![THE LOVERS’ PLEDGE, verses in French surrounding a double portrait miniature, independent illuminated leaf on vellum [France, c.1555]](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2018/CKS/2018_CKS_16018_0036_000(the_lovers_pledge_verses_in_french_surrounding_a_double_portrait_minia094437).jpg?w=1)
Details
THE LOVERS’ PLEDGE, verses in French surrounding a double portrait miniature, independent illuminated leaf on vellum [France, c.1555]
This entrancing French Renaissance leaf with apparently unique verses is a rare survival of an independent illumination made as a lover’s gift: the vellum portraits given between lovers were crucial antecedents of the portrait miniature. Here word and image demonstrate that two hearts have become one even though the lover must leave his lady.
244 x 192 mm. A miniature of a man and a woman at full length holding a heart below a cartouche with two hearts linked by a love knot, all within a border of pansies (thoughts) and daisies (probably for the name Marguerite) and four verses in French (some wear to texts). Mounted, in a seventeenth-century style wooden frame.
The verses open ‘Soulcy damour en ma doulce pensee’ as the Lover consoles his Lady for his departure: although two hearts, two souls and two bodies, they are yet united. The flanking placards perhaps represent their thoughts: Alas for you my heart hardens; more thinking than speaking – better to think than to speak. At the top is inscribed ‘God and the Virgin Mary be praised’.
The M and B beside of the hearts seem additions for later owners who wanted to identify with the original lovers. Their identity is unknown but the Lady was probably Marguerite. Their clothing, rich yet restrained in black with gleaming jewellery and trimmings in liquid gold, suggests a date in the 1550s or into the 1560s, although his tall hat would be more usual c.1570. Her headdress is found on a few of Corneille de Lyon’s more obscure sitters and may indicate a member of the urban elite rather than a courtier. The border with its symbolic flowers derives from Netherlandish manuscript illumination.
Earlier poets and writers reveal that the portraits given between lovers were often drawings or illuminations and such leaves were vital to the evolution of the portrait miniature. In France, the Netherlanders Corneille de Lyon (d. 1575) produced small scale portraits in oil on panel and Jean Clouet (d.1541) and his son François (d.1572) led the fashion for portrait miniatures, which embraced full-lengths and equestrian figures. Henri II’s Queen Catherine de Médicis (d.1589) and her family particularly favoured illuminated portraits, as independent images and within books (see M. Orth, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in France, Renaissance Manuscripts, The Sixteenth Century, 2015, no. 100). This leaf is now best paralleled in two books of c.1500: Pierre Sala had Jean Perréal illustrate his poems in a love offering, complete with his portrait, that helped to win his second wife (BL, Stowe ms 955); for an uncertain purpose, a wordless love story was told in pictures combining the realistic and the symbolic (Chantilly, Musée Condé, ms 388).
This entrancing French Renaissance leaf with apparently unique verses is a rare survival of an independent illumination made as a lover’s gift: the vellum portraits given between lovers were crucial antecedents of the portrait miniature. Here word and image demonstrate that two hearts have become one even though the lover must leave his lady.
244 x 192 mm. A miniature of a man and a woman at full length holding a heart below a cartouche with two hearts linked by a love knot, all within a border of pansies (thoughts) and daisies (probably for the name Marguerite) and four verses in French (some wear to texts). Mounted, in a seventeenth-century style wooden frame.
The verses open ‘Soulcy damour en ma doulce pensee’ as the Lover consoles his Lady for his departure: although two hearts, two souls and two bodies, they are yet united. The flanking placards perhaps represent their thoughts: Alas for you my heart hardens; more thinking than speaking – better to think than to speak. At the top is inscribed ‘God and the Virgin Mary be praised’.
The M and B beside of the hearts seem additions for later owners who wanted to identify with the original lovers. Their identity is unknown but the Lady was probably Marguerite. Their clothing, rich yet restrained in black with gleaming jewellery and trimmings in liquid gold, suggests a date in the 1550s or into the 1560s, although his tall hat would be more usual c.1570. Her headdress is found on a few of Corneille de Lyon’s more obscure sitters and may indicate a member of the urban elite rather than a courtier. The border with its symbolic flowers derives from Netherlandish manuscript illumination.
Earlier poets and writers reveal that the portraits given between lovers were often drawings or illuminations and such leaves were vital to the evolution of the portrait miniature. In France, the Netherlanders Corneille de Lyon (d. 1575) produced small scale portraits in oil on panel and Jean Clouet (d.1541) and his son François (d.1572) led the fashion for portrait miniatures, which embraced full-lengths and equestrian figures. Henri II’s Queen Catherine de Médicis (d.1589) and her family particularly favoured illuminated portraits, as independent images and within books (see M. Orth, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in France, Renaissance Manuscripts, The Sixteenth Century, 2015, no. 100). This leaf is now best paralleled in two books of c.1500: Pierre Sala had Jean Perréal illustrate his poems in a love offering, complete with his portrait, that helped to win his second wife (BL, Stowe ms 955); for an uncertain purpose, a wordless love story was told in pictures combining the realistic and the symbolic (Chantilly, Musée Condé, ms 388).
Brought to you by
Robert Tyrwhitt