The Hours of Guillaume Rolin and Simon Marmion: A Reconsideration
p. 189-210
Texte intégral
1In 1990, Thomas Kren organized a symposium centered on the Visions of Tondal, an illuminated manuscript that the J. Paul Getty Museum had acquired in 1987 (Ms 30)1. The codex was made in 1475 for Margaret of York, duchess of Burgundy; its miniatures have been ascribed to the documented Simon Marmion of Amiens and Valenciennes. All of the papers presented at the symposium in 1990 were published by the Getty in 19922. In his paper in the symposium volume, Antoine de Schryver reminded us that Marmion’s entire oeuvre, the Visions of Tondal included, is comprised of ascriptions; not a single securely documented work by the artist has yet been identified3. All of those ascriptions are founded on two panel paintings and two illuminated leaves. The former two are the L-shaped left and right wings originally attached to the sculpted corpus in precious metals, destroyed and melted down in 1793, of the altarpiece completed by 1459 for the abbey of Saint-Bertin in the Artois. Now broken up, the painted wings are divided between Berlin (Staatliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie, Ident. Nos. 1645-1645a) and London (National Gallery of Art, Inv. 1302-1303)4.
2The wings’ attribution to Marmion is based on a now-lost document of 1459 transcribed by Dom Charles-Joseph Dewitte (1725-1807), the last archivist of Saint-Bertin. It purportedly stated that on 23 June of that year the abbot “Guillaume Fillastre caused to be placed in the sanctuary of the abbey church the very rich and superb altarpiece, enriched with an infinite number of precious stones, which he had had made at Valenciennes”5. The precious stones surely embellished the sculpted corpus, which is unquestionably described as having come from Valenciennes; by contrast, it is not at all clear from the transcribed document that the wings were also from Valenciennes, much less that Marmion painted them.
3The two illuminated leaves, from a breviary, were first ascribed to Marmion in 1958 by Edith (then May, later Warren) Hoffman (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Robert S. Lehman Collection, Acc. 1975.I.2477, and whereabouts unknown)6. In the 1992 Getty symposium volume, Sandra Hindman proposed that the source breviary was the now-lost one begun by Marmion for Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, in 1467 and completed for Philip’s son Charles the Bold in 1470 (see Table 2)7. However, the two leaves bear no marks of original ownership whatsoever, making it impossible to conclude with certainty that they came from the documented ducal breviary.
4With an eye to the fact that all ascriptions to Marmion are based on circumstantial evidence, I sought in my contribution to the 1992 Getty symposium volume to order and date the ten Books of Hours largely by the artist on the basis of stylistic, compositional, and textual evidence to see if they dovetailed with what we know from the documents about the painter of Amiens and Valenciennes8.
5That evidence led me to three key observations. First, the steadily increasing height and depth of interior settings and the changing border styles in those manuscripts suggest that the ten were painted between the 1450s or 1460s and the 1480s or 1490s. Table 1 presents the shelf numbers of the ten Horae in the chronological order I proposed in 1992 in the left column and the dates I suggested then in the middle column.
6Second, the evidence makes clear that the earliest of the ten Marmion Hours — the grisaille ones in Turin (Fig. 7.1) and Madrid (Fig. 7.2) — betray a familiarity with book painting of the 1440s and 1450s in Picardy or the Artois9. My first published comparison was between the alignment parallel to the picture plane of the actors in the Turin Presentation (Fig. 7.1) and the like alignment of the same figures in the Antoine de Crèvecoeur Hours (Fig. 7.3)10. The latter codex is ascribed to the Mansel Master, who takes his name from the celebrated two-volume copy of Jean Mansel’s Fleur des histoires that the Mansel Master began and Marmion completed (Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, Mss. 9231-32; Figs. 7.8 and 7.9)11. As Marc Gil has established, the two volumes were bound in or shortly before 1462 at the expense of Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy12; the Mansel Master is thought to have worked in Picardy, the Artois, or both in the late 1440s and 1450s.
7My second comparison in 1992 was between the very similar handmaidens holding tapers and baskets of doves on the left sides of the Turin Presentation (Fig. 7.1) and the same subject in the Collins Hours (Fig. 7.4)13. The latter manuscript is ascribed to the eponymous Collins Master, who is thought to have migrated from Amiens, Picardy’s largest city in the late Middle Ages, to Bruges at the end of the 1440s14. My third and last observation was that the overwhelming majority of Marmion’s imitators were based in the diocese of Cambrai, which included Valenciennes’ more substantial right bank15. (The city’s smaller left bank fell into the diocese of Arras)16. My illustrated comparison was between the Raisings of Lazarus in Marmion’s Berlaymont Hours (San Marino, Huntington Library, HM.1173, fol. 84) and in a Mons Hours illustrated by the Philippe de Croÿ Master (Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, Ms 15080, fol. 98)17.
8While admittedly entirely circumstantial, all of my evidence corresponded reasonably well with what we know from the documents about Simon Marmion (Table 2). The son of Jehan Marmion, also a painter and recorded in Amiens from 1426 to 1444 (Table 4), Simon is documented in Amiens from 1449 to 1454, when Philip the Good called him to Lille to help make decorations for the Feast of the Pheasant. In 1458 Simon bought his first properties in Valenciennes. Marmion’s next recorded ducal commission came in 1467, when he began an unidentified breviary for Philip the Good; the breviary was completed in 1470 for Philip’s son, Charles the Bold. In 1468 Marmion joined the Tournai painters’ guild and in 1484 he is recorded as completing a commission for Cambrai cathedral. He died in Valenciennes in 1489, when the poet, chronicler, and composer Jean Molinet (1435-1507) wrote his epitaph18.
