Some of the masterly miniatures in the so-called Rohan Book of Hours (Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris) may still after more than 600 years be unequalled in expressing deepest sorrow and despair. Most well known are whole-page illuminations as the Judgement of Death, the Visitation, and perhaps even more the Lamentation of the Virgin with the tortued body of Christ lying on the ground and St John carrying the fainted Mary, her arms hanging lifeless down, while St John is looking back questioningly at an indifferent God the Father in the sky. It is a religious subject that here has been changed into something new, and it is represented with a revolutionary and original intensity.

The composition is masterly with a central triangle, horisontals, verticals and crossforms. Quite exceptional is the idea of representing St John as the principal character in a scene resembling a family drama, where Mary is a mother, Christ a son killed for no reason and God a heavenly father who in thriving isolation like an earthly prince is looking down slightly distressed at those he ought to have taken care of.

Most Books of Hours with prayers for different days of the year, a necessity at this time for important noble persons, are illuminated with rather conventional, more or less codified paintings suited for a majority often hardly able to read and with only modest experience of artistic quality. Yet a number of masterpieces were created as a result of some in magnificence competing high-ranked families, who were in the position to commission precious books from the best available artists.

The Rohan Book of Hours bears the arms of a member of the Rohan family, whose identity is unsure. Also the master who created the remarkable illuminations has up to now remained unidentified and as enigmatic as if he had come from an art milieu outside of France. The difficulty in identifying him has, however, its main reason in the generally accepted supposition that this book should have been illuminated in the years around 1430, because many of the illuminations seem to be based on an artistically week so-called Anjou Bible, thought to have been produced in Italy. The problem is further complicated by the fact that only some of the most original of the paintings are executed by the so creative leader of the atelier.

The figure of St John is the key person, with features recognizable also in some other illuminations in the book. The intensity of his expression, especially in the Lamentation, has caused some scholars to suspect that it should be the question of a real portrait. And so it may be. A wrong dating of the book has confused the interpreters, although the man who seems to be portrayed as St John is well known from several, yet later portraits: Jean, Duke of Berry, the famous collector and commissioner of illuminated books. His so characteristic profile is not difficult to recognize in some of the very detailed portraits, although he is here portrayed as a young man.

Jean of Berry liked to have himself portrayed, and as he had the same name as St John there was here a natural opportunity to paint him disguised as this saint. He was born in 1430 as the third son of King Jean II of France. In very young years he had been one of those who survived in the times of the Black Death. As well as the so sensitive artist he must on several occations have experienced the despair of loosing near friends and family members in sudden and meaningless-looking deaths in times rich of wars and plagues.

The number of his lost family members is considerable. Not 10 years old he had lost both his mother Judith of Bohemia and his grandfather King Philip VI. Two elder sisters had died as children and his stepmother Jeanne of Auvergne when he was 19 years old. Four years later also his father King Jean Le Bon died. Three younger sisters died in respectivly 1349, 1352 and 1372. When also his sister Jeanne died in 1373, there were in fact except three brothers and one sister only his stepgrandmother Blanche of Navarre in life of his once very big near family. It would not be unreasonable to suppose that his thrust in God in these years may have been failing, maybe the reason why the artist - who probably was a friend av him - chose to portray him as a questioning St John.

During most of his life Jean of Berry had several exceptionally talented artist working in different of his many castles, e g the three Limbourg brothers during some years until their sudden death in 1416. To judge from the portraits resembling the Duke of Berry in the Rohan Hours this book may have been produced rather early, maybe already in the 1370s. The young and revolutionary-looking man we see is also psychologically unlike the greedy, cruel and gaudy Duke that history knows for best.

