THE BEAUTY OF the miniatures painted by the Limbourg brothers in the Très Riches Heures is bewitching. They hold us hostage to such a degree that we sometimes pass too swiftly over those painted by Jean Colombe at the end of the fifteenth century. Yet these leaves hold some surprises. One miniature of special interest, fol.158v (Fig.12), is the scene for the third mass on Christmas Day, the daytime mass. In the initial for the introit Puer natus est, Mary and Joseph are shown kneeling in adoration before the Infant Christ; the shepherds shown kneeling in the margin evoke the readings at the preceding masses at midnight and dawn.

FEW MANUSCRIPTS EQUAL the beauty of the Très Riches Heures, although many match the intricacy of its different stages of illumination. Its complex history is more likely to be elucidated by previously unconsidered visual evidence, as presented here and by Patricia Stirnemann and Claudia Rabel on pp.534–38 below, than by the discovery of new documents. Yet the published documents bear reconsideration in order to provide a fuller context for these new insights. The one contemporary reference plausibly identified with the manuscript now in the Musée Condé, Chantilly (MS 65), comes in the post-mortem inventories of Jean, duc de Berry: ‘en une layette plusieurs cayers d’une tres riches heures, que faisoient Pol et ses freres tres richement histories et enluminez, prisez Vc livres tournois.’ The book was abandoned unfinished, probably because of the duke’s death on 15th June 1416 or because of the deaths of ‘Paul and his brothers’. The three Limbourgs were alive on 22nd August 1415; news of Jean’s death had reached Nijmegen, their home town, by 9th March 1416 and of Paul’s and Herman’s by September–October that year. Since they were salaried by the duke, who had presumably paid for the materials and writing of the Très Riches Heures, the manuscript belonged to his estate even if Paul or Herman had survived him.

IN OCTOBER 1947, at the beginning of the Michaelmas Term, I became a student at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, and began reading for my BA Honours degree in the History of Art. I was eighteen years old, very green from Luton Grammar School, and had been awarded a County Major Scholarship from the Bedfordshire Education Authority. While still at school, I had turned for advice first to our careers master, who, as a chemistry teacher, had no idea about the history of art; indeed, I quickly discovered that very few people had ever heard of the subject, and certainly my parents were bemused by my eccentric choice. I was perceived by my sympathetic headmaster as ‘good at art’, and he knew I wished to follow a career in that somewhat vaguely defined field. I owe a considerable debt to the senior art master at my school, Ronald Smoothey, who had not only heard of the subject but, as a graduate of Goldsmiths’ College, knew of the Courtauld Institute and directed my aspirations there. My father made enquiries and we were interviewed by the Courtauld’s registrar, Charles Clare, a big, jovial, silver-haired, pipe-smoking man, who seemed to fill the tiny second-floor office he occupied, which overlooked the garden at 20 Portman Square. Entrance requirements were discussed, and my examination prospects assessed. I needed to pass in Latin at Subsidiary level, Cambridge Higher School Certificate, to complete London University matriculation. I scraped through.