Exceptional Miniatures Among Les Enluminures' Highlights Headed to TEFAF Maastricht

Les Enluminures is celebrating its 25th year exhibiting at TEFAF Maastricht! 

For this prestigious event, the leading specialists in manuscripts and jewelry from the Middle Ages, Les Enluminures will inaugurate at TEFAF Maastricht the selling-exhibition “The thing of mine I have loved the best”: Meaningful Jewels. Forty-six exceptional pieces of European jewelry - pendants, reliquaries, amulets, and talismans - dating from the eighth century to the eighteenth century, will be presented in a specially commissioned, one-time-only display, which will be revealed at TEFAF. 

One of the many remarkable objects assembled by Founder and President of Les Enluminures Dr Sandra Hindman, over a period of fifteen years, is a Spanish “magic belt”. The oldest of the very few surviving examples, it includes elements from the tenth to the seventeenth centuries: Islamic textile, Arab coins, rosary beads, a rock crystal skull, a jet amulet, and a type of horse chestnut make up the belt, which would have been worn by a child to protect him or her from evil spirits.

A lavishly illustrated book by two senior scholars, Cynthia Hahn and Beatriz Chadour-Sampson, accompanies the exhibition.

Alongside this, Les Enluminures will present an array of important acquisitions. Notable highlights include two exceptional miniatures from the crucible of sixteenth century illumination, art, and design in Renaissance Paris. These two full-page miniatures come from a richly illuminated Breviary assigned to the Bellemare Group - possibly the late work of Noël Bellemare himself. 

Also on display will be the Hours of Philippote de Nanterre, a monumental illuminated manuscript with 27 miniatures by the Master of Raoul d’Ailly, a rare Amiens painter directly influenced by Flemish Primitives, and a collaborator.

Image: Bellemare Group (plausibly Noël Bellemare, active Antwerp and Paris, 1512-1546), Adoration of the Magi, France, probably Paris, c. 1540-45