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Above: Details of illuminations from Folio 15r, Folio 17r, and Folio 19v from the Belles Heures of Jean de France, duc de Berry, 1405–1408/9. Herman, Paul, and Jean de Limbourg (Franco-Netherlandish, active in France by 1399–1416). French; Made in Paris. Ink, tempera, and gold leaf on vellum; 9 3/8 x 6 5/8 in. (23.8 x 16.8 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Cloisters Collection, 1954 (54.1.1).

Every book of hours is unique in some way. What makes the Belles Heures unique is the addition of seven “picture book” cycles. Unlike the texts traditional to books of hours, these are not prayers or other devotional writing, but highly abbreviated narratives—stories about saints and sacred history. The texts are shortened versions of stories mostly taken from The Golden Legend, a popular collection of saints’ lives dating to the thirteenth century. But while the texts are abbreviated, the illustrations in the Belles Heures are not. In one sense, they’re like children’s picture books in that they have a succession of richly detailed painted images with only a few lines of text per page. The picture book cycles seem to have been added to the manuscript after the traditional sections were completed, to showcase the Limbourg brothers’ talents as artists, and to give Jean de Berry more action pictures to enjoy.

The first of the picture book cycles, immediately following the calendar, is the story of Saint Catherine of Alexandria. Although it appears early in the manuscript, it was probably among the last sections to be painted. Every page has a full-page illumination, with only four lines of text at the bottom in alternating blue and red ink, which matches the format of all the later added cycles and is unlike the two-column text format of the book’s original elements. It is also self-contained in an independent quire that was inserted into the manuscript.

Saint Catherine’s story would have appealed to Jean de Berry because of her royal lineage, her beauty, her intelligence, and her faith. The duke owned several of her relics and she was a patron saint of his second wife (Jeanne de Boulogne) and of the University of Paris. Catherine is prominent in the representation of saints adoring the Virgin on Folio 218r in the manuscript. She is presented as a Christian scholar who resists idolatry and the arguments of pagan philosophers and is punished with imprisonment and torture before being beheaded. The cycle closes with an image of her body being carried to Mount Sinai, where an important monastery was dedicated to her in the sixth century.

Illumination from Folio 17v

One of the most beautiful and complex scenes in this section is Folio 17v, Saint Catherine Tended by Angels. Here is Catherine at her loveliest, seated and semi-nude but still bearing her royal crown, submitting to the ministrations of three angels. Although they appear to apply salve, no wounds appear on Catherine’s unblemished body, presented for the viewer’s delectation. We see Catherine within the building, but also see the Empress Faustina and the jailer outside. The text says they see Catherine “in a wondrous light,” a phrase conveyed with the brilliance of white circling her figure in the drapery and wings of the angels. Unlike Folio 16v, where the building is shown full height, creating an absurd disjunction of scale and forcing the monumental Catherine to be squashed into the entrance, the building here is cut off by the lower frame of the picture, and we are permitted to zoom into the drama. The text indicates that the empress converted to the Christian faith after having discoursed all night with Catherine on “the rewards of eternal life.” The image captures the moment of surprise and discovery of Catherine’s divine assistance; the text fills in the detail of the narrative to explain the Empress’s execution in the following illumination (Folio 18r).

Illumination from Folio 20r

Two of the following pages (Folio 18v and Folio 19r) are among the most graphically violent in the manuscript, but the other image that is truly remarkable is the final one in the cycle. Folio 20r, Angels Carry the body of Saint Catherine to Mount Sinai, concludes Catherine’s story with her body wrapped in a shroud and carried by angels to her monastery. It conflates time by presenting in one scene the arrival of her remains (fourth century), the fully constructed monastery (built in the reign of Justinian, 527–565), and medieval pilgrims—perhaps contemporaries of the duke—visiting the site in Sinai. It also shifts scale, with the pilgrims as large as the massive stone monastery and Catherine largest of all, yet it is perfectly clear in what is represented. It brings a final miracle to provide closure to the story.

