The timeless treasure of a book of hours

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Jean De Carpentin's Book of Hours. The Genius of the Master of the Dresden Prayer Book

By Alixe Bovey

For a book to please all of the people all of the time is never an easy task, but this is a book for book-lovers of every kind, whether scholars or the general public.  When I lent my review copy to a friend who is an art-lover, I almost didn’t get it back.  Yet this is a monographic study, a book about a book, an in-depth inspection of a single volume from the 1470s by a Bruges illuminator--anonymous at that, known only as the Master of the Dresden Prayer Book. 

A masterwork from the last flowering of Flemish manuscript illumination, it is a delight to the eye and superbly reproduces its full-page miniatures (22), historiated initials, and bold, coloured borders, often impressively enlarged, with useful comparisons to the namesake manuscript, the Dresden Prayer Book.  One of the signature contributions of this master is his lively border figures, emerging as shadowy characters within gold scrolls against black or monochrome backgrounds, often creatively related to the main scenes.   He also mastered effects of atmospheric, tonal landscapes and presented elaborate religious narratives. 

The author is an expert, director of the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Kent, whose earlier books include studies of mediaeval manuscripts and genealogy rolls.  This lavish volume is doubly welcome, because its artist has been the subject of only one earlier close study, a published German dissertation by Bodo Brinkmann (1997), so this beautiful book should win him a wider following.  The charm and liveliness of his pictorial inventions shine forth in all the details, which are discussed in depth in Chapter 3.

The original owner of the volume is known: a Picard nobleman but also a prominent citizen of Normandy named Jean de Carpentin II, who had himself depicted and who added heraldry, arms, and personal devices to the decoration. Despite commissioning the Flemish artist, he had his book adapted to prayer texts local to Rouen.  This book has remained largely unstudied before now, and it still remains in private hands, though it was published (no. 48) in the massive catalogue of manuscripts, Illuminating the Renaissance, by Thomas Kren and Scot McKendrick (Getty Museum-Royal Academy; 2003-04).  So a debt of gratitude is owed to Dr Bovey for her determined, original research in bringing this book to fruition and to Paul Hoberton for so vividly capturing her images with her ideas. 

For future scholars, the codicology (historical study) of this manuscript is thorough, especially in an extended series of Appendices.  Indeed, Bovey’s analysis is thorough and rigorous throughout, so the casual reader will not be entertained.  But her consideration of the individual components of the Carpentin Hours and her comparison with both Flemish panels and contemporary manuscripts makes this a study that fully situates its object in a well-defined visual culture.  ‘Genius’ is a strange way to characterize an anonymous artist, so long tucked away in specialist studies, but these fascinating images compel attention, and anyone who closely consults Bovey's scholarship will find her study fully definitive.  For Anglophone readers, a star is born.

Jean De Carpentin's Book of Hours. The Genius of the Master of the Dresden Prayer Book  by Alixe Bovey is published by Paul Holberton 2011. 240 pp., 184 colour illus, $75.00. ISBN 978-1-903470-95-4