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Details
ST JOHN THE EVANGELIST, miniature from a Book of Hours, ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM
[Troyes or Paris, c.1415-20]
115 x 113mm (overall). An arch-topped miniature with St John seated underneath a red canopy writing on a scroll that hangs over a gilt lectern; his Evangelist symbol, an enormous eagle, sitting at his side watching him; set within a green-walled, gold-barrel-vaulted room with a brown and white tiled floor; to either side of the miniature a baguette border with scrolling tendrils of pink and blue and leaves or flowerheads of the same colours and ending in an acanthus and a flower spray (darkening to vellum, some abrasion of surface, silver of window oxidised). Mounted and framed.
This attractive miniature is by one of the foremost, and most individual, French illuminators of the first quarter of the 15th century, the Master of the Rohan Hours. Conjuring the scene out of fluid unfussy drawing, few colours and a strong sense of surface pattern is typical of his striking designs. The size of the miniature and the extensive use of gold and silver suggest that it came from a sumptuous Book of Hours where it would have been above the opening lines of the Gospel Extracts.
The layout of the page suggests a date early in his career, around 1415: compare M.Meiss, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry: The Limbourgs and their Contemporaries (1974), figs 835 & 836. It was around this time that the Master left his native Troyes for Paris and the manuscript may have been produced in either of these cities. The Grandes Heures de Rohan (BnF, Ms lat.9471), the manuscript after which he is named, is thought to be among his latest works, and to have been made in Angers in the 1430s, when the Master was illuminating manuscripts for the house of Anjou: F. Avril & N. Reynaud, Les Manuscrits à peintures en France 1440-1520, 1993, pp.25-26.
Provenance: Reportedly from the collection of the painter John Everett Millais (1829-1896).
[Troyes or Paris, c.1415-20]
115 x 113mm (overall). An arch-topped miniature with St John seated underneath a red canopy writing on a scroll that hangs over a gilt lectern; his Evangelist symbol, an enormous eagle, sitting at his side watching him; set within a green-walled, gold-barrel-vaulted room with a brown and white tiled floor; to either side of the miniature a baguette border with scrolling tendrils of pink and blue and leaves or flowerheads of the same colours and ending in an acanthus and a flower spray (darkening to vellum, some abrasion of surface, silver of window oxidised). Mounted and framed.
This attractive miniature is by one of the foremost, and most individual, French illuminators of the first quarter of the 15th century, the Master of the Rohan Hours. Conjuring the scene out of fluid unfussy drawing, few colours and a strong sense of surface pattern is typical of his striking designs. The size of the miniature and the extensive use of gold and silver suggest that it came from a sumptuous Book of Hours where it would have been above the opening lines of the Gospel Extracts.
The layout of the page suggests a date early in his career, around 1415: compare M.Meiss, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry: The Limbourgs and their Contemporaries (1974), figs 835 & 836. It was around this time that the Master left his native Troyes for Paris and the manuscript may have been produced in either of these cities. The Grandes Heures de Rohan (BnF, Ms lat.9471), the manuscript after which he is named, is thought to be among his latest works, and to have been made in Angers in the 1430s, when the Master was illuminating manuscripts for the house of Anjou: F. Avril & N. Reynaud, Les Manuscrits à peintures en France 1440-1520, 1993, pp.25-26.
Provenance: Reportedly from the collection of the painter John Everett Millais (1829-1896).
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