Details of illuminations from Folio 22r, Folio 23r, and Folio 24r

Following the Saint Catherine story and before the next major section of the manuscript are some texts that are more traditional to books of hours. Written in the two-column black ink of the traditional sections, Folios 21 through 29 were likely among the first pages in the manuscript to be written and illuminated, and feature only quarter-page paintings. They comprise readings from the Gospels and two prayers to the Virgin. Three of the Gospel readings are introduced by “portraits” of their evangelists together with their symbols (Man or angel for Matthew, Ox for Luke, Lion for Mark), but at least one page was lost, which would have contained the image of John and the start of his text. The readings were meant to accompany major feasts of the Church, and are found in most fifteenth-century books of hours.

Two illuminations from Folio 26v

Also to be found in many books of hours are the two Latin prayers to the Virgin that follow, known by their opening words as Obsecro Te and O Intemerata. The latter prayer begins on Folio 26v, which also includes two quarter-page paintings comprising one scene. The prayer extols the Virgin and asks for forgiveness of sins; the illumination technically has nothing to do with the text. Known as the Ara Coeli, it shows the vision of the Virgin as pointed out to the Roman Emperor Augustus by the Tiburtine Sibyl. Augustus and the Sibyl are nowhere mentioned in the prayer. Although the image is therefore not an illustration of the prayer, the emperor at his prie-dieu with his open prayer book can be understood as a royal stand-in for Jean de Berry himself with his book of hours, praying to the Virgin with the prayer O Intemerata as written in the page. In this way the image can function as a mirror for the reader and as an inspiration to contemplation. This is a theme we will visit again and again as we leaf through the manuscript.

—Wendy A. Stein

Since we’re talking about calendars, I’d like to point out a particularly lucky calendar confluence for those of us who are in New York right now (and for those who aren’t, how worthwhile it would be to visit). Three extraordinary exhibitions of medieval art with complex interrelations are here for a few more months.

At the Met, we have both The Art of Illumination and The Mourners. These exhibitions are related by patronage: the Valois dynasty was the patron in both cases, as Jean de Berry was the uncle of John the Fearless (Jean sans Peur), whose tomb is celebrated in The Mourners. Meanwhile, at The Morgan Library and Museum, you can see the exhibition Demons and Devotion: The Hours of Catherine of Cleves, featuring a different book of hours that has been taken apart to show many of its illuminations as individual leaves. The Hours of Catherine of Cleves was made a generation after the Belles Heures and was painted in the Netherlands rather than France. Having two luxury books of hours exhibited this way is unprecedented, and there is no better way to understand both the uniqueness and the shared, key features of every book of hours. Each book exemplifies private, personal ownership and devotion, and Catherine of Cleves made different choices than Jean de Berry.

—Wendy Stein

Nearly all books of hours began with a section of calendar pages, to help the owner keep track of saints’ days and holidays throughout the year. Local variants in the veneration of saints, combined with the personal tastes of individual patrons, make calendar pages a rich resource for scholars seeking to localize a manuscript. In the Belles Heures, the calendar page for each month begins on the recto (right-hand page) and ends on the verso (left-hand page). For every month, the first line begins with a decorated “KL” for Kalends, the traditional Roman name for the first day of the month, followed by gold text that gives the name of the month and the number of solar days in French with Roman numerals (e.g., Janvier a xxxi jour). The next line gives the number of lunar days. The text on the rest of the page is divided into four columns: the first two follow complex calculations that were used to determine the date of Easter. The third column comprises abbreviations for the Roman naming of dates: Kalends, Nones, and Ides. The fourth, wider column names the saints and holidays, alternating red and blue ink but with major feasts in gold. (In many lesser books of hours, most of the feasts are listed in black, and major feasts in red—hence the phrase “red-letter day.”) In the Belles Heures, each month begins with a quatrefoil medallion at the top containing a picture of the traditional labors or activities of the month, with another medallion at the bottom containing the zodiacal symbol.

