Description
This powerful and breathtakingly beautiful Book of Hours used to be designed in the fifteenth century by probably the most greatest masters of expressionism in France at the time, and executed by him (at the side of members of his workshop) for a royal patron. A quite unknown masterpiece, it emerged from artistic obscurity in 1904 to widespread acclaim and critical appreciation.
As Millard Meiss points out in his Introduction: “The Rohan Master cared less about what people do than what they feel. . . .Whereas his great predecessors, the Boucicaut Master and the Limbourgs, excelled in the description of novel aspects of the flora and fauna, he explored the realm of human feeling.” And, in his explorations, the Rohan Master disclosed a way of viewing and visually depicting reality (replete with familiar biblical figures, saints, angels, devils) and the emotions of simple women and men – suffering, elation, fear, melancholy, and hope – in a manner that may be both original and powerfully moving.
From the first folio of this remarkable and incessantly startling manuscript to the final plate, all the range of human emotions is compassionately but uncompromisingly explored. Named after the Rohan circle of relatives, whose arms appear in this manuscript, this distinctive artist earned himself a place as probably the most greatest manuscript illuminators of the early Renaissance.