Browsing by Subject "Book culture"
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
- Results Per Page
- Sort Options
Item Games of paint and print : strategies of juxtaposition in the Hours of Charles d’Angoulême(2020-05-06) Kottke, Ingrid Grace; Smith, Jeffrey Chipps, 1951-Dating to the early 1480s, the Hours of Charles d’Angoulême (Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, ms. Latin 1173) stands as a notable venue for imaginative engagement between painter and reader. A hybrid volume, it integrates prints and print imagery into the painted world of the manuscript, often through humorous or inventive means. The book is attributed to Robinet Testard (active c. 1471-1531), court illuminator to Charles d’Angoulême (1459-96), a Valois noble of the Orléans branch, best-known as the father of François I. It contains forty-three compositions directly derived from prints, sixteen of which are actual engravings glued directly onto the vellum and overpainted. Although on certain pages, Testard’s adaptation of print is direct, the artist frequently engages in some degree of alteration–from slight embellishment to almost total reinterpretation. He employed contemporary German and Netherlandish prints, especially those by Israhel van Meckenem. The manner in which Testard’s pairing of paint and print affects viewing experience merits thorough exploration. Print-derived couplings and oppositions, cast through motifs of courting and quarrel or wilderness and cultivation, recur consistently throughout the volume, often within the same miniature or figural pairing. I concentrate on these patterns of accord and discord throughout the volume as they relate to audience engagement, focusing particularly depictions of seasonality and the pastoral. In the manuscript’s calendar sequence, Testard’s inclusion and seasonalization of satirical love and battle scenes may have been intended to surprise and amuse his patron who, as scion of aristocratic bookworms, would be familiar with calendrical tropes. Elsewhere, full-page miniatures demonstrate further his strategies of creative selection and juxtaposition. I explore the extent to which the tragic wild couple of the Office of the Dead miniature and the ludic herders of the Annunciation to the Shepherds reshape northern print motifs to the nostalgic pastoral tastes of the French court