Also in medieval times the number of those who were able to recognize high artistic quality counted of course only a few, but Jean of Berry was certainly one of them. Among the artists that he had in his service during the last half of the fourteenth century André (Andrieu) Beauneveu, born c. 1335, seems to have been outstanding. The well-informed chronicler Jean Froissart, who was born in the same city as Beauneveu, Valenciennes, writes that Jean de Berry se devisoit au maistre de ses euvres de taille et de pointure, maistre Adryen Beau-Nepveu, à faire nouvelles ymages et pointures … et il estoit bien adreschié, car dessus ce maistre Adryen dont je parle, n’avoit pour lors meilleur, ne le pareil en nulles terres, ne de qui tant de bons ouvrages fuissent demourés en France ou en Haynnau dont il estoit de nation, ne ou royaulme d’Angleterre. This exceptionally talented artist, of whom there ´was no better nor equal in any land´, was in the 1480s commissioned to supervise all sculptural and painted works for the Duke of Berry, e g at the new castle Mehun-sur-Yèvre.

Beauneveu is mentioned several times in the archives, earliest as working in the years around 1360 for Yoland of Flanders, Duchess of Bar, in the chapel of her castle at Nieppe. King Charles V of France mentions him as esteemed sculptor. With the help of documented commissions it has been possible to attribute certain works to him, most sculptures. For a period he seems to have been in London, where also Jean of Berry lived for some years as a hostage for his imprisoned father. In London Beauneveu is thought to have collaborated with Jean de Liège in works for Philippa of Hainault, the wife of King Edward II. During the period 1374-77 he was in the service of Louis de Mâle, Count of Flanders, at Kortrijk, and he is known to have worked among else also in Mechelen and Ypres. He was living in Bourges in 1388, and he is thought to have spent, at least from 1396, a good deal of his time in Paris, where Jean of Berry often resided.

There has long been consensus that the 24 prophets and apostles in a Psalter in Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris have been painted by Beauneveu, as this Psalter once belonged to Jean of Berry and probably is one listed as illumninated by Beauneveu in the inventory of his library in 1402. These illuminations are quite comparable to the best of the paintings in the Rohan Book of Hours, where as mentioned only a few of the miniatures are by the master. Up to now Beauneveu is primarily recognized as a sculptur, painter, designer of stained glass windows and as an architect. He may, however, as most other exceptionally talented artist in late-medieval times, originally have been educated in the highest esteemed artistic profession, that as a goldsmith. A vaguely written or read name of an up to now obscure goldsmith Alebret de Bolure in Paris, to whom two of the so talented Limbourg brothers were apprenticed around l400, may in reality mean Andrieu de Bourges.

Beauneveu died probably one of the first years of the fifteenth century, as his name is not found connected to any later datable work. In Jean of Berry’s inventory list of 1402 there is mentioned a Très belles heures, which has been identified with the Très belles heures de Notre Dame (Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, Brussels). This manuscript, illuminated by several artists, opens with two paintings forming a diptych, which are of such unusual quality that there is no reason to doubt L Delisle’s attribution of them to Beauneveu. The first page shows Duke Jean wonderfully portrayed between his patron saints John the Baptist and Andrew, who present Berry to the Virgin and Child on the facing page.

Another outstanding painting, the so-called Wilton Diptych (National Gallery, London), shows on the interior left wing King Richard II of England, who by his patron saint John the Baptist and the saints Edward and Edmund is presented to the Virgin and Child on the interior right wing. Its author, and the time for its execution, have been very much discussed. Careful analysis has shown that the colours and the used painting techniques are as alike on interiors and exteriors as if one artist should have painted all. The style and the high artistic quality of the interior left wing point strongly at Beauneveu as the artist. The right wing is, however, as much different from the left one that it seems unlikely that these both could have been combined originally by an artist as qualified as Beauneveu. Maybe there once existed more than one diptych and that the parts that are now preserved have been combined from two different ones. The right wing has a resemblance to Virgin and Child with Angels and Butterflies (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin), a painting that sometimes without much reason has been guessed to be a work by Jean Malouel.

