The Très Riches Heures Calendar pages

One minor New Year's resolution for 2014 is to post again this year, as I did two years ago, the appropriate monthly calendar page from the Très Riches Heures of Jean, Duc de Berry. There is an article about this famous Book of Hours here, which has links to articles on the artists involved. 

The manuscript was begun by the Limbourg brothers Herman (b. 1385), Paul (b.1386 or 7) and Jean (b. 1388) in 1412, but left unfinished when they all died, probably of plague, in February 1416. The Duke died that same year and the Hours were completed by other artists, later in the century, in a recognisably different style. The majority of the calendar pages are by the Limbourgs themselves, and include marvellous views of the ducal and of other royal residences in France. 

What they do not indicate in their idyllic representations - and, given the nature of the book, why should they I might add - is that they were produced against the background of civil conflict between the Armagnacs and the Burgundians, as detailed so graphically in the Journal of the Bourgeois of Paris, and, in 1415, King Henry V's invasion and the French defeat at Agincourt. 

I will post each one separately on the first day of the month with some revised notes about the scene and places depicted.