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Jean Pichore
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Jean Pichore, France, Bourges and Tours, c. 1498
Saint Claude, a leaf from the Hours of Jean Lallemant the Elder
198 x 118 mm
Jean Pichore
Saint Claude, a leaf from the Hours of Jean Lallemant the Elder
France, Bourges and Tours, c. 1498
198 x 118 mm
$45000.00
This full-page miniature of Saint Claude raising a man from the dead opens the suffrage to that saint from the Hours of Jean Lallemant the Elder. The Lallemant Hours survives today across several institutions, including the British Library in London (Add. MS 39641), the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore (W.459.1R), and the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge (Marlay Cuttings, Fr. 7).
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Description

This full-page miniature of Saint Claude raising a man from the dead opens the suffrage to that saint from the Hours of Jean Lallemant the Elder. The Lallemant Hours survives today across several institutions, including the British Library in London (Add. MS 39641), the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore (W.459.1R), and the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge (Marlay Cuttings, Fr. 7). The Calendar, now in a private collection, was in Paris in 1953 and part of the Rohan-Chabot Collection. The manuscript was already fragmentary by the end of the sixteenth century: a section of thirty-four leaves sold in Paris in 1884 from the library of Ambroise Firmin-Didot contained an ownership inscription dating to 1599 and recording a gift from the Parisian notary Nicolas Le Camus to his daughter Jeanne in 1609 (previously in the collection of Jean-Jacques de Bure, his sale, Paris, Cataloguedes livres rares..., 1 December 1853, lot 45). The British Library fragment was previously in the collection of Robert Curzon (1810–1873), while the Walters Art Museum fragment was owned by Gruel and Engelmann, dealers and bookbinders, in Paris in the nineteenth century and acquired from them between 1895–1931. It is evident that a number of single leaves with miniatures were circulating at an early date: Ambroise Firmin-Didot added to the de Bure fragment by acquiring four single leaves with the Beheading of John the Baptist, the Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence, the Martyrdom of Saint Catherine, and Peter of Luxembourg; in 1867 Curzon added a miniature with Christ appearing to his mother, which he had acquired from John Ashley; other single leaves now in Cambridge were acquired in 1912.
 
Three artists illuminated the Hours of Jean Lallemant the Elder: the first, Jean Poyet, is responsible for the three miniatures in the British Library fragment and at least four of the miniatures in the Firmin-Didot fragment. The unique borders, personalized with the attributes of Jean Lallement the Elder – the coat of arms, the skulls, the putti – are identical to those found in the Boethius made for him in 1498; they are the work of an illuminator from the circle of Jean Pichore. It is Jean Pichore himself, likely working on models designed by Poyet, who is responsible for three of the miniatures in the British Library fragment (ff.1, 35v and 38v), the miniature with the Crucifixion in Baltimore, and the Marlay miniature in Cambridge. We attribute the present miniature also to his hand; representative of his style is the saturated palette juxtaposing rich yellows, reds, greens, and blues with immaculate whites and the strong-nosed figures.
 
The Lallemants were an important family of patrons, receveurs généraux for Normandy from the time of Louis XI, mayors of Bourges, and founding members of the civic confraternity of that city, the Table Ronde. Fifteen manuscripts made for the family survive: Jean Lallemant père owned a copy of Josephus’s Antiquités judaïques (Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 3686) illuminated in 1489; in c.1495 Guillaume Lallemant had Jean Poyet illuminate a Missal (New York, Morgan Library and Museum, MS M.495); and Jean Lallemant the Younger commissioned an impressive series of iconographically sophisticated Books of Hours (including Washington D.C., Library of Congress, Rosenwald MS 11; Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, W.446 and W.451; and Philadelphia, Free Library, Lewis E 87, which is missing all of its miniatures but whose pages are filled with blue and red six-winged seraphim). In addition to his Hours, Jean Lallemant the Elder owned an elaborate manuscript of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy (Paris, BnF, lat. 6643) dated 1498, which bears his coat of arms. He also owned a splendid copy of Virgil’s Aeneid (Dijon, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 493).
 
We are grateful to Elliot Adam for his expertise.

provenance

Jean Lallemant the Elder (d. 1533), mayor of Bourges and Receiver General of Normandy from 1494–1517, son of Jean Lallemant (d. 1494), and brother of Guillaume Lallemant and Jean Lallemant the Younger, Lallemant coat of arms (gules a chevron or with three roses argent arranged 2 and 1) within a gold wreath supported by blue cherubim (identical to Baltimore, Walters Art Museum W.459.1R) in the lower margin and red cherubim in the upper margin;
Edmond F. Bonaventure (d. 1918), bibliophile and rare book dealer, his sale, New York, American Art Association, 8–9 May 1936, lot 376 (ill.);
Collection of Kate and George Elderkin by descent;
London, Christie’s, 14–28 January 2025, lot 139.

literature

Related literature:

Avril and Reynaud 1993, pp. 312–13;

Wieck 1999, pp. 136-38;

Hofmann 2004, pp. 108–114;

Zöhl 2004.

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Jean Pichore

France, Paris, active, 1501–1521

Jean Pichore (Jehan Pychore, Jean Pichoyre) was the most successful and sought after manuscript illuminator in Paris during the first two decades of the sixteenth century. His output is vast, and he must have maintained a large workshop, assigning lesser illuminations to assistants and apprentices and reserving the most important, often the frontispieces, for himself. Documents assign his earliest work to the patronage of Cardinal Georges d’Ambroise, Archbishop of Rouen, at the Château de Gaillon in 1502–1503, notably a City of God (Paris, BnF, MS lat. 2070) and a Flavius Josephus, Antiquités judaïques (Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine, MS 1581). Although originally considered as works of the School of Rouen, these manuscripts are now understood to be thoroughly Parisian, and the documents describe Pichore as “enlumineur et historieur…demourant à Paris” (illuminator and historiator…living in Paris). In 1517, the échevins of the city of Amiens ordered a Chants royaux representing an important series of tableaux dedicated to the Virgin of the Cathedral of Amiens to be presented to Louise de Savoy (Paris, BnF, MS fr. 145). In 1520, Pichore sold land to the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris for a house situated between the rue de Seine and the rue Mazarine, which he owned at least since 1510. The last document to mention him by name is a civil lawsuit of 5 August 1521 in which he represents his three sons, who collaborated with him on the Chants royaux and to whom payment was still owed. The entrepreneurial Pichore also tried his hand at the new art of printing, going into partnership in 1504 with Rene de Laistre (otherwise unknown) to adapt his manuscript illuminations to designs for metalcuts. His best work is considered to be a copy of Petrarch’s Remedes de l’une et l'autre fortune offered to King Louis XII in 1503 or a little after (Paris, BnF, MS fr. 225). He frequently collaborated with another important personality in Parisian manuscript production, the Master of Petrarch’s Triumphs.

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