The borders for January and December are more elaborate than those for the intervening months, with twining decorative elements along the sides and, more significant, additional quatrefoils displaying the duke’s coat of arms. In January, the shields are held by swans, one of the duke’s emblems. In December, the swans are joined by bears, his other emblem.

Tiny as they are, the representations of the months demonstrate the attention to detail and specific class representations for which the Limbourg brothers became famous. The image of February’s man warming his hands includes a believable interior with a fireplace and smoke curling up the chimney, as well as the substantial figure seated by the hearth. The scanty clothes worn by the men in July’s harvest scene intimate the heat of the day, and the background includes a full landscape in compressed form. A whole forest is suggested in November’s feeding of the pigs. In these little pictures, the future of Northern Renaissance landscape painting is prefigured.

While the labors of the months and signs of the zodiac are represented with innovative details by the artists, the tradition of representation to which they belong derives from the Classical past. Gothic structures such as the cathedrals of Chartres and of Paris include representations of months in their sculptural programs. In fact, the comparison with cathedrals is apt: just as the sculptural and stained-glass programs of those monumental structures of the twelfth through the fourteenth centuries presented an encyclopedic view of the world and Christian theology, a book of hours as fully decorated as the Belles Heures encompassed a cathedral in pocket form, with Christ’s childhood and passion, and all of the stories, saints, and devotional images included.

The calendar pages of the Belles Heures have been explicated in another Metropolitan Museum blog, The Medieval Garden Enclosed. This marvelous resource written by The Cloisters’ Deirdre Larkin has enabled me to see the labors of the months with new eyes and to understand the medieval cycle of the year in the contexts of horticulture, philosophy, art, history, literature, religion, magic—it’s all there; you must check it out.

—Wendy Stein

Above: Folio 1r, Folio 97v, and Folio 149r from the Belles Heures of Jean of France, duc de Berry, 1405–1408/9. Herman, Paul, and Jean Limbourg (Franco-Netherlandish, active in France by 1399–1416). French; Made in Paris. Ink, tempera, and gold leaf on vellum; 9 3/8 x 6 5/8 in. (23.8 x 16.8 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Cloisters Collection, 1954 (54.1.1).

Welcome to the journey through the illuminated pages of the Belles Heures manuscript, occasioned by the current exhibition The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. While the exhibition is on view, now through June 13, 2010, I will post weekly discussions of one or more sections of the manuscript. I welcome your comments or questions—about the weekly posts or about the exhibition itself. (See About This Blog for more information about submitting comments.) Above all, I hope you will enjoy the richness of images presented here from the pages of the glorious Belles Heures; see Manuscript Pages for a complete list of images of the illuminations from this magnificent manuscript.

As we look together at the sections and pages in detail, we’ll find sumptuous color and delicate line; elegant, swaying postures and violent, bloody action; landscapes rendered with a new sense of verisimilitude and patterned backgrounds rooted in medieval tradition. We will not only see gold on every page, but also human expression and the Christian iconography of divine salvation.

A special advantage of this online presentation is that we’re able to look at all the pages in the original order of the bound manuscript. In the exhibition galleries, the sections of the manuscript are presented in order, but—because of the nature of how books are made—the physical pages are not. In the galleries, the unbound pages of the manuscript are seen as bifolia. A bifolium is a folded sheet of parchment comprising four pages. Manuscripts are made by binding together a series of quires, or gatherings; each quire is composed of several sheets of parchment folded in the middle and sewn together. If you imagine four sheets of parchment folded and gathered in this way, you can see that the first page is actually on the same original sheet as the last page. Accordingly, in the exhibition, the leaf with the calendar page for January (Folio 2r) also includes the page for December (Folio 13r).