9In the 28 years since my essay appeared, however, the accepted dates for the two grisaille Hours in Turin and Madrid (Figs. 7.1 and 7.2) that I judged to be Marmion’s earliest works have been moved some ten to fifteen years later, from the 1450s or 1460s to the late 1460s. Those redatings appear in the right column of Table 1 and highlight one of the weaknesses with the argument I made in 1992: where are Simon Marmion’s youthful works?
10Simon is thought to have been born around 142519. That Simon was a well-established artist already by 1454 is suggested by his hiring by Philip the Good to provide decorations for the Feast of the Pheasant, which makes it likely that he was establishing his reputation already by the middle or late 1440s. However, the earliest ascriptions to Simon — the Saint-Petersburg Grandes chroniques de France (National Library of Russia, Erm. 88) and the Brussels Fleur des histoires (Fig. 7.9) — are usually dated around 1455, which suggests that five to ten years or more of youthful work have escaped us20.
11Another, more glaring problem with the identification of the manuscripts ascribed to Simon Marmion with the documented painter of Amiens and Valenciennes became apparent in 2013, when Dominique Vanwijnsberghe published his groundbreaking study of the oeuvre of Marquet Caussin, an illuminator recorded in Valenciennes from the 1440s to the mid-1470s21. In his study, Vanwijnsberghe notes that Caussin began responding more energetically to the southern Netherlandish ars nova only in the 1460s and early 1470s, thus at the very end of his career22.
12The paragon of the ars nova closest to home for Caussin, of course, was Simon Marmion, who arrived in Valenciennes no later than 145823. However, the only painter known to me to have made an unmistakable impression on the mature Caussin was the Mansel Master. In the center foreground of the Pentecost in Caussin’s Guildhall Hours (Fig. 7.5), painted around or shortly after 1460, we see an apostle turned away from the viewer whose face is entirely hidden by his hair, which is split down the middle all the way to the back of his head by a part that terminates in a single, wraparound curl that extends from ear to ear24.
13Like coifs without parts are a commonplace in Parisian illumination of the first half of the fifteenth century25. Like heads of hair with wispy parts can be found in three of the borders of the name manuscript of the Collins Master, an artist with whose oeuvre, as I have already observed, the painter identified with Simon Marmion seems to have been familiar (Fig. 7.4); one of those coifs is worn by the angel in the margin directly beneath the Virgin and Child Enthroned (Fig. 7.6)26. A 360-degree curl without the part crowns the head of the apostle turned away from the viewer in the middle foreground of the Ascension ascribed to Marmion in the Sir John Donne Hours (Fig. 7.7)27.
14I have encountered the hairstyle in Caussin’s miniature, however, only in illuminations by the Mansel Master. In the Dartmouth Hours (London [formerly], Sotheby’s, 6 July 1964, lot 265), for example, painted by the Mansel Master around 1450, the prayer Veni sancte spiritus is introduced by a miniature of the dove of the Holy Spirit hovering over a Bible or Gospels surrounded by 12 cherubim (fol. 108)28. Those nearest to the viewer sport the coif seen in Caussin’s Guildhall Hours (Fig. 7.5) and those farthest from the viewer the hairstyle worn by the apostle in the Sir John Donne Ascension (Fig. 7.7).
15The Guildhall coif also appears on several folios painted by the Mansel Master in the first volume of the Brussels Fleur des histoires: a representive example is the kneeling angel seen entirely from behind in the bottom left-hand panel of the sexpartite frontispiece (Fig. 7.8)29. The angels clad in white who fall forward in the frontispiece’s middle right panel sport the 360-degree curl worn by the apostle in the Sir John Donne Ascension (Fig. 7.7) together with the marked parts seen in Caussin’s Guildhall Pentecost (Fig. 7.5).
16In a review published in 2014 of Vanwijnsberghe’s 2013 Caussin monograph, I wondered whether the Mansel Master had moved to Valenciennes together with Simon Marmion between 1454 and 145830. But given the complete absence of motifs peculiar to Simon in Caussin’s late oeuvre, the more plausible explanation is that Simon Marmion and the Mansel Master are one and the same (Table 2).
17Simon appears in the documentary record in 1449 in the Picard center of Amiens; the surviving oeuvre of the Mansel Master has been localized to Picardy or the Artois and dated to the late 1440s and 1450s. The Mansel Master’s earliest secular work, most recently dated between about 1445 and 1450, is Philip the Good’s celebrated copy of Boccaccio’s Decameron in the Arsenal Library in Paris (Ms 5070)31.
18Simon had clearly done very well for himself already by the late 1450s, as he was able to buy his first properties in Valenciennes in 1458. Of the 56 documents in the Valenciennes archives citing Simon between 1458 and his death in 1489, fully 51 concern his financial affairs, and most of those concern his properties; only five, all included in Table 2, concern works of art32. Four of those five documents date between 1463 and 1470; over the course of the last 19 years of his life only one work, an epitaph painted in 1484, is recorded. All of this suggests that Simon lived more off of his rents than his art in the 1470s and 1480s, if not before, just as the illuminator Roeland de Stoevere, documented in Ghent from 1407 to 1451, seems to have done in the 1430s and 1440s33.
