7 - An Associate of the Jouvenel Master and the Breviary of Prior François Robert

Summary

Abstract

Prior Francois Robert's incomplete Breviary would originally have been produced as a single volume. Today, however, it has only the texts for the feasts of the Temporal Cycle. When or how the Calendar, the Sanctoral and a complete Psalter were separated from the Temporal section cannot be determined. This study examines the manuscript's liturgical format and its relationship to the Jouvenel style and the manner in which its illustrations compare with selected images in early fifteenth-century Breviaries and Books of Hours. It highlights the stylistic developments of manuscript production in regional France, particularly Bourges.

Keywords: Breviaries; Books of Hours; Jouvenel Group of artists; Jouvenel style; Prior Francois Robert; Bourges

The focus of this essay is a relatively small Breviary, made in northern France around 1460–1470. It bears an inscription on folio 1 identifying the owner as Francois Robert, Prior of the College of Canons of St-Cyr at Issoudun in the Diocese of Bourges, in the province of Berry (Ex libris magistri francisci Robert prioris sancti Circi Exolduni), as well as thirteen coats-of-arms belonging to Robert. The manuu script (hereafter called Prior Robert's Breviary) is attributed to an associate of the Jouvenel Master, named for his illumination of a Mare Historiarum made in 1448–9 for Guillaume Jouvenel des Ursins, Chancellor of France. This manuscript (Figure 7.1) has an impressive illustrative cycle developed over several years by a group of illuminators working in a relatively unified style.The Jouvenel Master ran a large workshop for patrons living in Brittany, the Loire Valley, and Berry. His style, as ded fined by Eberhard Konig, includes figures with ‘long noses, high and rather solemn earnest faces, a delight in profiles, and …very distinctive pale green and gold and blue leaves in the borders’. What follows here will situate Prior Robert's Breviary within stylistic developments in illuminated manuscript production in regional France; though linked to developments at the courts and in Paris, this regional production was distinctive and needs to be studied in its own right. It will also explore the visual imagery, including how the illumination both followed the traditions of Breviary illustration and adapted it for the prior's personal use.