Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry

Many artists contributed to its miniatures, calligraphy, initials, and marginal decorations, but determining their precise number and identity remains a matter of debate.

When the Limbourg brothers and their sponsor died in 1416 (possibly victims of plague) the manuscript was left unfinished.

Its miniatures helped to shape an ideal image of the Middle Ages in the collective imagination, often being interpreted to serve political and nationalist agendas.

They offer vivid representations of peasants performing agricultural work as well as aristocrats in formal attire, against a background of remarkable medieval architecture.

Sixteenth-century Flemish artists imitated the figures or entire compositions found in the calendar (Cazelles and Rathofer 1988).

After this its history is unknown until the 18th century, when it was given its present bookbinding with the arms of the Serra family of Genoa, Italy.

The French Orleanist pretender, Henri d'Orléans, Duke of Aumale, then in exile at Twickenham near London, bought it from the baron in 1856.

[8] Aumale gave the German art historian Gustav Friedrich Waagen breakfast and a private view of the manuscript at Orleans House, just in time for a 10-page account to appear in Waagen's Galleries and Cabinets of Art in Great Britain in 1857, so beginning its rise to fame.

[10] The connection with the "très riches heures" listed in the 1416 inventory was made by Léopold Victor Delisle of the Bibliothèque nationale de France and communicated to Aumale in 1881, before being published in 1884 in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts; it has never been seriously disputed.

[13] A monograph with 65 heliogravure plates was published by Paul Durrieu in 1904, to coincide with a major exhibition of French Gothic art in Paris where it was exhibited in the form of 12 plates from the Durrieu monograph, as the terms of Aumale's bequest forbade its removal from Chantilly.

[15] In January 1948, the very popular American photo-magazine Life published a feature with full-page reproductions of the 12 calendar scenes, at a little larger than their actual size but at very low-quality.

Catering to American sensibilities of the time, the magazine censored one of the images by retouching the genitals of the peasant in the February scene.

[19] Delisle's resulting attribution to Paul de Limbourg and his two brothers, Jean and Herman, "has received general acceptance and also provided the manuscript with its name.

It is also generally agreed that another of Berry's books of hours, the Belles Heures, completed between 1408 and 1409, can also be attributed to the brothers.

Apart from the main campaign of illumination, the text, border decorations, and gilding were most likely executed by assistants or specialists who remain unknown.

It seems likely that this was because no image had been created by October 1411, when a large mob from Paris looted it and set it on fire in the Armagnac–Burgundian Civil War.

The second painter was identified by Paul Durrieu as Jean Colombe,[21] who was paid 25 gold pieces by the Duke to complete certain canonical hours (Cazelles and Rathofer 1988).

In folio 75 he followed the Limbourgs by including a depiction of one of his patron's castles in the Duchy of Savoy in the landscape background.

The "intermediate painter", also called the Master of the Shadows, as shadows are an element of his style, is often thought to be Barthélemy van Eyck (strictly the miniaturist known as the Master of René of Anjou, who is now normally identified with the documented painter Barthélemy van Eyck)[23] who would probably have been at work in the 1440s.

It is known that the gatherings fell into hands of King Charles VII after Berry's death, and it is assumed that the intermediate painter is associated with his court (Cazelles and Rathofer 1988).

[25] The artists of the calendar miniatures have been identified as follows (Cazelles and Rathofer 1988): Pognon gives the following breakdown of the main miniatures in the Calendar, using more cautious stylistic names for the artists:[26] In addition Pognon identifies the "pious painter" who painted many of the religious scenes later in the book during the initial campaign.

(Cazelles and Rathofer 1988) The book of hours consists of prayers and devotional exercises, freely arranged into primary, secondary and supplementary texts.

The Très Riches Heures is rare in that it includes several miracles performed before the commencement of the passion (Cazelles and Rathofer 1988).

All bi-folios are complete rectangles and the edges are unblemished and therefore must have been cut from the centre of skins of sufficient size.

A preliminary study was carried out using ultraviolet, infrared and raking light photographs, as well as hyperspectral and microscopic imaging, in order to analyze the condition of the book but also to provide information on the stages of its creation.

This undertaking will make it possible to present these notebooks flat for the first time, and in particular the calendar folios, at a major exhibition in 2025 at the Château de Chantilly, also bringing together the other books of hours of the Duke of Berry.