The Corlieu-Lusignan Hours of c. 1412: a remarkable work by the Boucicaut Master, one of the most Influential Artists of the early 15th Century
Book of Hours. Horae B. M. V. for the use of Paris. Illuminated manuscript on vellum with 26 miniatures (10 large, 16 smaller ones) by the Boucicaut Master and his workshop. Paris, around 1412. 143 leaves (two leaves with miniatures lacking). Large octavo (210 x 150 mm). Bound in modern red velvet over the possibly original wooden boards, brass clasps and catches. Immensely wide-margined and almost without traces of use.
“The most brilliant genius of pre-Eyckian painting.”
This hitherto unknown, artistically highly impressive Book of Hours from early in the second decade after 1400 contains ten large miniatures by the Boucicaut Master as well as four smaller miniatures and twelve quatrefoil miniatures in the calendar by an assistant. The miniatures within this manuscript fluctuate between traditional tessellated grounds and dynamic open-air scenes under a clear blue sky. Notably, the manuscript already showcases in two miniatures the fully developed acanthus decoration, a style also practiced by the Bedford Master at about the same time.
On the one hand, the imagery is indebted to older traditions, but also demonstrates the artist's characteristic sense for new, powerful colouring. Each miniature is a masterful variation on important pictorial themes, accompanied by sumptuous decorations that exhibit the transformative evolution of Parisian book illumination at the beginning of the 15th century. This hierarchical differentiation in the decoration enhances the manuscript's visual and historical appeal, making it a high-quality representative of the artistic zenith reached in Paris around 1410.
Of the six Book of Hours by the Boucicaut Master that we have had the honour of owning and offering over the last 25 years, this is for sure one of the three most beautiful.
Provenance: With the Corlieu-Lusignan coat of arms added a little later. Thomas de Corlieu or Curlew, born around 1390, came to France in 1414 with Thomas of Lancaster or Thomas Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence (died 1421), occupied the castle of Gourville near Angoulême until he was able to marry its heiress Renotte or Perotte du Fresne from Anjou; Thomas or his son Jean de Corlieu may have added the coats of arms. — In a private European collection in the last century.
An Artist of Genius and limitless Imagination
The Boucicaut Master takes his name from the noble Book of Hours in the Musée Jacquemart-André, made for Jean de Boucicaut, marshal of France (who swaggers into Shakespeare’s Henry V on the night before Agincourt, where he was taken prisoner). “The Boucicaut Master was an artist of genius and limitless imagination. He was a superb draftsman, a brilliant and original colourist, and a conjurer of riveting and poetic images.” (Thomas Kren, cited in the Los Angeles Times, 1 September 1996).
“During the first decades of the fifteenth century … the Boucicaut Master was transformative, offering innovations that would shape for a generation both book painting and the rapidly emerging art of painting in oil on panel in northern Europe…”; and with the Limbourg brothers, he “elevated French manuscript illumination to new heights of originality that, even as the form continued to flourish and innovate for another hundred years, would rarely be equalled” (Kren, French Illuminated Manuscripts, 2007, p.xix). He was one of the earliest truly commercial artists in France, running and evidently tightly controlling a workshop with distinctive patterns and composition. Since the ground-breaking The Boucicaut Master by Millard Meiss, 1968, the workshop has now been divided into two extremely similar and exactly contemporaneous hands, one still known as the Boucicaut Master and the other as the Mazarine Master (see our Book of Hours by the Mazarine Master).
Would you like to learn more about this Book of Hours by the Boucicaut Master? It has been described in detail in our catalogue Paris mon Amour Vol. I, lot 6. You can view the digital version here or order your printed copy in our online shop.
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