19Is the painter we now identify with Simon Marmion in fact Simon’s younger brother Mille? Mille first appears in the Amiens documentary record in 1464 or 1465, 15 years after Simon does (Table 3). A year or two later, in 1466, Mille was working in Tournai, where he is recorded as living in 1473 as well. Mille had relocated to Abbeville, just to the west of Amiens, by 1499; he died between that year and 1505.
20Mille Marmion is a much better fit for the body of work by the painter we now identify with Simon Marmion. The brothers most likely received their initial training in the Amiens atelier of their father Jehan. That shared foundation would explain the unparted heads of hair with wraparound curls seen from behind in both painters’ mature work (London [formerly], Sotheby’s, 6 July 1964, lot 265, fol. 108; Fig. 7.7).
21Simon would have completed his part of the Brussels Fleur des histoires before 1458, by which year he had moved from Amiens to Valenciennes (Fig. 7.8); Mille would have finished the two volumes’ illustration in Amiens before 1462, when Philip the Good paid for the bindings (Fig. 7.9)34. It would also have been in Amiens that Mille illustrated the Saint-Petersburg Grandes chroniques de France and the wings of the Saint-Bertin Altarpiece35.
22Mille’s earliest Books of Hours, those in Turin and Madrid (Figs. 7.1 and 7.2), would most likely have been painted after Mille’s move from Amiens to Tournai between 1464 and 1466. Once in the Tournai painters’ guild, Mille would have been able to facilitate his brother Simon’s admission to that guild in 1468. Mille’s move from Amiens to Tournai would have also have had the practical consequence of cutting the geographical distance between him and his numerous collaborators in netherlandophone Ghent and Bruges while still enabling Mille to live and work in a francophone city36.
23In addition, the city of Tournai’s straddling of the Scheldt (Escaut) river, which separated the dioceses of Tournai and Cambrai, would explain Mille’s many imitators in the diocese of Cambrai37. Finally, as Mille outlived Simon by at least ten years, the latest works now ascribed to Simon, the half-length narrative scenes in Books of Hours in Munich (Fig. 7.10) and Naples (Bibl. Naz., Ms I.B.51), can comfortably be dated to the 1490s, as their architectural enframements and host manuscripts argue for38.
24I noted earlier that heads of hair like those favored by the Mansel Master and the mature Marquet Caussin, but with wispy rather than marked parts, can be found in the name manuscript of the Collins Master, an artist with whose work the painter I propose to identify with Mille Marmion seems to have been familiar (Figs. 7.4 and 7.6).
25Might the Collins Master and Jehan Marmion be one and the same? As Susie Nash has demonstrated, the style of the Collins Master has its roots in both Parisian illumination of the late 1410s and 1420s, especially that of the Bedford Master, and Amiens book painting of the 1430s39. Two of the three manuscripts ascribed to the Collins Master, the Books of Hours of the Le Rat family (Baltimore, The Walters Art Museum, Ms W. 262) and Thiébaut de Luxembourg (Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, Ms 9785), were made in Amiens in the early to mid-1440s40. The Collins Hours itself (Figs. 7.4 and 7.6) has been dated to the mid- to late 1440s and tentatively localized to Bruges, when and where Nash believes the artist also painted the triptych of Eximén Pérez de Corella, long localized to Valencia and ascribed to Louis Alincbrot (Madrid, Museo del Prado, Inv. P-2538)41.
26Turning to the documentary record for Jehan Marmion (Table 4), we see that Jehan polychromed a sculpture or sculptures in Amiens in the late 1420s and painted and delivered a depiction of the head of Mary Magdalene to the church attached to the lepers’ house of Saint-Ladre in the Vallée Saint Ladre, just to the north of late medieval Amiens, in 1440. Four years later, in 1444, Jehan painted a banner with the arms of Amiens42. Jehan then disappears from view until 1465, when he appears to have moved to Valenciennes, although the wording of the document in question makes it impossible to be certain whether the Marmion “ad ce jour demourant audit Valenchiennes” is Jehan or his son Simon. Jehan’s last recorded appearance is in 1473, when he painted decorations for a convocation — unquestionably in Valenciennes — of the Order of the Golden Fleece.
27The Le Rat and Thiébaut de Luxembourg Hours were painted in Amiens when Jehan is recorded as living and working there. Did Jehan apprentice in Paris in the late 1410s and early 1420s, most likely with the Bedford Master; move in the mid-1420s to Amiens, where he established an atelier and trained his sons Simon and Mille; relocate in the mid- to late 1440s to Bruges, where he painted the Collins Hours and perhaps the Eximén Pérez de Corella triptych; and finally join his older son in Valenciennes no later than 1473?
28Given the modest documentary and pictorial evidence, I concede that this hypothesis, attractive though it may be, is entirely speculative. But are the Mansel Master and Simon Marmion one and the same, and was the “Marmion, prince de l’enluminure” praised by Jean Lemaire de Belges in his Couronne margaritique really Mille Marmion rather than Simon43? In my opinion, the firm anchoring of Marquet Caussin in Valenciennes, the mature Caussin’s obvious borrowing of the eccentrically turned and coifed heads favored by the Mansel Master, and the concordances between the documentary record for Simon Marmion and the career of the Mansel Master strongly argue for the two being one and the same.
29I will not insist, however, that the body of work traditionally ascribed to Simon Marmion is really by Mille Marmion because my evidence remains entirely circumstantial: that oeuvre could actually be the work of another master or masters whose name or names is or are now lost to us44. What I would like to argue for, though, is that trying to attach an anonymous oeuvre that cannot be securely localized to a recorded artist whose documented works cannot be identified puts the cart in front of the donkey: the oeuvre, not name-chasing, should always come first because the works of art themselves are our primary body of evidence. A comprehensive monograph on the sizeable and magnificent body of manuscripts and panel paintings long attributed to Simon Marmion still begs to be written; hopefully someone will shoulder the task sooner rather than later.
