The Warburg’s Photographic Collection sheds light on enigmatic manuscript
In this blog, Alison Rudd-Clarke, a postgraduate student in Art History and Renaissance Culture at the Warburg Institute, uses the Warburg’s Photographic Collection to explore an image from a fifteenth-century Book of Hours. Drawn to its unusual depiction of Mary reading rather than attending to the newborn Christ, Alison delves into the visual and symbolic choices made by the Master of Jaques de Besançon.
As part of the Postgraduate Certificate in Art History and Renaissance Culture, we were tasked with examining the visual and material properties of an image and how these related to the functions that it fulfilled for period viewers.
For my project, I chose to examine an image of Mary reading from a fifteenth-century Book of Hours. This manuscript is housed at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge (MS 69 folio 48r).
A closer look at the composition and symbolism
I chose this image due to its rather unusual composition. At first glance, the viewer of this Besançon Book of Hours would have seen a familiar nativity scene, but with an unexpected depiction of Mary reading. As well as the image of Mary reading, there are other unusual features that make this nativity idiosyncratic and possibly subversive. One of these is the role reversal of the parents of Jesus. Here they would see it was Joseph taking care of the baby whilst Mary is studiously reading a book; she is not even looking at her baby.
The image’s vivid colours also seem to be subverted. Red is often the colour of Jesus’s suffering. It covers Mary’s bed – perhaps foreshadowing what’s to come. The colour of Joseph’ s cloak is blue, a colour traditionally associated with Mary. It is as if Joseph, now holding the baby, has assumed the mantle of divinity. Mary is in her bed clothes, inferring that she has just given birth - surely rather an intimate depiction.
The search for similar depictions
Was this image unique? My investigations pointed to the fact that it is unknown who compiled the book or who it was for, so I wanted to find out whether the image was one of a kind, thereby perhaps giving a clue to the owner or patron. I therefore approached the Photographic Collection at the Warburg to see if I could find similar images. A browse through the collection revealed a black and white photograph of an almost identical image. The only clue to its provenance was the cryptic reference on the back to the “Bing Archive donation.”
The Photographic Collection staff, in particular Maria Goloteeva, did some further investigations on my behalf and found out that the image I was looking for could be found in an article "Medieval Women Book Owners: Arbiters of Lay Piety and Ambassadors of Culture". According to the information provided at the end of the article, the manuscript is at the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. Although the full manuscript is not available online, Maria located the reference within the article, originally written in Danish (!).
Concluding thoughts
To conclude, although we are no further forward to finding out who owned this particular Besançon Book of Hours, thanks to the Warburg’s Photographic Collection, we do now have evidence that similar images were used; therefore it seems likely that the original acted as a template for others to be inserted into bespoke Books of Hours, on request for particular readers, with some subtle variations, to suit any prospective owner.
The Warburg’s Photographic Collection not only offered a glimpse into the artistic choices of medieval manuscript creators but also underscored the importance of shared visual languages in devotional practices. By comparing these related images, we can better appreciate the complexity and adaptability of religious iconography in the fifteenth century.
