The Belles Heures of Jean de France is a prayer book – also called a book of hours, which was made for Jean de France, the Duke of Berry by Herman, Paul and Jean de Limbourg, more commonly known as The Limbourg Brothers. The Limbourg Brothers were actively making artwork in France during the early 1400s. Though they were all still teenagers they were very skilled as artists, and so they were hired to create a personal Bible for Jean de France by his brother Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy.
The book was to be used as a private devotional to the Virgin Mary; in fact Belles Heures actually translates to beautiful hours. This title is not only used because the book is dedicated to the Virgin Mary, but also because the Belles Heures is decorated so extravagantly as compared to other surviving books of hours from the time. Though all of the books have some common features, for example: it was popular for books of hours from this time to be dedicated to the Virgin Mary, however, there are not many others in existence that can compare to the rich color, narrative and decoration that the Limbourg Brothers applied to their work.
This book of hours is the only complete manuscript to be illuminated by the Limbourg Brothers. The Brothers painted every illustration in the Belles Heures which allows viewers today to see how their art changed and improved over the course of making the entire book of hours. As said best about their work evolving while working on the Belles Heures in an article about the Art of Illumination from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website, “Their art achieved new strength in construction of pictoral space, deeper expression of emotional narration, and increasingly beautiful light and technical finesse (metmuseum.or...
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... ways they chose to manipulate them that form them into a work of art that will always be regarded as beautiful.
Works Cited
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Art was viewed in a different sense in the fourteenth century. It had a more active role and was not just decoration, but a vital component of worship and pr...
Though most works of art have some underlying, deeper meaning attached to them, our first impression of their significance comes through our initial visual interpretation. When we first view a painting or a statue or other piece of art, we notice first the visual details – its size, its medium, its color, and its condition, for example – before we begin to ponder its greater significance. Indeed, these visual clues are just as important as any other interpretation or meaning of a work, for they allow us to understand just what that deeper meaning is. The expression on a statue’s face tells us the emotion and message that the artist is trying to convey. Its color, too, can provide clues: darker or lighter colors can play a role in how we judge a piece of art. The type of lines used in a piece can send different messages. A sculpture, for example, may have been carved with hard, rough lines or it may have been carved with smoother, more flowing lines that portray a kind of gentleness.
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1) France, Marie de. The Lais of Marie de France. trans. Robert Hanning and Joan
The object of this book, Early Medieval Art, is to convey the theme “tradition not only receives and transforms, it literally invents a tradition upon which it founded itself” (p. 15) concerning art of the early medieval era. The purpose of this book is to summarize and offer knowledge of medieval art, that will then be included in the greater series of books by other specialists for Oxford University Press. Lawrence Nees accomplished his argument successfully by following the chronological production of the art and the traditions that are imbedded within them. Although, his thesis is strongly supported, Ness’ failure is found in his over reliance on the artwork itself, which then leads to the masking of his personal arguments.
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