Manuscripts are either paginated (a number for every page) or foliated (a number for every folio). The Belles Heures is foliated. Each bifolium has two folios, and each folio has a recto and a verso. (Rectos are on the right, versos on the left.) In the reproductions here, every image from the manuscript is identified by its folio number and labeled either recto (”r”) or verso (”v”). (For more about book construction, watch the video The Structure of a Medieval Manuscript on www.getty.edu, or read the essay “The Art of the Book in the Middle Ages” in the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History.)

My sequential introduction to the Belles Heures—and to books of hours in general—relies on the work of a few scholars whose publications I would like to acknowledge and recommend to anyone interested in further research. For the Belles Heures itself, the now fundamental and indispensable work is The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry by Timothy B. Husband, curator of the current exhibition. The seminal work on the art of the Limbourg brothers and the patronage of Jean de Berry is by Millard Meiss. For information about books of hours in general, the best source is Roger Wieck. All of these books have informed my writing here, and I am grateful to their authors. (See detailed citations below.)

The major sections I will discuss, in order, are: Calendar Pages; The Saint Catherine Cycle; Prayers to the Virign and The Hours of the Virgin; The Seven Penitential Psalms; The Great Litany and the Hours of the Cross; Diocrès, Bruno, and Carthusians and the Office of the Dead; The Hours of the Passion; The Suffrages of the Saints and Heraclius and the True Cross; The Story of Saint Jerome; The Saints Paul and Anthony Cycle; and Masses, Prayers, and the Story of Saint John.

A few of the texts and some of the pictures included here fall outside these major sections of the manuscript. One of these is the first page, the ex libris shown above (see full-size image), proclaiming that the manuscript belongs to Jean de Berry. While the text does not name the manuscript as the Belles Heures, we know that the title comes from the time of the duke. Like many members of his age and class, Jean de Berry and his staff kept meticulous records and inventories of his collections, including the description “Item, unes belles Heures, très bien et richement historiées…,” which goes on to indicate the order of the pages that matches the Belles Heures.

—Wendy A. Stein, Research Associate, Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Sources:

Husband, Timothy B. The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008.

Meiss, Millard. French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry. 5 vols. New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1967, 1968, 1974.

Wieck, Roger S. Time Sanctified: The Book of Hours in Medieval Art and Life. New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1988.

———Painted Prayers: The Book of Hours in Medieval and Renaissance Art. New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1997.

Between the level turf and the herbs let there be a higher piece of turf made in the fashion of a seat, suitable for flowers and amenities; the grass in the sun’s path should be planted with trees or vines, whose branches will protect the turf with shade and cast a pleasant refreshing shadow.

—Book VIII, Chapter I: “On small gardens of herbs.” Piero de’ Crescenzi, Liber ruralium commodorum (1305-09). (See Catena, the Bard Graduate Center’s Digital Archive of Historic Gardens and Landscapes for more information.)

Above: Honor Making a Chaplet of Roses, ca. 1425–1450. South Netherlandish. Wool warp, wool wefts; 93 x 108 in. (236.2 x 274.3 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Cloisters Collection, 1959 (59.85). See the Collection Database to learn more about this work of art.

Turf benches were among the most distinctive features of medieval gardens, and are depicted in many paintings and tapestries. Such benches may be rectangular, circular, L-shaped, or U-shaped; the U-shaped type is known as an exedra. Regardless of their shape, the benches were usually constructed with low-walled frames made out of brick, wood, stone, or wattle (woven willow). The frames were then filled with soil and the surfaces were topped with turf. Turf seats were placed in the middle of the garden or against one of its walls, and were sometimes incorporated into the enclosure. Arbors or trellises were sometimes built into the seat to provide shade and shelter, while circular benches were constructed around single trees.

Not all turf benches were constructed within a frame; some had grass growing on all sides, as seen in the tapestry shown above. The same plants and flowers that grow in the lawn are shown growing in the turf of the bench. It’s important to note that although the grass growing on this turf bench looks perfectly even on all sides, it would actually be very difficult to achieve such uniformity, since not all sides would have equal exposure to the sun. It is hard to match the perfection of a painted image when working in three dimensions in a re-created medieval garden.

