The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Limbourg brothers · a book of hours on vellum, made for Jean de France, duc de Berry · twelve full-page calendar months, each a scene of the month beneath a lunette of the heavens, and the large and small miniatures of the Hours · painted by Paul, Jean and Herman de Limbourg, brothers from Nijmegen, from about 1411 or 1412 to 1416, and left unfinished at their deaths and the duke’s; worked on by an anonymous painter of about the 1440s, and completed by Jean Colombe about 1485 to 1489 for Charles I of Savoy · Chantilly, Musée Condé, MS 65 · the unit scored is the book’s illuminated programme as one work, weighed most on the brothers’ campaign of about 1412 to 1416, the later hands counted as part of the one book; text, script and binding are context
Mode
Book of hours as the image of a year and of a cosmos; the labours of the months enlarged into landscape, each beneath the heavens of its month
Mythos
The year as a wheel under the zodiac and the sun’s chariot; creation, the fall, the life of Christ and the last things
Phase
Painted for Jean de France, duc de Berry, from about 1411 or 1412 to 1416 and left unfinished at the deaths of painters and patron; worked on about the 1440s; completed about 1485 to 1489 for Charles I of Savoy
Presentation
Painting on vellum in a book of hours: twelve full-page calendar months, each in two registers, lunette above and scene below; the large and small miniatures of the Hours
Register
Splendour at the scale of a hand: ultramarine and gold, white castles under blue skies, snow, and one page of terror
Scale
A society, its land and its seasons, the heavens above them and the sacred history around them, at the size of a page
Governing Proposition
Twelve pages, turned in the hand at the year’s own pace, set the duke’s feast and the peasant’s thaw, the betrothal and the mowing, each before a castle and beneath the sun’s chariot crossing the zodiac, so that a whole society appears as one turn of the heavens. The wager of the book is that the labour of the month, until then a vignette at the foot of the page, can fill the page as a landscape of real places, seasons and weather, and that the stars, the land and the land’s owner can be seen as one order: a wager made for a patron who wanted exactly this, and left unfinished when the painters and the patron died in the same year.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The year opens on a feast. In January the duke sits at his table before a fire screen, a tapestry of battle on the wall behind him, and his household presses forward toward him; a dog is at the table. He is the host of the whole book, and the book sets him at the head of the year. Above the scene, in the lunette that crowns the page, the sun’s chariot crosses the signs of the zodiac on a field of blue and gold. Below, the world of the month; above, the heavens that order it. Every month of the calendar is made the same way, in two registers on one leaf.
The patron is Jean de France, duc de Berry, and the book is a book of hours on vellum, painted for him by three brothers from Nijmegen, Paul, Jean and Herman de Limbourg, who were at work on it from about 1411 or 1412. It is now Chantilly, Musée Condé, MS 65. It holds twelve full-page months and the large and small miniatures of the Hours that follow them: the Anatomical Man, the Garden of Eden in its circle, the Fall of the Rebel Angels, Hell, the Meeting of the Magi and the Adoration, the Purification, a plan of Rome, and the pages of the Passion and the Penitential Psalms.
The work scored is that illuminated programme as one book. It is weighed most on the brothers’ campaign, the calendar and the Hours’ great miniatures in their hands; but the book was finished by others, and what they added belongs to the one book and is credited or charged to it, not to the brothers. Its text, its script and its binding are the occasion and the context. The book is small enough to be held, and everything in it is made to be seen at the distance of a reader’s hands.
Movement II
Before this book, the labours of the months in a French calendar were small vignettes or roundels at the foot of the page, as in the Pucelle tradition of the fourteenth century; the brothers had already made the Belles Heures for the same patron. Here the labour of the month fills the page. It is set in a continuous landscape that goes back into deep space, before buildings drawn so exactly that they can be identified on the ground, under weather, with cast shadows, and peopled by peasants observed at their work. Sienese and Florentine models are taken in and made into Northern observation.
The months alternate between the lords and the labourers. January’s feast, April’s betrothal and May’s ride are the court’s; February’s snow, March’s ploughing, June’s mowing, July’s shearing and October’s sowing are the field’s. Take any month away and the year is broken. White castles stand against the ultramarine skies of April, June, September and October, so that the land, its work and its owner are seen together under the sun’s course. The duke possesses the world the calendar shows twice over: as land, and as this book.
February is the cold made visible from inside. The wall of the house is cut away, and the household warms itself at the fire; outside, snow lies over the yard and the beehives under a grey sky, a magpie stands in the snow, one figure blows on his hands, another drives a donkey toward the village. October is an afternoon: a sower walks before a royal palace across the river, a scarecrow archer stands in the field, birds come down to the seed, and the figures cast their shadows on the furrows. The labourers are shown with care, and sometimes with a joke. What their year costs them the pages do not say.
