Musée de Chantilly.
BOOK OF HOURS OF ETIENNE CHEVALIER.
To face page 162.
Of the miniatures at Chantilly, the whole series of which forms a most tender and rare tribute to wife and friend, only brief mention can here be made of those concerning Agnes. The most simple and beautiful in sentiment and design is that of the Annunciation, in which the seated Virgin, in the likeness of Agnes Sorel, with bowed head receives the angel’s message. The scene is laid in a Gothic chapel (perhaps the Sainte Chapelle with slight adaptations to suit the artist’s fancy),[41] with statues of the Prophets all around, and Moses, holding the Books of the Law, as the central figure of the group. This assemblage of Old Testament seers certainly typified the Old dispensation, whilst the Annunciation prefigures the New, and to us the whole may not unfitly form an allegory of the new order which Agnes Sorel was to help to bring about. In another miniature—the Visit of the Magi—Charles the Seventh, accompanied by his Scottish guard, and with the Castle of Loches in the background, himself kneels as one of the kings before the Virgin, here also represented in the likeness of Agnes. And so on, throughout the series, in many of the scenes of the Virgin’s life we find her bearing the features of Agnes until an older and sadder type becomes necessary in the Crucifixion, the Entombment, and the Announcement of the Death and the Death of the Virgin. When, however, death has transfigured age and sorrow, the likeness of Agnes reappears in the Assumption, and Coronation, and, the crowning glory, the Enthronement of the Virgin.
Musée de Chantilly.
BOOK OF HOURS OF ETIENNE CHEVALIER.
To face page 163.