Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Friday 28 August 2015

St Louis in medieval art


To mark the feast day of St Louis on August 25th John Dillon posted the following images of the Saint-King, who ruled France from 1226 until 1270, on the Medieval Religion discussion group. I have opened and copied some of the more spectacular images, but all are worth investigating:

a) as depicted (upper register at right; upper register at left, his mother Queen Blanche of Castile) in the dedication illumination of an earlier thirteenth-century picture bible (circa 1230; New York, The Pierpont Morgan Library and Museum, MS M.240, fol. 8r):




b) as depicted (carrying the Crown of Thorns with Robert of Artois to Sens) in a panel of the mid-thirteenth-century Relics of the Passion Window (window A; ca. 1245-1248) in the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris:



c) as depicted (carrying the Crown of Thorns) in a mid-thirteenth-century glass window panel from Tours (circa 1245-1248) in the Cloisters Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York:

King Louis IX Carrying the Crown of Thorns


d) as depicted at the outset of the dedicatory letter to him in a mid- to later thirteenth-century copy of Vincent of Beauvais' Speculum historiale formerly owned by the abbey of Royaumont (Dijon, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 568, fol. 9r):
http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht6/IRHT_094713-p.jpg

e) as depicted in a later thirteenth-century legendary (ca. 1273-1300; Rouen, Bibliothèque publique, ms. 1410, fol. 3r):
http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht6/IRHT_101412-p.jpg

f) as depicted in a later thirteenth-century copy of the Grandes chroniques de France (1274?; Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, ms. 782, fol. 327r):
http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht15/IRHT_026819-p.jpg

g) as depicted (carrying the Crown of Thorns) in the later thirteenth-century martyrology and obituary of the abbaye Notre-Dame des Prés in Douai (ca. 1275-1300; Valenciennes, Bibliothèque de Valenciennes, ms. 838, fol. 101r):
http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht5/IRHT_092290-p.jpg

h) as portrayed in a late thirteenth- or early fourteenth-century polychromed statue (circa 1300) formerly in the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris and now in the Musée national du Moyen Âge (Musée de Cluny) in the same city:
http://www.sculpturesmedievales-cluny.fr/notices/notice.php?id=667 This has an account of the statue.



The statue's modern copy in the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris:
https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3337/3664528845_9db0da0bd0_b.jpg

i) as depicted in an early fourteenth-century sacramentary for the Use of Senlis (ca. 1310; Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, ms. 103, fol. 278r):
http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht15/IRHT_023729-p.jpg

j) as depicted (at left; at right, St. Louis of Toulouse) by Simone Martini in his early fourteenth-century frescoes (ca. 1310-1320) in the cappella di San Martino in the lower church of the basilica di San Francesco in Assisi:



k) as depicted (two of eight scenes illustrating his Dominican Office) by Jean Pucelle in the earlier fourteenth-century Hours of Jeanne d'Évreux (ca. 1324–1328) in the Cloisters Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York:
1) receiving from a dove his lost prayer book (fol. 154v): http://images.metmuseum.org/CRDImages/cl/original/DP233778.jpg
2) collecting the bones of martyrs (fol. 159v):
http://tinyurl.com/np6bex2

l) as depicted (three of numerous scenes from his life) by Mahiet in the earlier fourteenth-century sole copy of William of Saint-Pathus' thematically organized Vie et miracles de Saint Louis (circa 1330-1340; Paris, BnF, ms. Français 5716; foliation acc. to the digitization in Gallica):
1) going by ship on crusade (fol. 39v):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8447303m/f48.item
2) instructing his offspring (fol. 43v):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8447303m/f52.item
3) praying before the Crown of Thorns in the Sainte-Chapelle (fol. 67r):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8447303m/f75.item

m) as depicted (with Innocent IV at Cluny) in a later fourteenth-century copy (ca. 1375-1380) of the Grandes chroniques de France (Paris, BnF, ms. Français 2813, fol. 277r):
http://tinyurl.com/ovsjktq

n) as depicted (at his coronation) in the second volume of a late fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century copy of Don Gonzalo de la Hinojosa's chronicle of Burgos in its French-language translation by Jean Golein (ca. 1400; Besançon, Bibliothèques municipales, ms. 1150, fol. 287r):



o) as depicted (right-hand column) in the early fifteenth-century Hours of René of Anjou (ca. 1405-1410; London, BL, Egerton MS 1070, fol. 99v; image zoomable):
http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=48379

p) as depicted in an early fifteenth-century breviary for the Use of Paris (ca. 1414; Châteauroux, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 2, fol. 298v):
http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht2/IRHT_054144-p.jpg

q) as depicted in grisaille by Jean le Tavernier and assistant in the Suffrages of the mid-fifteenth-century Hours of Philip of Burgundy (ca. 1450-1460; Den Haag, KB, ms. 76 F 2, fol. 268r):
http://manuscripts.kb.nl/zoom/BYVANCKB%3Amimi_76f2%3A268r_min

r) as depicted (at left center; at right center, Bl. Charlemagne) as depicted in a later fifteenth-century copy of the Grandes chroniques de France (ca. 1460; Châteauroux, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 5, fol. 282v):



s) as depicted (carrying the Crown of Thorns) in a late fifteenth-century breviary for the Use of Langres (after 1481; Chaumont, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 33, fol. 340r):
http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht6/IRHT_096983-p.jpg

t) as depicted in a late fifteenth-century copy (1493) of the Legenda aurea in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Angers, Université Catholique de l'Ouest, Bibliothèque universitaire, incunable non coté, fol. 290v):
http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht16/IRHT_043130-p.jpg

u) as depicted on a wing of a late fifteenth- or very early sixteenth-century triptych (ca. 1495-1501?; Bl. Charlemagne on the other wing) in the Cappella del Santissimo Salvatore in Naples:
http://www.ilportaledelsud.org/images/casati/ss08.jpg

v) as depicted in a late fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century book of hours for the Use of Rome (ca. 1500; Den Haag, KB, ms. 74 G 22, fol. 201r):
http://manuscripts.kb.nl/zoom/BYVANCKB%3Amimi_74g22%3A201r


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