Happy Birthday, Duc; too bad about the boar

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I go to a museum I always wonder what the people staring at paintings are seeing. My museum style is to get through as quickly as possible, except when I’m with my artist friend Tina, who explains to me what she sees.

Today, though, I feel quite proud of myself – I can see that these two Très Riches Heures illustrations were painted by two different artists (Jean Columbe painted November; and the Limbourg brothers, who also painted both tympana, did December).

I’m including both here not just to show off, but because today is the Duc de Berry’s birthday, and he was born in December’s castle – the Château de Vincennes. Here I will also confess that I’ve been relying on commentary by one Michael Olteanu for all the Heures illustrations, since I really am quite hopeless without Tina, and I think this is hilarious:

The boar has been run down and speared by the huntsman on the left, and hounds are tearing it apart. . . This scene . . . completes the year in an appropriate setting and time, recalling the birth of the Duc de Berry.

October at the Duc’s

Here are the Duc’s peasants again, tilling and sowing (it must be the hay they harvested in June). I wonder if he ever felt guilty, looking out his luxurious Paris window at all the work other people were doing for him.

September at Saumur

It took me a whole semester of college art history to figure out that I couldn’t see what other people saw. To remedy that (and to bring my pathetic grade of “C” up a bit), I wrote down everything the professor said about every slide and memorized it.

I still hate looking at paintings, but the Duc de Berry’s miniatures are a whole different thing. I could look at them forever. Like September – but who knew? Turns out this one is different – someone else, not the Limbourg brothers, completed the foreground!

I probably never would have realized this, but at least I have an excuse. Is that guy really mooning in the middle of the grape harvest?

Enjoying August with the Duc

The joys of August in the Duc de Berry’s court: horseback riding in long gowns, swimming (naked!) in the river or, for those less fortunate, harvesting his wheat; all protected, as usual, by the sun god in his chariot, Leo the lion standing on his hands (paws), and a strangely attenuated Virgo.

July work

Those peasants sure worked hard during the summer, while the Duc de Berry was probably reclining in his triangular castle in Poitiers. But wouldn’t you worry that you might shear off that fancy blue dress by mistake?

Cancer time

Here’s what the lucky Duc de Berry got to look at from his Paris window – all the slaving peasants raking hay under the blazing chariot of Helios, the sun god; the Gemini twins; and Cancer the crab, who came in with the solstice.

Why on earth a crab, when you can barely see the constellation even with a telescope? Apparently it’s because, now that the sun has reached its highest point, it begins walking backwards, descending the zodiacal arc like, I guess, a crab. But it’s sure an inauspicious birth sign, even though cancer means “crab,” not a horrible disease, in Latin.

The merry month of May

Ah, to be Jean, Duc de Berry, and be able to commission the Tres Riches Heures. But then he did have several advantages, being the son, brother, and uncle of various kings of France; and owning at least seventeen palaces and mansions, many of which illuminate the background of these pages.