Table 1: Datings of 10 Books of Hours largely illustrated by the illuminator identified with Simon Marmion.
| MS | Clark 1992 dating | Most recent dating/s and authority |
| Turin, Museo Civico, Ms 446/M | 1450s or 1460s | Ca. 1470 (Jan van Eyck 2009, cat. 14); ca. 1460-1465 (Gil, 2013, p. 276) |
| Madrid, BNE, Res/149 | 1450s or 1460s | Ca. 1465-1470 (Jan van Eyck 2009, cat. 13); ca. 1458-1462 (Gil 2013, p. 276) |
| San Marino, Huntington Library, HM.1173 | Ca. 1470-1475 | Ca. 1470-1475 (Illuminating the Renaissance 2003, cat. 12, and Gil 2013, p. 276) |
| London, Victoria & Albert Museum, Ms Salting 1221 | Ca. 1475-1480 | Ca. 1470-1475 (Illuminating the Renaissance 2003, cat. 53, and Gil 2013, p. 276) |
| Chantilly, Musée Condé, Ms 85 | Ca. 1480 | Ca. 1470-1475? (Gil 2013, p. 276); ca. 1480 (Dubois 2015) |
| Tournai, Bibliothèque de la Ville, Ms 15 (conservé no. 11) | Ca. 1480-1485 | Ca. 1480-1485 (Medieval Mastery 2002, cat. 90); ca. 1458-1465 (Gil 2013, p. 276) |
| Louvain-la-Neuve, Université Catholique, Ms A.2 | Ca. 1485 | Ca. 1480 (Gothic 2003, cat. 215, and Gil 2013, p. 277) |
| New York, Morgan Library & Museum, Morgan 6 | Ca. 1485-1489 | Ca. 1480 (Wieck 1997, cat. 58); ca. 1480-1485 (Gil 2013, p. 277) |
| London, British Library, Additional 38126 | Ca. 1485-1489 | Ca. 1480-1485 (Illuminating the Renaissance 2003, cat. 33, and Gil 2013, p. 277) |
| Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, Ms I.B.51 | Ca. 1485-1489 (borders later) | Late 1480s (miniatures), 1490s (architectural borders) (Illuminating the Renaissance 2003, cat. 93, and Gil 2013, p. 277) |
Table 2: Documents related to major life events and works of Simon Marmion.
| Date/s | Subjects |
| 1449-1454 | Five payments to Simon for works executed in Amiens (Hénault 1907-1908, Pièces justificatives [hereafter Pjs (singular Pj)] 5-8, 10) |
| 1454 | Payment to Simon, demourant à Amiens, by Philip the Good for decorations for the Feast of the Pheasant in Lille (Hénault 1907-1908, Pj 9) |
| 1458 | Simon buys his first properties in Valenciennes (Hénault 1907-1908, Pjs 14-16) |
| 1463 | A “Marmion” paints the altarpiece for the newly acquired chapel of the Confraternity of Saint Luke in the church of Notre Dame in Valenciennes (Hénault 1907-1908, Pj 20) |
| 1464-1465 | Simon paid for repainting the image of the Virgin for Cambrai cathedral (Hénault 1907-1908, Pj 23) |
| 1465 | Simon marries Jeanne de Quarouble of Valenciennes (Hénault 1907-1908, Pj 24) |
| 1467 | Simon, escripvain, paid by Philip the Good to ystorier, enluminer, et mectre en fourme a breviary (Hénault 1907-1908, Pj 27) |
| 1468 | Simon joins Tournai painters’ guild (Hénault 1907-1908, p. 128 n.4) |
| 1470 | Simon is paid by Charles the Bold for completion of the breviary undertaken for Philip the Good in 1467 (Hénault 1907-1908, Pj 35) |
| 1484 | Simon is paid for a tablet de Nostre-Dame à 11 feullés en manière de ung épitaphe ordered by Pierre Dewez (Devado), chaplain of Cambrai cathedral (Hénault 1907-1908, Pj 65) |
| 1489 | Epitaph of Simon written by Jehan Molinet (Hénault 1907-1908, Pj 78) |
Table 3: Documents related to major life events and works of Mille (Wille, Guillaume) Marmion.
| Date/s | Subjects |
| 1464-1465 | Mille paid for paintings in the Council Room in the Cloquiers in Amiens (Hénault 1907-1908, Pièce justificative [hereafter Pj (plural Pjs)] 22) |
| 1466 | According to the records of the guild of Saint Luke in Tournai, Mille accepted an apprentice, Richard Lecat, on 21 May; Lecat was accepted into the Tournai guild of Saint Luke on 15 July 1469, when it is noted that Mille was the brother of Simon Marmion (Hénault 1907-1908, p. 122-123) |
| 1473 | Mille, de présent demourant à Tournay, cited with respect to the sale of a house opposite the cathedral of Amiens (Hénault 1907-1908, Pj 51) |
| 1499 | Now living in Abbeville, Mille and his son Colinet sold a pension viagère (life annuity) to Mille’s nephew, Michel Clauwet (Hénault 1907-1908, Pj 90) |
| 1505 | Mille is presumed dead, as he was not included in the will of Jeanne de Quarouble, widow of his brother Simon Marmion (Hénault 1907-1908, Pjs 95-98, 100-101) |
Table 4: Documents related to major life events and works of Jehan Marmion.