In medieval depictions, turf benches are usually occupied by the Virgin, or by a pair of lovers. While figures are often shown sitting on the bench, they are sometimes shown seated on the ground, leaning back against the bench. In the example above, the allegorical figure of Lady Honor is seated on the grass in front of a turf exedra.

The simplest form of turf bench, and the easiest one to replicate, is the four-walled rectangular frame with turf growing only on the top of the bench. Such benches are very common in representations of medieval gardens, as in the view through the window in The Annunciation:

Above: Workshop of Rogier van der Weyden (possibly Hans Memling, active by 1465, died 1494) (Netherlandish, 1399/1400–1464). The Annunciation (detail), 1465–75. Oil on wood; 73 1/4 x 45 1/4 in. (186.1 x 114.9 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917 (17.190.7). See the Collection Database to learn more about this work of art.

This example is especially interesting because the benches that border the paths serve not just as seating, but also enclose the interior of the garden. Many of the same plants growing on the little flowering lawn in the foreground also grow amid the grass of the bench. The bench near the back wall of the garden is used to display the potted topiaries tended by the woman gardener.

Turf benches are often included in re-created medieval gardens, such as Queen Eleanor’s Garden at Winchester Castle, designed by Dr. Sylvia Landsberg. The garden was named after Eleanor of Provence and her daughter-in-law, Eleanor of Castile. Such a garden would have been used as a private retreat; the turf bench has been fitted into an intimate space that invites conversation and relaxation. The trellis surrounding the turf exedra is covered with red and white roses.

Above: Site of proposed turf bench in Trie garden.

The turf bench is such a distinctive feature of the medieval garden that we would like to construct one here at The Cloisters. There is only one site that seems suitable, and that is at the back of Trie garden. This garden is planted as a single field of herbs and flowers, and is meant to evoke the millefleurs tapestries in the collection (e.g., the Unicorn in Captivity, and The Lady Honor tapestry itself). A bench framed out of cedar boards faced with wattle and planted with turf and small wildflowers would complement the design of the garden and allow visitors to see an important medieval garden feature.

We are renovating Trie garden this spring, and a space for a turf bench will be included in the new design. I’ll keep you updated as we develop our plans. In the meantime, consult Dr. Landsberg’s book, Medieval Gardens, and try constructing your own medieval turf bench!

—Corey Eilhardt

Sources:

Harvey, John. Medieval Gardens. Beaverton, Oregon: Batsford Ltd., 1981.

———”Sweet Repose.” Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society. 120.10 (1995): 626–628. Print.

Landsberg, Sylvia. Medieval Gardens. London: Thames & Hudson, 1996.

Paul, Martine. “Turf Seats in French Gardens of the Middle Ages (12th–16th centuries).” Journal of Garden History. 5.1 (1985): 3–14. Print.

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Above, from left to right: Detail of the activity for the month from the March calendar page of The Hours of Jeanne d’Évreux, ca. 1324–28; detail of the activity for March from the Belles Heures of Jean of France, duc de Berry, 1405–1408/1409; detail of the zodiacal symbol Aries from The Hours of Jeanne d’Évreux. See the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History to learn more about manuscript illumination in Northern Europe, or see special exhibitions for information about the exhibition “The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry” (on view at the Main Building March 2 through June 13, 2010).

The month of March marked the return to work in the fields for the medieval peasant, and the pruning, cultivation, and manuring of the vines was the first task of the agricultural year—these essential chores constitute the activity almost always chosen to represent March in medieval calendars. (The spring ploughing of the fields might be shown instead in books of hours made in locales where wine was not produced.)

The cultivation of the soil beneath the grapes, the association of vine-dressing with the month of March, and the tools with which the toilers in the vineyard worked, all derive from Roman tradition. Falx was the Latin name applied to any agricultural knife with a single curved edge. Specific variations were designated by adding an adjective to indicate special usage. The pruning hook wielded by the peasant on the left of the image from the Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux is the Roman falx vinitoria, described by ancient agrarian writers like Cato the Elder, Columella, and Palladius, all of whose works were consulted throughout the Middle Ages.