Scholars who have examined works by an artist thought to have lived in the first half of the fifteenth century, a Phantom Rohan Master, have noticed several occations when this artist and his workshop should have been inspired by e g the Limbourg brothers and by the also very talented so-called Boucicaut Master. It seems clear, however, that these artists, like many other of their contemporaries, were instead strongly influenced by Beauneveu, one of the greatest artist of the fourteenth century, the teacher of e g the Limbourgs, who were to follow him in the service of Jean of Berry. In the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, there is e g on a separate folio a miniature of St Christopher, which has been interpreted as an imitation by the Rohan Master of a painting of the same motif in the Belles heures de Jean, duc de Berry (Cloisters, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). It seems more likely that it here instead is the question of an imitation by a Limbourg brother of a painting by his teacher Beauneveu.

The coat of arms of the Rohan family that are painted at several places in the Rohan Book of Hours have been interpreted as a later addition. It is a possibility that they are those of Jean, Viscount of Rohan, who in 1373 married Joanna of Navarre. Jean’s interest in illluminated books was as well-known that Juan I, King of Aragon, in 1388 asked him to help him to arrange that the artist Jacques Coene was sent to his court. Joanna was a sister of Philip of Navarre, Count of Longueville, who in 1452 married Beauneveu’s early commissioner Yoland of Flanders, Duchess of Bar. Yoland’s first consort Count Henry IV had died already in 1344. Count Philip was the son of Philip III, King of Navarre, and Jeanne of France. A sister of Philip, called Blanche, married in 1349 Philip VI of France. His elder brother Charles II of Navarre married in 1351 Jeanne, a daughter of Jean II of France, his elder sister Marie married in 1373 Gaston III, Count of Foix. The younger brother of Philip of Navarre, Louis, married in 1366 Jeanne, a daughter of Charles of Naples, Duke of Durazzo. There was in fact a series of marriages between the royal families of France, Navarre and Naples. It was in the last-mentioned city that the royal family once possessed the so-called Anjou Bible, in which the eclectic illuminations have confused so many scholars to pretend that they should have inspired the Rohan Master.

After his return from London Jean of Berry started in 1367 the work at his new castle in Mehun-sur-Yèvre. Philippa of Hainault, for whom Beauneveu is thought to have worked, died in 1369, which may have been the reason for the artist to leave London. Returned to the Continent around this time he would have been in the position to undertake new commissions for members of the highest circles of Europe.

Although the art-loving Duke of Berry’s features are recognizable in the Rohan Book of Hours, he may not originally have commissioned this book. If so he would hardly have been prepared to leave hold of a piece of art of such a high quality. It seems more likely that Yoland of Flanders, since 1353 widowed for the second time, may have ordered the book and that she then gave it to the bridegroom when Jeanne, a sister of her last consort, was to marry Jean, Viscount of Rohan. Yoland’s son Robert of Bar was since 1364 married to Marie of France, a daughter of King Jean II and a sister of Jean of Berry.

The Rohan Book of Hours, misdated for so long, presents us an excellent proof of how high and inspiring a quality northern art had reached already at the times of André Beauneveu in the second half of the fourteenth century. It may now be easier to right understand the careers of some artists, who were inspired by him and often imitated him very near. A number of illuminations, which since long have been attributed to a created Phantom Rohan Master thought to have existed in the fifteenth century, may now be possible to group under correct names, illuminations that sometimes are very clumsily imitated, as e g in the so-called Molé-Boucherat Hours (sold at Christie’s in London in 2000), yet interpreted as of high value.

When Froissart judged that Beauneveu was the best artist of his time, he obviously based his opinion on a thorough knowledge of this master’s long career. Preserved to our time are of course only a few works. Among them we are, however, lucky to find outstanding masterpieces, as e g the Lamentation of the Virgin. The intensity of sorrow, despair and heavenly indifference expressed in this miniature reminds me of some words written by the Swedish author Stig Dagerman when contemplating over the many lying deadly wounded at Gettysburg: Skriken tystna och stiga upp mot stjärnorna, där änglar utan öron förnimma dem som vind mot sina kinder (The screams become silent raising against the stars, where angels without ears sense them as wind against their cheeks).

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