Movement III
Over every month the lunette carries the heavens: a semicircle of blue and gold in which the sun’s chariot drives across the zodiac above the calendar’s measures of time. The arched top makes each month a small world under its own sky, and the heavens stand literally above the land on the same leaf. The order of the stars and the labours of the months, the oldest of calendar archetypes, are joined here on every page, and the year becomes a wheel turned in the hand at the year’s own pace.
The Anatomical Man is the hinge. The signs of the zodiac are assigned to the limbs of a human body, and the heavens of the calendar are bound to the body of the one who reads it. The year, the stars and the flesh are one measure. What the calendar shows in the land it shows here in a man, and the book passes from the months into the Hours by way of him.
One law holds the book together, from the geometry of a lunette to the fire of Hell: every page shows a creature in its place in a created order, from the heavens through the ranks of society to the fallen. The calendar keeps that law across its twelve months completely. Its archetypes are inherited, given by the calendar and the liturgy as much as made by the brothers; what the brothers made was the joining of them to particulars that stay particular, these sheep, this snow, a feast with its host.
Movement IV
After the calendar the Hours carry the Christian pattern through the book. The Garden of Eden is a circle, closed like a jewel. In the Fall of the Rebel Angels the angels drop like gold sparks from a heaven of blue thrones. The Meeting of the Magi and the Adoration, the Purification and the plan of Rome follow, with the Passion and the Penitential pages, so that the book holds creation, the fall, the life of Christ and the last things beside the cyclical year.
Terror comes once, and strongly. In Hell, Satan lies on his grill and breathes the souls upward in a column of fire. Everywhere else the book’s height is splendour: the lift of ultramarine and gold, the minuteness that rewards the closest look, the grandeur of a sky or a castle at the size of a hand. Between the summits stand the Hours’ lesser pages, many of them required by the liturgy rather than by the book’s argument, which could be removed without loss to what the work knows.
Not every page is the brothers’. An anonymous painter of about the 1440s worked on some of the calendar pages, and Jean Colombe completed the book about 1485 to 1489 for Charles I of Savoy. Which brother painted what, and which pages belong to which later hand, is disputed. Colombe’s scenes are heavier and more crowded, another manner at another scale, and the change of hands within the calendar itself can be seen. They are part of the one book, and the book bears their cost.
Movement V
In 1416 the three brothers died, and the duke died in June of the same year. The book was left unbound and unfinished, and its present order is partly the work of those who completed it. It stood unfinished for some seventy years, was completed in Savoy, and then went largely out of view for most of four centuries. Its reach through its own pages was small. What reached the painting after it ran through the brothers’ workshop and models: into Parisian illumination, into the Flemish calendar tradition of the sixteenth century, and so toward the seasons of Bruegel, whose Hunters in the Snow is the heir of the calendar tradition this book began. The decisive turn of Netherlandish panel painting, the Ghent Altarpiece among it, came from Ghent and Bruges, not from this book.
The book came to Chantilly in the nineteenth century and is held there under a bequest that keeps it from being lent; it is rarely shown, and almost everyone knows it through reproduction. Its vellum and pigments, the ultramarine and the gold, are in famously fine condition. As far as is known no miniature that carried the brothers’ programme is lost. Its late fame as the image of the Middle Ages is presence, not proof.
About a century and a half of close study has not exhausted it. Which brother painted which page, and whether their hands can be told apart at all; who the mid-century painter was and how much of the calendar is his; how accurately each castle is drawn, and what it shows of buildings since lost; how the unbound book stood in 1416; whether the peasants are seen tenderly or mockingly; the calendar’s astronomy. Each of those questions turns on hands and sites more than on meaning. The pages answer return in their detail: the magpie, the scarecrow archer, the dog at January’s table, the sower’s shadow on the furrow.
Act III · The Twelve
Judged on the programme, part by part. The calendar resists subtraction: twelve months are twelve, each bound to the sky by its lunette, and the alternation of the lords’ months, January’s feast, April’s betrothal, May’s ride, with the labourers’, February’s snow, March’s ploughing, June’s mowing, July’s shearing, October’s sowing, is its argument; take any month away and the year is broken. The Anatomical Man, the hinge between the calendar and the body, cannot go. What holds the axis lowest is that a book of hours is an assembly by nature. Many of its miniatures are required by the liturgy rather than by the book’s argument: a Penitential page or a later Passion scene could go without loss, Colombe’s pages could go with gain, and the scale is permitted by the commission more than compelled.