The very similar tool used for pruning fruit trees was known as the falx arboraria or silvatica—this tool was the emblem of the goddess Pomona. In addition to its agricultural uses, the falx was also used as a weapon, as was the mattock (see “Iron Implements and Appliances” from The Roman Era in Britain by John Ward) wielded by the man cultivating the soil around the vine stocks in the detail from the Belles Heures shown above. (In antiquity and the Middle Ages, March marked not only the return to the fields, but also the return to military campaigns.)

For more information about the month of March in the cycle of the medieval year, see “Marching Out,” March 9, 2009. For more about medieval viticulture, see “The Vintage,” September 4, 2009.

—Deirdre Larkin

Sources:

Boehm, Barbara Drake, Abigail Quandt and William Wixom. The Hours of Jeanne d’Évreux. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000.

Henisch, Ann Bridget. The Medieval Calendar Year. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999.

Hourihane, Colum, ed. Time in the Medieval World: Occupations of the Months and Signs of the Zodiac in the Index of Christian Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.

Husband, Timothy B. The Art of Illumination. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008.

Pérez-Higuera, Teresa. Medieval Calendars. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1997.

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Above, from left to right: Detail of the activity for the month from the February calendar page of  The Hours of Jeanne d’Évreux, ca. 1324–28; detail of the activity for February from the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry, 1405–1408/1409; detail of the zodiacal symbol Pisces from The Hours of Jeanne d’Évreux. See the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History to learn more about manuscript illumination in Northern Europe, or see special exhibitions for information about the exhibition “The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry” (on view at the Main Building March 2 through June 13, 2010).

In the medieval calendar tradition, the month of February is frequently represented by a solitary male figure seated before a fire; he may or may not be cooking his meal as he warms himself. A table set with a few dishes is sometimes placed by the fire, a variant on the theme of feasting common to both January and February. (See “The January Feast,” January 15, 2010).

Unlike the outdoor scenes proper to spring and summer, the calendar scenes proper to the winter’s rest from agricultural labor were usually set indoors. (See “Works and Days: The Medieval Year,” January 9, 2009.) Both the fourteenth-century Hours of Jeanne d’Évreux and the fifteenth-century Belles Heures are faithful to a long-established type: a solitary householder is confined within a single chamber, and artistic attention is given to the details of the well-furnished room. In both manuscripts, the February calendar scene is the only one set in an interior space. The earlier of the two books—see image above, at left—depicts a man swaddled against the cold, hunching in a chair and warming himself at his fireside, as he stretches one leg toward the embers to toast his toes; a few sausages are hung to cure from a rack above his head. The latter shows a prosperous, fur-hatted householder, well-wrapped up, warming himself before the fire blazing and smoking in the hearth as his Lenten fish supper cooks on a grate.

Although the famous February calendar page of the Très Riches Heures (see image) keeps to the set theme of warming by the fire, the painter breaks with tradition in representing a seated woman raising her skirts to warm her bare shins; two men sit to her left, further from the fire, warming their legs as well. The simply rendered shelter in which they all sit contains a roomy bed, but is open to a wintry landscape, in which a flock of birds pecking at a meager patch of bare ground, a herd of sheep sheltering in a tightly packed fold, a man with hunched shoulders and a shrouded head, and a row of bee skeps crowned with snow, all testify to the bitter cold of the season and the common lot of all creatures. Outside the wattle enclosure of the farmyard, a man cuts firewood, while another drives a donkey laden with faggots toward a distant village. In contrast to the confined, quasi-allegorical representation made in the Belles Heures, the elaboration of the same theme in the Très Riches Heures opens an entire world to our view.

