page_title: Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry
section_title: Contents
hierarchical_section_title: Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry / Contents
context_page_description: The Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry or Très Riches Heures, is the most famous and possibly the best surviving example of manuscript illumination in the late phase of the International Gothic style. It is a book of hours: a collection of prayers to be said at the canonical hours. It was created between c. 1412 and 1416 for the extravagant royal bibliophile and patron John, Duke of Berry, by the Limbourg brothers. When the three painters and their sponsor died in 1416, possibly victims of plague, the manuscript was left unfinished. It was further embellished in the 1440s by an anonymous painter, who many art historians believe was Barthélemy d'Eyck. In 1485–1489, it was brought to its present state by the painter Jean Colombe on behalf of the Duke of Savoy. Acquired by the Duc d'Aumale in 1856, the book is now MS 65 in the Musée Condé, Chantilly, France.
  Consisting of a total of 206 leaves of very fine quality parchment, 30 cm in height by 21.5 cm in width, the manuscript contains 66 large miniatures and 65 small. The design of the book, which is long and complex, has undergone many changes and reversals.
context_section_description: The contents of the book are typical of those of a book of hours, though the quantity of illumination is extremely unusual.
  The Calendar: Folios 1–13
  A generalized calendar (not specific to any year) of church feasts and saints' days, often illuminated with representations of the Labours of the Months, is a usual part of a book of hours, but the illustrations of the months in the Très Riches Heures are exceptional and innovative in their size, and the best known element of the decoration of the manuscript. Up to this point any scenes of the labours had been smaller images on the same page as the calendar text, though later 15th-century calendars often adopted the Limbourg's innovation of a full-page miniature, though most had smaller pages than here.  They were also unprecedented in mostly showing one of the duke's castles in the background.  They are filled with details of the delights and labors of the months, from the Duke's court to his peasants, a counterpart to the prayers of the hours. Each illustration is surmounted with its appropriate hemisphere showing a solar chariot, the signs and degrees of the zodiac, and numbering the days of the month and the martyrological letters for the ecclesiastic lunar calendar.  Each month of the calendar is allotted an opening of two pages, on the righthand page the calendar listing notable feast days and on the left the miniature. January is the largest miniature in the calendar and includes the Duke of Berry at a New Year’s Day feast (Longnon, Cazelles and Meiss 1969).
  Several of the miniatures depict the Duke, fields or castles he owned, and places he visited. This shows the personal function of the book of hours, as it is customized to suit the patron (Cazelles and Rathofer 1988).
  The September miniature was almost certainly painted in two phases: first, the upper section with the sky and château was painted in the middle of the fifteenth century, around 1438-1442, in the time of René d’Anjou and Yolande d’Aragon; then the lower scene of grape-picking was completed by Jean Colombe from a sketch left by his predecessor. In general, artists started with the background, then painted in the characters before finishing with their faces.
  In the foreground, it is grape-picking time. The woman in a white and red apron looks pregnant. Other young peasants are picking the purple bunches, while one of them is tasting the grapes. A further character holding a basket is walking towards a mule which is carrying two panniers. The grapes are being loaded either into the mules' panniers or into the vats on the cart pulled by two oxen.
  In the background stands the Château de Saumur with its chimneys and weathervanes decorated with golden fleurs-de-lys. It was built by Louis II d'Anjou then given to his wife Yolande d’Aragon, the mother of King René and mother-in-law of Charles VII, over whom she had a considerable sway. The presence of this château can be explained by the important role played by Yolande in the early years of the reign of Charles VII and by how much the king enjoyed staying there. On the left, behind the enceinte, stands a clock-tower, the chimneys of the kitchens and a gate leading to a drawbridge. A horse is coming out and a woman with a basket on her head is on her way in.
  In front of the château, between the vines and the moat can be seen a tilting ground surrounded by palisades, where tournaments were held.
  The architectural design of the château draws the gaze up towards the dreamily poetic volutes. The towers conceal their protective nature beneath festive trappings, redolent of fabulous adventures in the forests of Arthurian legends and suggestive of the presence of God in His creation. As François Cali put it: "These extravagant towers are a dream landscape with constellations of canopies, pinnacles, gables and arrows, with their crockets fluttering against the light."
  In the middle of the grape pickers, a character is showing his behind. This intentionally grotesque touch contrasts with the extraordinary elegance of the château. Jean Colombe's peasants lack the digni
caption: Purgatory, f. 113v, Jean Colombe
exif: {}