None
Hide caption
Workshop of the Master of Claude de France, France, Tours, c. 1518–1520
Death of Saint Jerome
330 × 241 mm
Workshop of the Master of Claude de France
Death of Saint Jerome
France, Tours, c. 1518–1520
330 × 241 mm
$85000.00
Considering the subject and similarity of the composition, the present full page miniature must come from another copy of the Trés saincte vie, mort et miracles du glorieulx sainct Hierosme that has been attributed to Jean Thenaud by Anne-Marie Lecoq, who dated the text c. 1509–1511.
%3Cdiv%20class%3D%22title%22%3E%3Cem%3EWorkshop%20of%20the%20Master%20of%20Claude%20de%20France%3C%2Fem%3E%2C%20France%2C%20Tours%2C%20c.%201518%E2%80%931520%3C%2Fdiv%3E%0D%3Cdiv%20class%3D%22medium%22%3EDeath%20of%20Saint%20Jerome%3C%2Fdiv%3E%0D%3Cdiv%20class%3D%22dimensions%22%3E330%20%C3%97%20241%20mm%3C%2Fdiv%3E
17
77
Description
Considering the subject and similarity of the composition, the present full-page miniature must come from another copy of the Trés saincte vie, mort et miracles du glorieulx sainct Hierosme that has been attributed to Jean Thenaud by Anne-Marie Lecoq, who dated the text c. 1509–1511. Four copies are known: Paris, BnF, MS fr. 418, illuminated for Anne de France (1461–1552) and attributed variously to the Circle of the Master of Claude de France or a follower of the Claude Master; Paris, BnF, MS fr. 421, illuminated for Queen Anne of Britany by Jean Pichore; Provo, Brigham Young University, for an unknown recipient illuminated by Etienne Colaud; and a copy sold in Paris, Hotel Drouot, 29 March 1985, lot 30, without full-page miniatures, now in a private collection. Lecoq discusses the text, iconography, and patronage in relationship to women at the court of France. The dissemination of the text and quality of the present illumination raises the question as to which woman was the recipient of the manuscript from which the present miniature comes. Claude de France herself is certainly a possibility.
The model of this miniature only occurs in the copy illuminated for Anne de France and related to the Master of Claude de France (Paris, BnF, MS fr. 418, f. 97v). The composition evidently derives from the Death of Saint Jerome illuminated in the Hours of Claude de France (New York, Morgan Library and Museum, MS M.1166, f. 40v), especially the f igures of Saint Jerome, the two kneeling monks, and the standing monks in the background. They are a variation and in reverse of the model by Jean Pichore in BnF, MS fr. 421 made for Anne of Brittany. The style of the present miniature compares with the Master of Claude de France’s remarkable hatching of the draperies, as do the faces of some of the monks with rounded eyes and fluid highlights. The handling of the gold is superb, and many minute details are very well executed, such as the books and the bale of hay in the right foreground. The architectonic surround is close to that found in the borders of the Book of Hours in London on which the Claude Master collaborated (British Library, Add. MS 35315).
The best comparison within the corpus of the Master of Claude de France’s manuscripts is the leaf with Saints Cyril and Augustine in Écouen (Musée de la Renaissance, E.Cl. 11764). The architectural border with paneling, the interior space, especially the faux marble walls, and the treatment of the f igures and faces are all comparable. Even the dimensions of the two leaves are strikingly similar. Other miniatures with which our Jerome compares closely include the All Saints in the Adler-Beatty Collection and the Saint Claude (Sale, Paris, Piasa, 9 December 2016, lot 46), especially the modeling of the faces. One hypothesis seems compelling: the Jerome miniature (along with that of Cyril and Augustine) once formed part of the Trés saincte vie, mort et miracles du glorieulx sainct Hierosme cited above and sold in Paris in 1985. This manuscript, a virtual twin to the manuscript for Anne de France (Paris, BnF, MS fr. 418), would have been painted by the same hand as MS fr. 418, around the same time, c. 1518–1520, and made for another high-ranking figure at court: Claude de France? In a forthcoming article I will discuss more fully the related miniatures, Paris, BnF, MS fr. 418, and the Paris, Hotel Drouot 1985 manuscript.
We are grateful to Elliot Adam and François Avril for their expertise.
provenance
Edmond F. Bonaventure (d. 1918), bibliophile and rare book dealer: his sale, New York, American Art Association, 8–9 May 1936, lot 377;
Collection of Kate Elderkin (1897–1962) and George Elderkin (1895–1965), both academics, she at Vassar College and he at Princeton University, and by descent.
literature
Related literature:
Sterling 1975;
Lecoq 1987, esp. pp. 70–72;
Avril and Reynaud 1993;
Crépin Leblond 1995;
Brown 2012, no. 2, pp. 257–76;
König 2012;
Tours 2012;
Cousseau 2016
learn
Master of Claude de France
France, Tours, active c. 1505-1520
In 1975, Charles Sterling first baptized the Master of Claude de France after two Books of Hours then in the possession of bookdealer H. P. Kraus in New York, painted c. 1515–1517 for Claude de France (1499–1524), the daughter of King Louis XII and Anne of Brittany and the first wife of the future Francis I (r. 1515–1547), whom she married in 1514. These two manuscripts are a Prayer Book for Claude now owned by the Morgan Library and Museum (MS M.1166) and a companion Book of Hours handled by the dealer Heribert Tenschert. Both are full of personal references to Claude, and both are jewel-like and very tiny. The illuminator was probably attached at one point to the royal family, for another miniature manuscript, a Primer, by his hand was made around the same time, c. 1515–1517, for Claude’s baby sister Renée who was born in 1510 (Modena, Bibl. Estense, A.U.2.28=lat. 614). His art is situated between that of Jean Bourdichon and Jean Poyet, both active in Tours, where the royal family had their court in the sixteenth century. It has been suggested that the Claude Master collaborated with Jean Bourdichon on the Hours of Louis XII in 1498–1499 (see a leaf in Philadelphia, Free Library, John Frederick Lewis Collection, Lewis EM 11:22v) and in the Hours of Frederick of Aragon (Paris, BnF, MS lat. 10532). He evidently learned flower painting under Bourdichon’s tutelage, which he mastered in the small manuscript recently acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, The Cloisters Collection, 2019.197). Many of his later works are larger in scale, such as the Gospel Lectionary in Cambridge (Harvard University, Houghton Library, MS Typ 252), a dismembered Book of Hours, from which parts of a calendar and single leaves survive (New York, Morgan Library and Museum, MS M.1171; and Frances Beatty and Allen Adler collection), and a Book of Hours in the British Library (London, British Library, Add. MS 35315), the latter a collaboration between the Claude Master and a Poyet follower. Since 1975, the oeuvre of the Master of Claude de France has grown to around thirty works.