| Date/s | Subjects |
| 1426 | Jehan Marmion, paintre, paid to polychrome a sculpture (pierre) in front of (endevant) the church of Saint-Firmin in Amiens (Hénault 1907-1908, Pièce justificative [hereafter Pj] 1) |
| 1426-1427 | Jehan paid a second time to polychrome the sculpture in front of Saint-Firmin (Hénault 1907-1908, Pj 2) |
| 1440 | Jehan paid for painting the head of the Magdalene on canvas for the church of Saint-Ladre in the lepers’ valley just outside Amiens (Hénault 1907-1908, Pj 3) |
| 1444 | Jehan Marmion, paintre, demourant à Amiens, paid for having painted a banner bearing the arms of Amiens (Hénault 1907-1908, Pj 4) |
| 1465 | Simon Marmion fil Jehan ad ce jour demourant audit Valenchiennes marries Jeanne de Quarouble of Valenciennes (Hénault 1907-1908, Pj 24) |
| 1473 | Jehan Marmion paintre paid for decorations for the festivities surrounding the meeting in Valenciennes of the Order of the Golden Fleece called by duke Charles the Bold (Hénault 1907-1908, Pj 48) |
Bibliography
Illustrations
Fig. 7.1 Book of Hours, Turin, Palazzo Madama — Museo Civico d’Arte Antica, Ms 446/M, fol. 73 : « Presentation in the Temple », ascribed to Simon Marmion (here identified with Mille Marmion), ca. 1465-1470, Tournai (?).

© Paolo Robino 2003; reproduced by permission of the Fondazione Torino Musei.
Fig. 7.2 Book of Hours (Hours of Guillaume Rolin), Madrid, BNE, Res/149, fol. 104v : « Pentecost », ascribed to Simon Marmion (here identified with Mille Marmion), ca. 1465-1470, Tournai (?).

© BNE.
Fig. 7.3 Book of Hours (Antoine de Crèvecoeur Hours), Leeds, University Library, Ms Brotherton 4, fol. 76 : « Presentation in the Temple », Mansel Master (here identified with Simon Marmion), ca. 1450-1455, Amiens.

Reproduced with the permission of Special Collections, Leeds University Library.
Fig. 7.4 Book of Hours (Collins Hours), Philadelphia, Museum of Art, Ms 1945-65-4, fol. 83v : « Presentation in the Temple », Collins Master (here identified with Jehan Marmion), ca. 1445, Amiens or Bruges.

© PMA.
Fig. 7.5 Book of Hours, London, Guildhall, Ms 1364, fol. 13 : « Pentecost », Marquet Caussin, ca. 1460-1470, Valenciennes.

© James H. Marrow.
Fig. 7.6 Book of Hours (Collins Hours), Philadelphia, Museum of Art, Ms 1945-65-4, fol. 170v : « Virgin and Child Enthroned in Interior with Attendant Angel », Collins Master (here identified with Jehan Marmion), ca. 1445, Amiens or Bruges.

© PMA.
Fig. 7.7 Book of Hours (Sir John Donne Hours), Louvain-la-Neuve, Université Catholique, Ms A.2, fol. 93v : « Ascension », ascribed to Simon Marmion (here identified with Mille Marmion), ca. 1480-1485, Tournai (?).

© KIK-IRPA.
Fig. 7.8 Jean Mansel, Fleur des histoires, Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, Ms 9231, fol. 9r : « Wisdom (top left), Trinity Debating Creation of Angels (middle left), Trinity Creating Angels (bottom left), Fall of Rebel Angels (right top to bottom) », Mansel Master (here identified with Simon Marmion), 1450s and before 1458, Amiens.

© KBR.
Fig. 7.9 Jean Mansel, Fleur des histoires, Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, Ms 9232, fol. 448v : « Four Moral Virtues », ascribed to Simon Marmion (here identified with Mille Marmion), before 1462, Amiens (?).

© KBR.
Fig. 7.10 Book of Hours, Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 28345, fol. 230 : « Jesus Taking Leave of His Mother », ascribed to Simon Marmion (here identified with Mille Marmion), 1490s, Tournai or Abbeville (?).

© Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München.
Bibliographie
Des DOI sont automatiquement ajoutés aux références bibliographiques par Bilbo, l’outil d’annotation bibliographique d’OpenEdition. Ces références bibliographiques peuvent être téléchargées dans les formats APA, Chicago et MLA.
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Dubois 2015 : Dubois (Anne), “Les Heures de Jean Gros”, Art de l’enluminure, 54 (2015), p. 34-62.
El Renacimiento Mediterráneo 2001 : El Renacimiento Mediterráneo : Viajes de artistas e itinerarios de obras entre Italia, Francia, y España en el siglo XV, Mauro Natale (ed.), Madrid : Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza / Valencia : Museo de Belles Arts, 2001.
Gil 1998 : Gil (Marc), “Un livre d’heures inédit de l’atelier de Simon Marmion à Valenciennes,” Revue de l’art, 121 (1998), p. 43-48.
10.3406/rvart.1998.348401 :Gil 1999 : Gil (Marc), “Du Maître de Mansel au Maître de Rambures. Le milieu des peintres et des enlumineurs de Picardie, ca 1440-1480,” Thèse de doctorat, Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne (dir. Anne Prache), 1999.
