Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry

©Photo. R.M.N. / R.-G. OjŽdaUsu­al­ly, I don’t list a book as “read” unless I read the whole thing, but this is a spe­cial case. The Très Rich­es Heures is a medieval bre­viary, famous for its artis­tic val­ue as an illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­script. I doubt that many peo­ple have ever read the entire text, which is mere­ly a col­lec­tion of prayers, mak­ing tedious read­ing. Such books were made for lay­men who wished to bring some ele­ments of monas­tic prac­tice into their dai­ly lives. They pro­vid­ed a cal­en­dric sched­ule for read­ing pas­sages from the Gospels, the Psalms, and lita­nies, and also helped one keep track of the many feast and saints’ days. Most were in Latin, but some were in local ver­nac­u­lars. Thou­sands of these man­u­scripts sur­vive, but a hand­ful that were pro­duced for wealthy nobles are spec­tac­u­lar­ly illu­mi­nat­ed. The one pro­duced for the Duc de Berry is con­sid­ered to be one of the prin­ci­pal mas­ter­pieces of medieval art. It is some­times said to be the most valu­able book in the world. 

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The copy I have is a fac­sim­i­le of the orig­i­nal man­u­script, and even for some­one famil­iar with medieval French, the script used in the mid­dle ages is very dif­fi­cult for a mod­ern read­er to get used to [see the sam­ple in the image below]. I could not find a trans­la­tion of the text, or a ver­sion in mod­ern French, so I con­tent­ed myself with read­ing a ran­dom assort­ment of pages to get the feel of it. It is, after all, as visu­al art that the book has its fame. The book was begun in 1412, com­mis­sioned by Jean duc de Berry from three Lim­bourg broth­ers, Dutch artists who worked in the court of Bur­gundy. All three died of the plague (along with their patron) four years lat­er, with the work uncom­plet­ed. More illus­tra­tions were added over the next few decades, by an unknown artist and by Jean Colombe (c.1430–1493). It remained obscure until the 19th cen­tu­ry, when it left pri­vate hands and became rec­og­nized as a masterpiece. 

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Quite apart from being extra­or­di­nar­i­ly beau­ti­ful, the book is a trea­sure-trove of visu­al infor­ma­tion about medieval soci­ety, because it includes depic­tions of peas­ant life (ide­al­ized) as well as the activ­i­ties of the aris­toc­ra­cy. For this rea­son, some of the images — notably those from the cal­en­dri­cal por­tion [the first one shown here] — have been often repro­duced as cov­ers and illus­tra­tions for books on medieval history. 
16-01-24 READ Heures 5But I strong­ly rec­om­mend that you down­load the images from Wikipedia Com­mons. This is a slow process, as you must indi­vid­u­al­ly down­load 425 files if you want to have the whole book. Most peo­ple will be con­tent with the full-page illus­tra­tions and some of the more ornate text pages. There are dozens of unfa­mil­iar, sel­dom repro­duced images that will daz­zle you.

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