Score: 7.8 / 10
What is disclosed can be stated: a society is shown as a year, and the year as one order in which the duke’s feast and the peasant’s thaw, the betrothal and the mowing, are a single turn of the heavens. Each month sets its labour or its leisure before a castle, so that the land, its work and its owner are seen together under the sun’s course. In February the wall of the house is cut away and the cold is shown from inside, on bodies warming at a fire; in October the sower’s shadow lies on the furrow. That is a condition articulated, and it holds: power as the possession of a seen world and its seasons. It stays below the gate because the order disclosed is the patron’s. The labourers are shown with care, at times with a joke, and the cost of the order to them is not uncovered.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Elevation recurs page after page, mostly in one kind: splendour, the lift of colour and minuteness at a scale that rewards the closest look. The blue and gold of the lunettes over every month; white castles against the ultramarine skies of April, June, September and October; February’s snow under a grey sky, a small figure walking toward the village; the rebel angels dropping like gold sparks from a heaven of blue thrones; Eden closed like a jewel. Terror comes once, and strongly, in Hell, where Satan on his grill breathes souls upward in a column of fire. The height is real and frequent, but it is the height of the precious, held at the size of a hand, and the Hours’ lesser pages and Colombe’s crowded scenes sit between the summits.
Score: 8.5 / 10
The myth is built, not evoked. The calendar’s structure carries it: the year as a wheel, the zodiac and the sun’s chariot crossing each lunette above, and below it the particular world of the month, a castle, a mown field, a feast with its host. The order of the heavens and the labours of the months, the oldest of calendar archetypes, are joined on every page rather than alluded to, and the Anatomical Man binds the stars to the body, the signs assigned to the limbs. The Hours carry the Christian pattern from the Fall of the Angels and Eden through the Passion to Hell. The particulars stay particular: these sheep, this snow. Held below the top because the archetypes are inherited from calendar and liturgy, built in by the genre as much as by the brothers.
Score: 8.6 / 10
The inheritance is the French book of hours and its calendar, where the labours of the months were small vignettes or roundels at the foot of the page, as in the Pucelle tradition of the fourteenth century, and the brothers’ own Belles Heures for the same patron. The departure is large: the labour of the month enlarged to a full page and set in a continuous landscape with deep space; real architecture, identifiable on the ground; weather, in February’s snow; cast shadows; peasants observed at their work; Sienese and Florentine models absorbed into Northern observation. The stake is the soft part. The commission was private and the patron wanted exactly this extravagance, so the brothers risked invention and little else: a great turn, staked on a proven patron.
Score: 8.6 / 10
The book form is the instrument of much of what the work knows. The calendar is turned in the hand, page by page, so the reader passes through the year at the year’s pace and comes back to it. The lunette sets the heavens literally above the month on the same leaf, and the arched top makes every month a small world under its sky. The scale is that of private devotion and private possession: the duke owns the seen world twice, as land and as book, and the minuteness asks the slow look of one reader. Painted as panels, the cycle would become a set of views; painted on a wall, the possession would go. Held below the top because the Hours’ miniatures sit in the book as a book of hours requires, and because the book was left unbound and unfinished, its present order partly the completers’.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Evidence over promise: about a century and a half of close study since the book came to Chantilly, and it has not been exhausted. The open questions are real and keep yielding: which brother painted what, and whether the hands can be told apart at all; who the mid-century painter was, and how much of the calendar is his; the identification and accuracy of each castle, read as evidence of medieval architecture; the order of the gatherings, and how the unbound book stood in 1416; whether the peasants are seen tenderly or mockingly; the calendar’s astronomy. The images reward return in their detail: a magpie in the snow, a scarecrow archer in October’s field, the dog at January’s table. Held below the top because much of the yield is connoisseurship and documentation, questions of hands and sites more than of what the work says.
Score: 8.6 / 10
The field is French and Netherlandish painting and illumination of the 1410s. The intrinsic force is a reorganisation of possibility: the landscape of observed places and seasons, the genre scene of labour, the cast shadow and the snow, years ahead of the panel painting that took up the same world in the Low Countries. The book itself was little seen, unfinished in 1416, completed in Savoy and out of view for most of four centuries, so its reach through its own pages was small, and that is discounted. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: it ran through the brothers’ workshop and models, into Parisian illumination after them and the Flemish calendar tradition of the sixteenth century, and so toward the seasons of Bruegel; its late fame as the image of the Middle Ages is presence and counts for little here.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Weighed on form, then presence, then fabric, at about six centuries. Form: the brothers’ campaign survives whole, as far as is known; no miniature that carried the programme is lost, and the completions by later hands are part of the one book. Fabric: the vellum and the pigments, ultramarine and gold, are in famously fine condition, and ordinary handling, rebinding and conservation are the smallest charge. Presence is the charge. The book stood unfinished for some seventy years, then in Savoy, then largely out of view until the nineteenth century; since then it has been held at Chantilly under a bequest that keeps it from being lent, rarely shown, and known to almost everyone through reproduction. Four centuries of obscurity hold it at the foot of what form kept whole would earn.