Gil 2006 : Gil (Marc), “D’Italie du nord en Artois, le portrait de saint Bernardin de Sienne des Heures d’Antoine de Crèvecoeur, vers 1450-55 : Leeds, University Library, The Brotherton Collection, Ms 4”, in Tributes in Honor of James H. Marrow : Studies in Painting and Manuscript Illumination of the Late Middle Ages and Northern Renaissance, Jeffrey F. Hamburger and Anne S. Korteweg (eds.), London : Harvey Miller / Turnhout : Brepols, 2006, p. 207-218 and 619.
Gil 2013 : Gil (Marc), “Picardie-Hainaut : quelques remarques sur les livres d’heures produits par le Maître de Rambures et Simon Marmion”, in Books of Hours Reconsidered, Sandra Hindman and James Marrow (eds.), London : Harvey Miller / Turnhout : Brepols, 2013, p. 265-277, 518-519.
Gil and Nys 2004 : Gil (Marc) and Nys (Ludovic), Saint-Omer gothique. Les arts figuratifs à Saint-Omer à la fin du Moyen Âge 1250-1550 : peinture — vitrail — sculpture — arts du livre, Valenciennes : Presses Universitaires, 2004.
Gothic 2003 : Gothic : Art for England 1400-1547, Richard Marks and Paul Williamson (eds.), London : Victoria & Albert Museum, 2003.
Grosshans 1992 : Grosshans (Rainald), “Simon Marmion and the Saint Bertin Altarpiece : Notes on the Genesis of the Painting”, in Margaret of York, Simon Marmion, and The Visions of Tondal : Papers Delivered at a Symposium Organized by the Department of Manuscripts of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Collaboration with the Huntington Library and Art Collections, June 21-24, 1990, Thomas Kren (ed.), Los Angeles : Getty Publications, 1992, p. 233-242.
Hénault 1907-1908 : Hénault (Maurice), “Les Marmion (Jehan, Simon, Mille, et Colinet) : peintres amiénois du XVe siècle”, Revue archéologique, 4th series, 9 (1907), p. 119-140, 282-304 and 410-424; 10 (1908), p. 108-124.
Hindman 1992 : Hindman (Sandra), “Two Leaves from an Unknown Breviary : The Case for Simon Marmion”, in Margaret of York, Simon Marmion, and The Visions of Tondal : Papers Delivered at a Symposium Organized by the Department of Manuscripts of the J Paul Getty Museum in collaboration with the Huntington Library and Art Collections, June 21-24, 1990, Thomas Kren (ed.), Los Angeles : Getty Publications, 1992, p. 223-232.
Hoffman 1958 : Hoffman (Edith May Warren), “Simon Marmion,” PhD dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 1958.
Illuminating the Renaissance 2003 : Illuminating the Renaissance : The Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe, Thomas KREN and Scot McKendrick (eds.), Los Angeles : Getty Publications, 2003.
Jan van Eyck 2009 : Jan van Eyck : Grisallas, Till-Holger Borchert (ed.), Madrid : Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, 2009 (Contextos de la colección permanente, 23).
König 2007 : König (Eberhard), The Bedford Hours : The Making of a Medieval Masterpiece, London : British Library, 2007.
Leaves of Gold 2001 : Leaves of Gold : Manuscript Illumination from Philadelphia Collections, James R Tanis (ed.), Philadelphia : Museum of Art, 2001.
Legaré 1996 : Legaré, Anne-Marie, "L’héritage de Simon Marmion en Hainaut (1490-1520)," in Valenciennes aux XIVe et XVe siècles: art et histoire, Ludovic Nys and Alain Salamagne (eds.), Valenciennes: Presses Universitaires, 1996, p. 201-224.
Lemaire De Belges 1549 : Lemaire De Belges (Jean), La couronne margaritique, Lyons : [s. n.], 1549.
Lyna 1989 : Lyna (Frédéric), Les principaux manuscrits à peintures de la Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique : tome III (ed. Christiane Pantens), 2 vol., Brussels : Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, 1989.
Margaret of York 1992 : Margaret of York, Simon Marmion, and The Visions of Tondal : Papers Delivered at a Symposium Organized by the Department of Manuscripts of the J Paul Getty Museum in collaboration with the Huntington Library and Art Collections, June 21-24, 1990, Thomas Kren (ed.), Los Angeles : Getty Publications, 1992.
Medieval Mastery 2002 : Medieval Mastery : Book Illumination from Charlemagne to Charles the Bold | 800-1475, Leuven : Davidsfonds / Turnhout : Brepols, 2002.
Meiss 1968 : Meiss (Millard), French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry : The Boucicaut Master, London : Phaidon, 1968.
Meiss 1969 : Meiss (Millard), French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry : The Late Fourteenth Century and the Patronage of the Duke, 2 vol., London : Phaidon, 1967 (2nd ed. 1969).
Meiss 1974 : Meiss (Millard), French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry : The Limbourgs and Their Contemporaries, 2 vol., New York : George Braziller & Pierpont Morgan Library, 1974.
Miniatures flamandes 2011 : Miniatures flamandes 1404-1482, Bernard Bousmanne and Thierry Delcourt (dirs.), Paris : Bibliothèque nationale / Brussels : Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, 2011.
Morrison 2018 : Morrison (Elizabeth), “Codicological Puzzles and Artistic Interchange in Flanders : The Example of La Flora”, in New Perspectives on Flemish Illumination, Bernard Bousmanne et al. (eds.), Leuven : Peeters, 2018, p. 172-191 (Corpus of Illuminated Manuscripts, 22; Low Countries Series, 16).
