Photo. Giraudon.
THE ANNUNCIATION.
Jean Fouquet.
Musée Condé.
To face page 184.
But of all the MSS. illuminated by this artist the one which must most particularly attract our attention is the Book of Hours executed for Etienne Chevalier, the greater part of which is now preserved at Chantilly. Almost all these miniatures are reminiscent of impressions received by Fouquet during residence in Florence and Rome. They were apparently executed during the years 1453 and 1460, soon after his return from Italy and immediately after the completion of the celebrated diptych of Etienne Chevalier and his Patron Saint and the Madonna and Child commissioned by this same Chevalier in 1453 for the Cathedral at Melun in memory of his wife Catherine Buti. One portion of this diptych (the Madonna and Child) is now, as mentioned above, in the Antwerp Museum, whilst the other has found its way into the Kaiser Friedrich Collection at Berlin. The miniatures at Chantilly, forty in number, represent, if not the greatest, at least the most fascinating period of the master’s artistic career. Like the MS. of the Antiquitates Judæorum they also suffered many vicissitudes before finally entering the haven of the Musée Condé. Nicolas, Baron of Navarre and Bearn, a descendant of Etienne Chevalier, in the year 1630, when at the point of death entreated his nephew, to whom he bequeathed his manuscripts, to preserve and augment them “en faveur des gens doctes.” Howbeit that same nephew sold not only the Boccaccio to Munich, but also his ancestor Etienne Chevalier’s Book of Hours. Whilst the former remained intact the latter was mutilated by a dealer, who separated the text from the miniatures in order to sell them individually. It is interesting to note here that Gaignière in his Receuils had copies made of the portraits of Etienne Chevalier and of Charles VII from this MS. and attached to them explanatory notes, as follows: “Charles VII copié après une miniature dans une prière d’heures faite pour Etienne Chevalier, trésorier general de France sous ce Prince”; and again, “Copie d’après une miniature dans un livre d’heures qu’il avait fait faire.”
We may therefore gather from these notes that as late as the seventeenth century the illustrations in this Book of Hours had not been divided from the text. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, however, the portraits were again reproduced by Montfaucon; but this time they were not copied from the originals, proving that the learned Benedictine writer was then unable to discover their existence. Eventually in 1805 forty of these treasures were discovered at Bâle and bought by George Brentano la Roche of Frankfurt, whence in 1891 they passed to the Duc d’Aumale. Besides these forty, four more pages have been identified as belonging to this same book, as follows: one in the British Museum, which represents David kneeling in prayer amid a beautiful landscape; a Mariensippe (Genealogy of the Blessed Virgin) in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; a fragment in the Louvre representing St. Margaret with a landscape background; and yet one more, St. Martin dividing his mantle, in the Conches Collection.