Score: 9.2 / 10
Judged as command of illumination on vellum, against the same anchors as every medium. The making carries the meaning, for the meaning of the calendar is its precision. Architecture is drawn so exactly that castles can be identified and their lost parts reconstructed from the pages; figures a few millimetres high carry weight, gesture and dress; colour is laid in the purest pigments of the day, ultramarine and gold above all, with a control of tone that gives February its grey air and October its afternoon; space recedes deep behind the figures without the system of later perspective. The costs are charged: the courtly figures keep the elongated, doll-like canon of the International Gothic, scale between figure and building is inconsistent, ground planes tip, and the later hands, Colombe’s above all, are heavier and more crowded.
Score: 9.2 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the zodiacal lunette at the head of a month, astronomical and geometric, gold on blue; and Hell, a vision of fire and torment. One law holds them. Every page shows a creature in its place in a created order, from the heavens through the ranks of society to the fallen, and the calendar’s sky and the Hours’ theology are one ordered cosmos seen from two sides. The range is very wide, from snow in a farmyard to the fall of the angels, and across twelve months the calendar keeps its law completely. Charged because the law is kept more surely in the brothers’ pages than in the book: Colombe brings another manner and another scale of crowding, and the change of hands within the calendar itself is visible. Wide range, one physics, an uneven hand.
Score: 8.4 / 10
The orders held are many and joined: the heavens and their measured time, in the lunettes; nature and the seasons, in snow, field, vine and forest; labour, in ploughing, sowing, mowing, shearing, harvest and the swineherd’s month; the court and its rituals, in feast, betrothal and May ride; the state, in the castles of the duke and of the crown; the body, in the Anatomical Man; and the sacred, from creation and fall through the life of Christ to the last things. The calendar integrates them, each page setting a rank of society in a season, before a seat of power, under the stars. What holds the axis here is what is scarcely present: consciousness and the family, and history, which the book holds only as the possession of the present world.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.6 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable and The Made at 9.2, then The Archetypal Deep, The Swerve, The Bottomless Well and Pressure on Tradition at 8.6. A programme surviving whole in famously fine condition after six centuries; a making whose precision is its meaning, from identifiable castles to figures a few millimetres high; the year built as a wheel under the zodiac on every page; the labour of the month enlarged into a landscape of real places and weather; and a forward turn years ahead of the panel painting that took up the same world.
Limiting Dimension
The Inevitable at 7.8: a book of hours is an assembly by nature, many of its miniatures required by the liturgy and not by its argument, and the later pages removable with gain. Beside it The Unconcealment and The Encompassed at 8.3: the order disclosed is the patron’s and its cost to those who labour in it is not uncovered, and consciousness, the family and history are scarcely held. Then The Inner Law at 8.4, one law kept more surely in the brothers’ pages than in the finished book.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.8 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Made at 9.2, The Living Form at 8.5, The Inner Law at 8.4, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Imperishable at 9.2 clears the bar of 8.5, and The Archetypal Deep, The Swerve and Pressure on Tradition at 8.6 clear it by one tenth each, but The Unconcealment at 8.3 falls short by two tenths. The Universal Minimum is met (no axis but The Encompassed falls below 7.8, against 7.5) and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 8.3. The twelve sum to 102.6 and average 8.55, which displays 8.6, below the 9.0 the summit also requires; the placement in Tier IV is settled on the aggregate and on the gate alike.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of the manuscript, Chantilly, Musée Condé, MS 65, and of the standard account of its making: closely for the calendar, page by page, and less closely for the Hours’ miniatures. No image, facsimile or written source was consulted for this page, and no words of the book or of its makers are quoted. The work scored is the book’s illuminated programme as one work, weighed most on the campaign of Paul, Jean and Herman de Limbourg from about 1411 or 1412 to 1416; the pages of the anonymous painter of about the 1440s and of Jean Colombe, who completed the book about 1485 to 1489 for Charles I of Savoy, are part of the one book and are credited or charged to the work, not to the brothers. The text, the script and the binding are context and are not scored. The attribution of particular pages between the brothers and the later hands is disputed and is not given page by page. Facts that could not be verified are not given, among them the number of leaves and miniatures and the size of the page, the source of the book’s title, the names of the castles shown on particular months, the identity of the mid-century painter, the hand of particular pages including Hell, the Italian sources of particular miniatures and any journey to Italy, where the book was and how it was bought before it came to Chantilly, and the place of particular later manuscripts in its descent.