The Hours of Isabella Stuart
One of the most extensively illustrated Books of Hours in existence, this volume contains a unique, highly personalised combination of images and texts. It was completed by 1431 for the learned and powerful Duchess of Anjou, Yolande of Aragon. Over the next three decades, the manuscript belonged to three other women and was continuously adapted to suit their devotional needs and dynastic aspirations.
The manuscript received over 500 figural scenes and ornamentation on every page. It was illuminated by professional artists working in Angers for Yolande of Aragon, Dowager Duchess of Anjou. She probably gave the volume to her daughter, Yolande of Anjou, around the time of her marriage to the future Duke Francis I of Brittany in 1431. After her death, the volume came into the possession of Francis’ second wife, Isabella Stuart, and then passed on to their daughter, Margaret of Brittany. Breton artists working in Nantes adapted and added illuminations for Isabella and Margaret. Variations in the underdrawings help to distinguish between the original artists based in Angers. The use of different pigments confirms the modifications and additions made in Nantes.
Learn more about the manuscript by exploring the sections below or selecting folios on the right. Discover further details by choosing any of the folios with the hotspot symbol 
.
Three main artists – the Giac, Rohan and Madonna Masters – and their assistants completed the illumination in Angers by 1431.
Collectively known as the Rohan Masters, they represented a sophisticated artistic style dominant across Europe in the decades c. 1400 and known as International Gothic. They may have begun work on the extensive and complex illustrative programme, comprising over 500 miniatures, in the 1420s. A starting date after 1417 is suggested by depictions of a widowed woman and the inclusion of motifs from the Limbourg brothers’ works. Yolande of Aragon’s husband, Louis II of Anjou, died in 1417. The same year, she purchased one of the Limbourg brothers’ manuscripts, the Duke of Berry’s Belles Heures (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cloisters Collection, MS 54.1.1). In the 1440s and 1450s, artists working in Nantes amended and added images for Isabella Stuart and Margaret of Brittany.
During the first twenty-five years of its existence, the manuscript was associated with four distinguished women: Yolande of Aragon (1381-1442), Duchess of Anjou; her daughter, Yolande of Anjou (1412-1440); Isabella Stuart (1427-after 1494); and her daughter, Margaret of Brittany (1443-1469). It belonged to the Isambert Family of Paris from 1578 until 1619. Richard, VII Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion (1745-1816), acquired the manuscript in 1808 and bequeathed it to the Fitzwilliam Museum in 1816.
This extraordinarily complex manuscript combines the standard texts and images for Books of Hours with other, less common devotional texts and four extensive pictorial cycles of marginal miniatures.
Large miniatures, mostly depicting events from the lives of Christ and the Virgin, and elaborate ornamental initials filled with foliage mark major text divisions. Smaller miniatures showing Christ and the saints illustrate prayers. Less important texts open with small gold, blue or pink initials with foliate or geometric infill. Every page has borders of delicate spraywork with gold leaves and a marginal miniature.
The marginal miniatures belong to four cycles that illustrate texts not included in the volume, but popular at the ducal court in Angers. The four texts that inspired these pictorial cycles are the Apocalypse and three allegorical poems composed in French by Guillaume de Deguileville (1295-died after 1358): Pilgrimage of Jesus Christ, Pilgrimage of the Human Life and Pilgrimage of the Soul. The marginal scenes that draw on these poems and the Apocalypse are carefully aligned with the themes of the main texts and images.
The three main artists, as well as their assistants, used the same pigments throughout the manuscript. Their palette is dominated by ultramarine, malachite, red lead, lead white, brown earth and an insect-based organic pink. It is occasionally supplemented with vermilion, azurite, organic green, yellow ochre, mosaic gold and a light purple admixture of an organic dye and ultramarine. This rich colour scheme is set against a range of metals: gold leaf, shell gold and silver.
Slight differences in the use of blue pigments help to differentiate the assistants’ work from that of their masters. The later modifications and additions on fols. 20r and 28r are also characterised by a slightly different palette.
The main artists employed similar painting materials and techniques, but differed in their use of underdrawing and in their preparation or application of the same pigments. For instance the Rohan Master’s white areas show an identical pattern of flaking and so do the Giac Master’s blue pigments, while neither seems to have caused problems in the Madonna Master’s images. The uneven behaviour of the same materials may be due to different methods of preparation or application of the paint, such as individual approaches to the priming of the parchment surface or the painting of the base colour layers, varying proportions of pigment to binder, selective use of distinct binders for specific pigments, or a combination of these factors.
Madonna and Child in a Church (Five Joys of the Virgin)
The second full-page miniature painted by the Madonna Master, this image incorporates in its interior a design of the Limbourg brothers which was in the collection of Yolande of Aragon’s son, René of Anjou, by the 1430s. The demure Madonna exudes dignified sophistication and gentle self-control, even though she seems to be propelled towards the viewer from the depth of the picture space. Rendered in soft grey charcoal over the bare parchment (hotspots 1 and 2), the Madonna appears to be either carved out of the page, a statue that has just come to life and miraculously stepped out of its niche, or conjured up by the imagination, a sublime vision in the mind’s eye of a devout viewer. Creating tension between the materiality and spirituality of the image, the Madonna Master’s consummate technical skill is made ever more impressive by the economy of his materials.
In addition to the ultramarine blue, vermilion red, malachite green, organic pink, lead white and gold he used to paint the Apocalyptic Virgin, here the Madonna Master also employed silver to paint small details in the background, as well as an organic colourant for the muted green architectural interior. The skilful and subtle modelling of flesh tones and draperies, the sophistication of the Madonna, as well as the seamless integration of architecture and storytelling, all single him out as the most talented artist in the Hours of Isabella Stuart.