Underdrawing
Artists' Techniques
The extensive underdrawing in brown ink which is revealed in the majority of the illuminations, both through thinly laid colours or paint losses and in the near-infrared images, is crucial in distinguishing between the three main artists.
A substantial amount of underdrawing and frequent changes of mind at the painting stage are typical of the Giac Master and the two assistants who painted large miniatures.
The Rohan Master’s work is characterised by elaborate drawing of an idiosyncratic nature. Strings of curly loops resembling doodles and brushed over with a grey ink wash cascade down fabric folds or congregate into pools of drapery.
The Madonna Master instead painted both of his miniatures freehand: neither shows any underdrawing.
Virgin and Child (prayer O intemerata)
This composition, with a figure seated on a bench and books displayed on the desk, replicates the design of the image of St John painted by the Rohan Master (fol. 13r). The Rohan Master sketched this image too, as his idiosyncratic underdrawing reveals. But he left the painting to an assistant who was trained by the Giac Master and replicated his tiled floors and his bland, plump, beady-eyed faces. The assistant had not yet mastered the preparation and application of his pigments, as their poor condition indicates. Aesthetically and technically inferior as this miniature may be, it is an important link between the Rohan and Giac Masters, as it shows them sharing an assistant.
The marginal scene of the Flagellation illustrates the Pilgrimage of Jesus Christ cycle. The arms of Isabella Stuart have been added to the border.