MEDIEVAL IMAGES OF SAINT BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX - MA118.jpg

Category Manuscript
Origin: artist/workshop Flanders, probably Bruges
Date 15C/4
Reference No MS Add 18,851, f 441r (detail)
Size
Provenance Isabella of Castile, Queen of Spain and Sicily
Present Location London, British Library
Bibliography Backhouse 1993

de Gray Birch 1879, 58; Brinkmann 1997, 387-8
Illustration From photo - Library
Other illustrations Backhouse 1993, ill 61

Country Belgium
Description:
Breviary for use of the Dominicans in Spain written in a Spanish hand on the finest vellum at the end of the fifteenth century - the so-called 'Isabella Breviary' as it was presented to Queen Isabella of Castile in or shortly after 1497 to commemorate the marriages of two of her children to the son and daughter of Maximilian of Austria, king of the Romans, and his first wife, Mary, duchess of Burgundy. Several foremost craftsmen contributed to its decoration, the largest part by an anonymous illuminator known as the Master of the Dresden Parayerbbok from his most important work, and the second last by the illuminator known as the master of James IV of Scotland because of the Book of Hours of that name which he decorated. He completed the sequence of illustrations to the Sanctorale, a number of smaller pictures of individual saints which includes the one of Bernard. He was probably the celebrated Gerard Horenbout, court painter to Margaret of Austria who was born in c 1465 and became a master in the Bruges painters' guild in 1487. Bernard is depicted in a white cowl standing with a red book in his right hand and a golden crozier and a chain in his left at the end of which is a small demon with a brown face and a green body. On the other side is a brown dog.