Nash 1999 : Nash (Susie), Between France and Flanders : Manuscript Illumination in Amiens in the Fifteenth Century, London : British Library / Toronto : University of Toronto Press, 1999 (The British Library Studies in Medieval Culture).
Nash 2014 : Nash (Susie), “The Myth of Louis Alincbrot : Relocating the Triptych with Scenes from the Life of Christ in the Prado”, Boletín del Museo del Prado, XXXII/50 (2014), p. 70-95. Paris 1400 2004 : Paris 1400. Les arts sous Charles VI, Élisabeth Taburet-Delahaye (dir), Paris : Fayard – RMN, 2004.
Vanwijnsberghe 2013 : Vanwijnsberghe (Dominique), ‘Ung bon ouvrier nommé Marquet Caussin’ : Peinture et enluminure en Hainaut avant Simon Marmion, Brussels : Institut Royal du Patrimoine artistique, 2013 (Contributions à l’étude des Primitifs flamands, 12).
Vanwijnsberghe and Verroken 2017 : Vanwijnsberghe (Dominique) and Verroken (Erik), À l’Escu de France : Guillebert de Mets et la peinture de livres à Gand à l’époque de Jan van Eyck (1410-1450), Brussels : Institut royal du Patrimoine artistique, 2017 (Scientia artis, 13).
Wieck 1997 : Wieck (Roger S.), Painted Prayers : The Book of Hours in Medieval and Renaissance Art, New York : George Braziller in association with the Pierpont Morgan Library, 1997.
Notes de bas de page
1 For the Visions, see most recently Illuminating the Renaissance 2003, cat. 14.
2 Margaret of York 1992.
3 De Schryver 1992, p. 171-172. De Schryver’s point was reiterated by Campbell 1998, p. 300; see also Gil and Nys 2004, p. 157-160.
4 For the Saint-Bertin Altarpiece, see most recently Grosshans 1992, p. 233-242; Châtelet 1996, p. 158-163 and figs. 2-8; Campbell 1998, p. 300-309.
5 Saint-Omer, Bibl. d’agglomération, Ms 803, vol. 7, p. 6; see Campbell 1998, especially p. 308 and 309 n. 25.
6 Hoffman 1958, p. 177. Both leaves, which Hofmann believed came from a book of hours, were then privately owned by Lehman.
7 Hindman 1992, p. 223-232, and again Hindman 1997, p. 60-72.
8 Clark 1992, p. 195-208, especially p. 200-201. To the ten should perhaps be added a Book of Hours in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris (NAL 3214) published in 1998 by Marc Gil, who ascribed all 12 of its surviving full-page miniatures (a thirteenth, originally between fols. 94 and 95, has been removed) to an associate of Marmion and dated them ca. 1465-1470; Gil 1998, p. 43-48. Samuel Gras has also recently identified an unpublished Horae made in the 1470s with at least ten inserted miniatures by a Marmion follower in Berlin (Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Ms LH3).
9 Clark, 1992, p. 201.
10 Clark 1992, figs. 169-170. For the Brotherton Hours, see most recently Gil 2006, p. 207-218, 619.
11 The Brussels Fleur des histoires is most recently considered in Miniatures flamandes 2011, cat. 110.
12 Gil 1999, p. 896.
13 Clark 1992, p. 201.
14 For the Collins Hours and its painter, see most recently Leaves of Gold 2001, cat. 19, and Nash 2014, p. 79-90, figs. 9, 14, 16, 18, 20, and 22.
15 For a diocesan map of northern France and the southern Netherlands before the redrawing of the diocesan lines in 1559, see Clark 2000, p. 134, fig. 84 (from De Moreau 1940-1952, Map Ia).
16 A plan of late medieval Valenciennes with the left and right banks indicated in pink and green, respectively, can be found in Vanwijnsberghe 2013, p. 371, Map 2.
17 Clark 1992, p. 204-205 and figs. 181-182. For the Berlaymont Hours, see Illuminating the Renaissance 2003, cat. 12; the Brussels Hours is included in Lyna 1989, cat. 342.
18 As Anne-Marie Legaré has observed, Marmion is also eulogized by Louis de la Fontaine in his Recoeil des antiquités de la ville de Vallenchiennes, composed between 1551 and 1554 (Douai, Bibl. Mun., Ms 1183). Legaré 1996, p. 223-224.
19 Hénault 1907-1908, (1907, p. 124); Illuminating the Renaissance 2003, p. 98; Vanwijnsberghe 2013, p. 59.
20 For the Grandes chroniques, see most recently Avril and Reynaud 1993, cat. 36; for the Fleur des histoires, see most recently Miniatures flamandes 2011, cat. 110.
21 Vanwijnsberghe 2013.
22 Vanwijnsberghe 2013, p. 291, 293, 340-341.
23 Vanwijnsberghe 2013, p. 59-61.
24 For the Guildhall Hours, see Vanwijnsberghe 2013, p. 125-143 et passim, cat. XI, and fig. 149. While Vanwijnsberghe dated the Guildhall Hours to about 1460, I proposed a date between about 1460 and 1470 in Clark 2014, p. 382. For another like bouffant by Caussin, see the Pentecost in the Gould Hours (Chicago, Newberry Library, Ms 188, p. 34; Vanwijnsberghe 2013, fig. 411; ca. 1470-75). A follower of Caussin, the Master of Carpentras 78, similarly coifed one of the apostles in the back row of the Pentecost in his name manuscript (Carpentras, Bibliothèque Inguimbertine, Ms 78, fol. 12v; Vanwijnsberghe 2013, fig. 347; ca. 1460-70).
