Les Enluminures to Launch Special Exhibit on Painting in Manuscripts During TEFAF Maastricht
This is the twenty-sixth year that Les Enluminures will be exhibiting at TEFAF. To celebrate this occasion, the gallery will launch a special exhibition based on new high-profile acquisitions and entitled "Painting in Manu-scripts in France and Flanders during the Middle Ages and Renaissance."
A select group of nearly a dozen stunning single miniatures is exhibited for the first time. Illustrating David and Bathsheba and Job and his Friends and Family, two of these by the MASTER OF FRANCOIS DE ROHAN come from a presumably lost Book of Hours, most likely made for a patron at the court of King Francis I (r. 1515-1547). They display this artist's imaginative subject matter and lively narration set in elaborate architecture enlivened by putti on the eve of the French Renaissance.
A monumental miniature of the Crucifixion, painted with a brilliant palette and charged with emotion, boldly expresses an accomplished new figural style emerging from Italy in the wake of the Renaissance. It can now be added to a group of thirteen other historiated initials, mostly in major museums, from an enormous pair of Choir Books commissioned by Philippe de Levis, bishop of Mirepoix from 1493 to 1537. A recent study convincingly identifies the artist as a Toulouse-based painter, ANTOINE OLIVIER. Complementing the group of miniatures are several illuminated volumes of exceptional richness that reveal the full flowering of the Middle Ages. One of two centerpieces is THE HOURS OF MARIE. This is one of the oldest and most important of all early Books of Hours and one of few thirteenth-century books unambiguously painted for a named laywoman, perhaps Marie de Bra-bant Queen of France. Its pages virtually explode with a richness of imagery. Nearly 300 images display with unusual frequency women in daily life and are set in the royal court.
The second featured work THE ROMANCE OF TROY includes seventeen large paintings by a rare and accomplished illuminator-painter known as the Master of Girart de Roussillon who worked for the court in the then-Southern Netherlands, probably in Brussels. According to Christopher de Hamel: "The addition of a newly attributed manuscripts to the elusive and incomparable Master himself is a major event in the scholarship of southern Netherlandish art."
Founded by Dr. Sandra Hindman nearly thirty years ago and with locations in Paris, Chicago, and New York, Les Enluminures has forged long-standing relationships with major museums and prestigious private collections throughout the world. It exhibits at TEFAF Maastricht, TEFAF New York, Masterpiece, the Winter Show, Paris Fine Art, and Frieze Masters. The gallery is well-known for the level of its scholarship but also for the diversity, high quality, and provenance of the works it offers for sale.
Sandra Hindman states: "We are proud to continue our participation in TEFAF Maastricht, which in my opinion remains unchallenged as the premier venue for the display of world-class, museum-quality works of art. Hats off once again to the astute organizers."
