Madame Marie's Picture Book

Madame Marie's Picture Book

The manuscript at hand is a medieval picture book par excellence. The martyrology contains 87 full-page miniatures with short inscriptions underneath the pictures within its 110 pages. Based on this, historians assume that the work was a book of hours. It contains the typical components of a book of hours, e.g. a calendar and illustrations of the martyrdom of the saints. Having said that, this private devotional book is missing the tables for the canonical hours and the specific liturgical prayers. The Anglo‐Norman Martyrology occupies a unique position in the history of literature.

An Interesting Provenance

The so-called Picture Book of Madame Marie is first recorded in the inventory of the Burgundian Duke Philip the Bold in the year 1405. He bequeathed this manuscript to his son John the Fearless. In the year 1467, the precious manuscript found itself in the possession of Philip the Good. Apparently, the codex was created between 1285 and 1290 for Mary of Rethel, a noblewoman from the northern French county of Rethel, which went to the Duchy of Burgundy in the 14th century. A donor portrait shows the patron kneeling and praying before St. James. The miniatures of the gothic masterpiece are indicative of the style of the Anglo-Norman illumination from Westminster. The original title of the picture book was The First Apocalypse from Westminster. The artist responsible for the work has never been determined.

Dramatic Scenes

The expressive, colorful images of the work present richly detailed scenes of gothic painting to the beholder. The characteristic personality traits, social status, or historical attributes of people were illustrated. The agonies, which the saints and martyrs of the legends had to suffer, were expressed unsparingly here. For example, a miniature shows a naked man being roasted on a grill (St. Lawrence). Another scene shows a person strapped to a tree, their body pierced with arrows (St. Sebastian). The book stages well-known legends of martyrdom with unvarnished realism – blood, broken bones, severed heads, and disemboweled bodies – with an excellent use of line and intense colors. Such imagery requires no long texts for explanation.