25 The earliest appearance of this hairstyle known to me is found in a Man of Sorrows ascribed to the Master of the Luçon Missal in an Hours dated 1401 in Barcelona (Biblioteca de Catalunya, Ms 1850, fol. 177v; Meiss 1969, fig. 810). Most often the coif was favored for angels surrounding apparitions of God the Father. The Master of the Boucicaut Hours and illuminators in his orbit exploited the coif in the first third of the fifteenth century (Meiss 1968, figs. 29, 118-20, 125, 131, 211-14, 216-17, 251, 256, 263, 271, 291), as did the Limbourg brothers and their followers (Meiss 1974, figs. 388, 389, 569) and the Master of the Rohan Hours and painters in his orbit (Meiss 1974, figs. 390, 865, 866, 873). The Bedford Master and illuminators in his circle in both Paris and northern France favored the hairstyle from the 1410s until at least the 1440s (König 2007, p. 45, 46, 105, 108; Clark 2016, fig. 37, ills. 7-9, 12, 62, 121, 128, 129, 138, 150, 158, 159).
26 For the Collins Hours and its painter, see footnote 14. The two other folios in the Collins Hours where such heads can be found in the borders are 101v (Coronation of the Virgin, lower margin) and 177 (text page with the incipit of the Stabat mater, lower and outer margins).
27 The Sir John Donne Hours is most recently considered in Gothic 2003, cat. 215.
28 For the Dartmouth Hours, see most recently Gil 1999, p. 304-309 et passim, cat. 68, and figs. 413-420. I know the book’s miniatures only from black-and-white prints bound together with the 1964 sale catalogue in the Books and Manuscripts Department of Sotheby’s in London. In the late 1980s the manuscript was in a private collection in Vancouver, B.C., Canada; I have not been able to determine its present whereabouts.
29 Other wearers of the Guildhall hairstyle in the Fleur des histoires are the triumphant David carrying the freshly severed head of Goliath in the lower right-hand corner of the illustration on folio 42 recto and the male onlooker on the near side of Charlemagne’s deathbed on folio 274 recto.
30 Clark 2014, p. 382-383.
31 For the Arsenal Decameron, see most recently Vanwijnsberghe & Verroken 2017, p. 251-273 et passim and 742-751, cat. 55.
32 For the 51 documents, see Hénault 1907-1908, Pièces justificatives 14-16, 18, 19, 21, 24-26, 28-34, 36-47, 50, 52, 53, 57-64, 66-77.
33 For Roeland de Stoevere, see Vanwijnsberghe & Verroken 2017, p. 134-135, 494 n.3, and docs. B9, B13, and B15.
34 For the document, see Gil 1999, p. 896.
35 For the Grandes chroniques, see Avril and Reynaud 1993, cat. 36. For the Saint-Bertin Altarpiece, see Châtelet 1996, p. 158-163 and figs. 2-8, and Campbell 1998, p. 300-309.
36 166 and 159 kilometers separate Amiens from Ghent and Bruges, respectively; 77 and 95 kilometers lie between Ghent and Bruges, respectively, and Valenciennes. By contrast, a mere 54 and 67 kilometers separate Tournai from Ghent and Bruges, respectively. In addition, Tournai is located just 20 kilometers south of the border separating the francophone and netherlandophone southern Netherlands.
37 For a diocesan map of Tournai before 1559, see Clark 2000, p. 132, fig. 82 (from De Moreau 1940-1952, Map II).
38 For the Munich and Naples Horae, see Illuminating the Renaissance 2003, cats. 90 and 93, respectively; De Kesel 2011, p. 48-85 and color plates 4-5; and Morrison 2018.
39 Nash 1999, p. 187-192 and 212-223; Nash 2014, p. 79.
40 For the Le Rat Hours, see most recently Nash 1999, cat. 3; for the Thiébaut de Luxembourg Hours, see Nash 1999, cat. 6; El Renacimiento Mediterráneo 2001, cat. 17; and Nash 2014, p. 79-80, figs. 11, 12.
41 Nash 2014.
42 Given the modesty of these commissions, Maurice Hénault concluded that Jehan was “not at the head of his profession” (Hénault 1907-1908, p. 120). However, the Amiens documents record only Jehan’s institutional commissions; records of his private commissions have not been identified or do not survive.
43 Lemaire De Belges 1549, p. 70, col. 2 : “De Marmion, Prince d’enluminure / Dont le nom croist, comme paste en levain / Par les effects de sa noble tournure.” Lemaire de Belges (1473-1524/1525) was the godson (and possibly nephew) of Jean Molinet (1435-1507), who wrote Simon Marmion’s epitaph in 1489 (see Table 2). Lemaire de Belges was studying with Molinet in Valenciennes around the time of Simon’s death there, which makes it very likely that both men knew Simon personally. If so, they must at least have known of Simon’s brother Mille and of his professional reputation, even if they didn’t know Mille personally.
44 In 1993, Nicole Reynaud wondered whether Mille Marmion might be the anonymous Second Master of the Grandes Chroniques de France (Saint-Petersburg, National Library of Russia, Erm. 88; Avril and Reynaud 1993, p. 90).
Auteur
-
Gregory T. Clark
The University of the South, Sewanee
Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence Licence OpenEdition Books. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.
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