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.


Sunday, 1 April 2012

April


File:Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry avril.jpg

The April calendar page of the Très Riches Heures is attributed to Jean de Limbourg.

The scene depicts a bethrothal before two witnesses whilst two young women in attendance pick flowers. On the right is a walled garden or pleasance and in the background is the Château de Dourdan, which had been held by the Duke of Berry since 1385, and of which considerable portions remain. Romance and the spring clearly went together in the early fifteenth century mind. There is in its aristocratic rural idyll something we recognise in later artists and even in modern advertisements such as those for firms like Barbour.



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