—Deirdre Larkin

Sources:

Boehm, Barbara Drake, Abigail Quandt and William Wixom. The Hours of Jeanne d’Évreux. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000.

Henisch, Ann Bridget. The Medieval Calendar Year. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999.

Hourihane, Colum, ed. Time in the Medieval World: Occupations of the Months and Signs of the Zodiac in the Index of Christian Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.

Husband, Timothy B. The Art of Illumination. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008.

Pérez-Higuera, Teresa. Medieval Calendars. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1997.

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Above, from left to right: In The Unicorn is Found, a handsome pair of pheasants has been attracted to the fountain (the larger detail shows two goldfinches and a nightingale perched nearby); two partridges keep company on the bank at the bottom of The Unicorn is Attacked; The Unicorn Defends Itself includes a stately heron, and a woodcock and a mallard flying low to the water are visible in the larger detail.

Saynt Valentyn, that art ful hy on-lofte,
Thus syngen smale foules for thy sake:
Now welcome, somer, with thy sonne softe,
That hast this wintres wedres overshake.
Wel han they cause for to gladen ofte,
Sith ech of hem recovered hath hys make;
Ful blissful mowe they synge when they wake:
Now welcome, somer, with thy sonne softe
That hast this wintres wedres overshake
And driven away the longe nyghtes blake!

—Excerpt (lines 682–692) from The Parlement of Fowles by Geoffrey Chaucer. For a modern prose translation of the complete work, see: www.umm.maine.edu/faculty/necastro/chaucer/pf/.

In his comic dream-vision, The Parlement of Foules, Chaucer makes poetic play of the fourteenth-century belief that the birds choose their mates on the feast of Saint Valentine, at the season when they first begin to sing. Nature has convened a parliament of all the birds, which the poet attends. Three tercels (male eagles) speak first, in keeping with their high position as the noblest of birds, and make their respective cases for winning a single formel (a female eagle). The birds of the lower orders protest against the eagles’ claims. (Chaucer is careful to differentiate this avian hierarchy: worm-eaters are placed directly beneath the raptors in the trees; seed-eaters are seated on the green and given precedence over the waterfowl, who sit lowest.

Chaucer has the commoner birds voice their objections in a parody of a parliamentary debate. Nature intervenes in the cacophony that results, and allows the formel another year before making her choice between the three tercels, although all the other birds are paired off. At the close of the poem, the birds welcome in the sweet season by singing the round quoted above.

The poem is the earliest reference to the belief that the fourteenth of February is set apart for lovers. While Valentine’s Day is celebrated by the birds in the fourteenth century, men and women choose their valentines in the fifteenth century. The earliest English valentine letter belongs to the copious family correspondence known as the Paston Letters, and was written by Margaret Brews to her husband-to-be, John Paston, in 1477. The seventeenth-century Protestant John Gee referred in a sermon to the practice, among certain Jesuit priests, of celebrating the feast of Saint Valentine by choosing a female saint to be their heavenly valentine for that year. Robert Herrick (1591–1674) refers to both the medieval tradition of the birds’ choosing their mates and the later practice of choosing a lover on that day:

Oft have I heard both youths and virgins say,
Birds chuse their mates and couple too this day:
But by their flight I never can devine
When I shall couple with my valentine.

—Robert Herrick, To his Valentine, on Saint Valentine’s Day

The males of the many European house sparrows that inhabit the gardens of The Cloisters have been cheeping on fine days this month. Chaucer apostrophizes the sparrow as “Venus’ lecherous son.” Notorious for their constant tupping, sparrows have been sacred to the goddess since antiquity. (These birds are as bellicose as they are amorous; W. B. Yeats described them as “brawling in the eaves,” and so they do under our roof tiles.)

—Deirdre Larkin

Sources

Blackburn, Bonnie, and Leofranc Holford-Strevens. The Oxford Companion to the Year. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1999.

Freeman, Margaret B. The Unicorn Tapestries. New York: E. P. Dutton, Inc., 1956.

