Turin-Milan Hours - History

History

The work was commissioned in about 1380 or 1390, perhaps by the person who later owned it, Jean, Duc de Berry, brother of Charles V of France, and the leading commissioner of illuminated manuscripts of the day. The original commissioner was certainly a great person of the French court – Louis II, Duke of Bourbon, uncle of the King and Berry, has also been suggested. It seems to have been conceived, very unusually, as a combined book of hours, prayer-book and missal, all parts to be lavishly illustrated. The first artist involved was the leading master of the period known as the Master of the Narbonne Parement. There was another campaign by other artists in about 1405, by which time the manuscript was probably owned by the Duke of Berry, who had certainly acquired it by 1413, when the work, still very incomplete, was given to the Duke's treasurer, Robinet d'Estampes, who divided it. D'Estampes retained most of the actual book of hours, whose illustrations were largely complete, which became known as the Très Belles Heures de Notre-Dame de Duc Jean de Berry. This remained in his family until the 18th century, and was finally given to the BnF in Paris (MS: Nouvelle acquisition latine 3093) by the Rothschild family in 1956, after they had owned it for nearly a century. This section contains 126 folios with 25 miniatures, the latest perhaps of about 1409, and includes work by the Limbourg brothers.

Robinet d'Estampes appears to have sold the other sections, with completed text but few illustrations other than the borders, and by 1420 these were owned by John, Count of Holland, or a member of his family, who commissioned a new generation of Netherlandish artists to resume work. It is the miniatures of this phase that are of the greatest interest. Two further campaigns, or phases of decoration, can be seen, the last work being of near the mid-century. The art historian Georges Hulin de Loo distinguished the work of eleven artists – "Hand A" to "Hand K" – in the work. By this stage the manuscript appears to have been owned by, or at least was at the court of, Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy – another argument for the involvement of Jan van Eyck who moved from the employment of the counts of Holland to the court of Burgundy, apparently taking the work with him.

Most of this part of the work, the prayer-book section, known as the Turin Hours, belonged by 1479 to the House of Savoy, later Kings of Piedmont (and subsequently Italy), who gave it in 1720 to the National Library in Turin. Like many other manuscripts it was destroyed, or virtually so, in a fire in 1904. This portion contained 93 leaves with 40 miniatures. However the missal portion of the work, known as the Milan Hours, was bought in Paris in 1800 by an Italian princely collector. After the fire, this part, containing 126 leaves with 28 miniatures, was also acquired by Turin in 1935, and is in the Civic Museum there (MS 47). Eight leaves had been removed from the original Turin portion, probably in the 17th century, of which four, with five miniatures, are in the Louvre. Four of the five large miniatures are by the earlier French artists, with one from the later Flemish phases (RF 2022–2025). A single leaf with miniatures from the last phase of decoration was bought by the Getty Museum in 2000, reputedly for a million US dollars, having been in a Belgian private collection.