The Château de Lusignan
The landscape is the work of the courtly painter, the figures are by the Master of the Shadows
Image :Wikipedia
Lusignan
was constructed, occupying a natural strongpoint: a narrow promontory
that overlooked steep valleys on either side. It was already so
impressive in the twelfth century that a legend developed to the effect
that its founder had faery aid, in the guise of the water spirit
Melusine, who built it and its church through her arts, as a gift for her husband Raymondin.
Lusignan at its height in the early fifteenth century, is illustrated in the
Très Riches Heures of
Jean, Duc de Berri,
for whom it was a favorite residence until his death in 1416. It rises
in the background of the miniature for the month of March, clearly
shown in perspective, with its barbican tower at the left, the clock
tower - with the exterior chute of the garderobe to its right - and the
Tour Poitevine on the right, above which the gilded dragon flies, the protective spirit of Marc Lacombe.
After the Duc de Berri's death, Lusignan became briefly the property of the
Dauphin John, who died in May 1417, and then passed to his brother, Charles, the future
King Charles VII.
The village which developed into the town of Lusignan grew up beneath the castle gates, along the slope; it formed a further enceinte
or surrounding fortification when it too was later enclosed by walls.
Lusignan remained a strategically important place in Poitou, in the
heart of France. About 1574, during the Wars of Religion, a plan was
made of the castle's defences which is now in the Bibliothèque National.
In the following century Lusignan was reinforced in the modern manner
by Vauban for King Louis XIV. It was a natural structure to be used as a
prison, and later housed a school.
The
château was long used as a local quarry of pre-cut stone before it was
razed by the Comte de Blossac in the nineteenth century, to make a
pleasure ground for the town. Today the remains are largely portions of
the foundations, some built into steep hillside, part of the keep, the
base of the Tour Poitevine, cisterns and cellars, and remains of a subterranean passage that probably once led to the church.
With acknowledgements to the article on the château on Wikipedia
To
those points I would add that the depiction of this and, over the
succeeding months, other châteaux associated with the Duc de Berri and
his family, indicate a delight in their possession, and convey the fact
that these medieval castles, however defensible, were essentially homes
in the country, replete with medieval domestic comforts and surrounded
with agriculture and other peaceful pursuits.These are residences,
more than they are fortifications. The same sense is conveyed, for
example, by surviving images of English castles in the sixteenth and
early seventeenth centuries.
The
plough oxen in the foreground are a reminder that for centuries the ox
was the beast of burden in Europe, and their use continued later than
one might expect. I have, for example, seen a photograph of someone
still ploughing with oxen in Wiltshire in about 1900.
As
with the other scenes in the manuscript the landscape is perhaps
unnaturally tidy, altough the ploughman in the foreground is wearing
patched clothing, and the grey and green tones do convey something of
the climate and mood of March as the farming year demands hard work from
the husbandmen.
The wayside shrine at the cross roads
in the middle distance is an indication of the type of monument which
may well have been common, but of which we have few surviving examples -
although more modern examples are still to be found in Catholic areas
of Europe.