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Above, from left to right: Detail from The Annunciation (17.190.7); Detail from The Unicorn in Captivity (37.80.6); Trie Cloister Garden in bloom.

…fruit trees that grow easily, such as cherries and apples, should be planted in place of walls; or, what is better, willows or elms or birch trees should be planted there, and their growth should be controlled for several years, both by grafting and by stakes, poles, and ties, so that walls and a roof might be formed from them.

—Book III: “On the Gardens of Kings and other Illustrious Lords.” Piero de’ Crescenzi, Liber ruralium commodorum (1305-09). (See Catena, the Bard Graduate Center’s Digital Archive of Historic Gardens and Landscapes for more information.)

In my undergraduate studies in landscape and architecture, I examined how the natural landscape is used to determine designs for parks, gardens, and public spaces. I took part in several design processes, which included research on site analysis, interviewing potential patrons of public spaces, building models of future designs, and using plants to blend artistic design with nature. I learned to look at the land as a palimpsest rather than a blank slate, and to examine its many layers of use throughout history, understanding that context is an important influence on new designs. Now, as the new assistant horticulturist here at The Cloisters, I’ve found more levels of meaning to my studies, and am inspired to think about design issues from a landscape historian’s perspective.

Today, parks are most often public spaces dedicated to recreational use such as playgrounds, sports fields, or walking trails. In the Middle Ages, on the other hand, parks were generally private areas signifying high social status. They were often used as hunting grounds, or as areas for deer management, animal grazing, woodland management, and timber production.

While medieval parks contained areas for pasture, the majority of the land was dedicated to the recreational activity of hunting, especially for deer. Although medieval parks were put to practical use, they also played a complex social role, and research about royal palaces in the medieval ages indicates that they were carefully designed for aesthetic purposes as well. English kings arranged their estates in such a way that their living places were almost completely surrounded by parks. Attention was given to the placement of the park lodges within the visual approach to the main royal buildings. There were also smaller parks that contributed aesthetically to the spatial relationship between buildings on the property. In the above detail from The Annunciation, we see a common convention: an enclosed garden with a doorway leading into a rolling landscape, perhaps a park. Plants were used not only ornamentally, but also as design features within the gardens, a trend that we still see in landscape architecture today.

A specific example of a hunting park can be seen in The Cloisters’ treasured series of Unicorn Tapestries. The presence of the palace in the backgrounds of the third, fourth, and sixth tapestries tells us that the enclosure was aristocratic, but the plants also provide a wealth of information. They’re are all shown in their true habitats, with the correct type of trees located in the forest and the moisture-loving plants near the water’s edge. Even though the plants are all displayed in their most attractive stage, regardless of the season, their specific inclusion and placement are part of the symbolism in the tapestries’ story.

The pomegranate tree (Punica granatum), featured in several of the tapestries, symbolized the chastity of the Virgin Mary, the union of faith, and peace. The fruit’s red juice represented Christ’s blood, and redemption in a paradise garden. In the seventh tapestry, The Unicorn in Captivity (shown above), the unicorn is enclosed by a fence and chained to a pomegranate tree, signifying the tree’s direct connection to the story’s meaning. (The lush planting of Trie Cloister Garden, shown above, evokes the landscape of medieval millefleurs tapestries like this one.)

As we see in this example, plants were more than just a pleasant physical backdrop in the Middle Ages; they had important symbolic meanings. Landscape was treated as more than just a place to inhabit physically. It was used to create ambience, emotion, and symbolism within a specific setting, or, in this case, work of art.

—Corey Eilhardt

Sources:

Cavallo, Adolfo. The Unicorn Tapestries at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1998.

Freeman, Margaret B. The Unicorn Tapestries. New York: E. P. Dutton, Inc., 1956.

Harvey, John. Mediaeval Gardens. Beaverton, OR: Timber Press, 1981.

Liddiard, Robert, ed. The Medieval Park: New Perspectives. London: Windgather Press, 2007.

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