggested that this man might be Berry’s book-collecting friend Martin Gouge, Bishop of Chartres, or possibly Guillaume Boisratier, Archbishop of Bourges. The colour of this man’s dress makes it, however, more probable that he may be the well-known Louis of Bar, who became a cardinal in 1397 and Bishop of Langres.

Louis of Bar was the son of Duke Robert of Bar and Jean of Berry’s sister Marie. At the time we deal with here he was Bishop of Châlons-sur-Marne. In 1419 he became Bishop of Verdun. This cardinal-duc inherited the Duchy of Bar since two of his brothers had fallen at the battle of Agincourt in 1415. He is known as a great supporter of arts and literature. With no children of his own he adopted in 1419 the young René of Anjou as his follower, and René was chosen to marry Isabelle, the only child of Duke Charles in the bordering Duchy Lorraine, also this duke a supporter of the arts. It has been guessed that René of Anjou in this milieu may have met Jan van Eyck or that he at least had got to know his art.

A third person is honoured enough to eat together with Duke Jean and the supposed Louis of Bar, a young man standing at the end of the table. He seems to be dressed as a Prince of France and may be identified with Dauphin Louis, Duke of Guyenne, born in 1396 and on 5 May 1403 as a child engaged to Duchess Margaret of Burgundy in an arrangement by the old Duke Philip the Bold. Margaret was sent to be raised at the court in Paris and the children were married in Notre-Dame on 31 August 1404. The also mentioned date for their marriage, 31 August 1412, probably means that they started to live together on this day. The not very respected Dauphin Louis, who died already on 18 December 1415, probably poisoned, was very interested in magnificence and precious objects and is known to have had an artist called Haincelin de Haguenot in his service. Busy eating this supposed prince shows no interest in the discussion beside him or in the group just arriving, one of the elements that create a strained atmosphere in this skilfully calculated composition.

The young man at the head of the newcomers casts an interrogating glance at him and at the group behind him as if astonished to find them there or maybe as if waiting for being welcomed. To be judged from his dress this prominent new guest may be a member of the Burgundian court. He is most likely the young Count Philip of Charolais, the later Philip the Good, who at the same time as his sister Margaret in 1403 was sent to be raised at the court in Paris and engaged to Princess Michelle. These high-ranked children were then married on 14 February 1405. When it also is mentioned that they were married in June 1409, this may mean that this was the time when they started to live together. The supposed Count Philip, warming his hands at the open fire, is accompanied by a beautifully dressed young lady wearing a big golden chain, most likely Princess Michelle.

The man in black who seems to hide himself behind this couple - maybe for good reasons - is probably Philip’s father John the Fearless, the instigator of the murder of Louis of Orléans. It is not unreasonable to think that the very richly dressed man behind the supposed Dauphin Louis may be meant to show his from time to time insane father King Charles VI. The young man who supports him with his right arm around his shoulders has the same intricately arranged red turban and may be one of the other young royal princes, Jean or Charles. We find the same kind of turban, although blue, on the supposed Princess Michelle indicating that these three persons are family members with a creative dress designer in their service.

Behind the supposed King Charles and his supporter there stands another young man wearing a dress decorated with several golden letters r and a not very princely but surely warming cap folded over one of his ears. He has, however, a dress with a precious fur collar. It seems difficult to find a reason for his presence should he not be one of the young French princes, which also the many letters r (Royal) on his dress seem to indicate. One may guess that the letters were added for facilitating the understanding of this man’s identity, if not as one of the princes at least as a member of the court.

The expert P Durrieu has guessed, however, that we here see a self-portrait of the painter, thought to be one of the Limbourg brothers, especially as this man’s ´coifed head reappears in two other books of hours by the Limbourgs: the Petites Heures (Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris) and the Belles Heures´. My first reaction to this suggestion was quite negative, as it in fact would mean something as odd as accepting an artist in the circle of high-ranked nobles at a time when also those who serve at the table are chosen nobles. At second thought I find that the possibility that we here should see a self-portrait by a seemingly about 30-year-old artist might be believable if presupposing that it is the question of a partly repainting by the artist, when he in later years felt a reason to sign in this way one of his very memorable paintings, a masterpiece in the art of book illumination.

A very interesting figure is a jester in a dress somewhat reminding of that of the supposed Count Philip. He has a band decorated with golden drops over his shoulders and a long rod in his hand. A richly dressed man standing just behind Jean of Berry and leaning himself at the sofa may be Charles of Orléans, placed as if assisting the old duke, to whom he was related since his marriage in 1410 to Bonne of Armagnac, a lady then deceased already in 1415. He was the son of the murdered Duke Louis of Orléans. Placed between him and the entering Philip of Burgundy the jester would seem to stand as a kind of guard between the two young descendants of hostile dynasties. Charles was after the battle of Agincourt imprisoned for many years in London and is known also as a good poet at the same time as the incomparable F Villon, who tried to get support from him. Two nobles have dresses marked with the letter M, which may refer to the name of the castle where the happening is taking place.

At first sight this January miniature seems to show a friendly festivity at a palace decorated with a big tapestry and the arms and the emblems (bears and wounded swans) of Duke Jean of Berry, and so it has normally been interpreted. At a closer look it becomes obvious, however, that what the ingenious artist shows us is a concentrated moment of a contemporary game of power, as full of human insight and irony as a scene from a Shakespearean drama. The miniature is of course painted in the atelier with the help of earlier sketches and does not necessarily refer to circumstances dateable to some real event in just the month of January.

Copyright © 2001-2007 Knut Andersson. All rights reserved.