Hours of Jeanne D'Evreux - History and Authorship

History and Authorship

Although there are dissenting opinions, the book is generally believed to be the work of the leading Parisian illuminator, Jean Pucelle (or Jehan Pucele). It is usually identified with the book mentioned by Queen Jeanne in her will, in which she leaves to Charles V "un bien petit livret d'oroisons que le roy Charles, dont Dieu l'ame, avoit faict faire pour Madame, que pucelle enlumina" ("a very small prayer book which King Charles, may God protect him, had made for Madame, which Pucelle illuminated"). The identification of the patrons, illuminator and the date assigned to the work all largely depend on identifying this book with the manuscript in New York, as does any clear conception of what Pucelle's personal style was. However this refers to a prayer book not a book of hours, and it has been doubted that this imprecision would have been likely in such a context. In addition none of Jeanne's heraldry appears in the book, unlike two other royal manuscripts made when she was queen, her Coronation Book and a breviary.

On the conventional assumptions, the book was first owned by Queen Jeanne until her death in 1371, when it was left to the then king Charles V. In 1380, an inventory of Charles V’s possessions mentions a Dominican Book of Hours that had belonged to Jeanne d’Evreux. This book is assumed to be one mentioned in an inventory from 1401-2 of the books of John, Duke of Berry, who inherited many manuscripts from his brother’s collection. There the description matches the present book more closely than that in Queen Jeanne's will: "Item une petites heures de Nostre Dame, nommée Heures de Pucelle, enlumées de blanc et de noir, à la usaige des Prescheurs" ("Item: a little hours of Our Lady, called the Hours of Pucelle, illuminated in black and white, in the Dominican usage"). If they are the same, between the inventories of Charles and Berry, the cover of the illuminated manuscript changed from a pearl-studded cover to a blue silk binding in 1402. Its whereabouts are then unknown until it reappears in the 17th century, as the two coats-of-arms on the current leather bookbinding make it clear that it belonged to the French noble Louis-Jules de Châtelet and his wife Christine de Gleseneuve Bar, who married in 1618 and both died before 1672.

The book then lacks a history until Alphonse de Rothschild of Geneva acquired it in the 19th century. At his death in 1900, it was left to his nephew Maurice de Rothschild in Paris. The Germans confiscated the book in 1940 during the occupation of France and sent it to Neuschwanstein castle in Germany. It was restored to its owner in 1948 and Maurice de Rothschild sold it in 1954 to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.