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Donation by a private individual
Acquisition 2001
Date Ca. 1470
Size 13 x 9 cm.
Signature SMC 1
The Trivulzio Hours is one of the most important, and certainly the most costly, gift ever presented to a Dutch cultural institution. Given in 2001 by an donor who wished to remain anonymous, the manuscript represents the return of a spectacular item of culture heritage that had been presumed destroyed. The manuscript used to belong to the collection of the princes of Trivulzio in Milan, but by the early twentieth century its whereabouts were no longer known.
The manuscript was made in Flanders, probably in Bruges and Ghent, by several masters who each supplied miniatures to the rich program of illumination: Lieven van Lathem from Antwerp, Simon Marmion from Valenciennes, and an illuminator from Ghent who is called the Master of Mary of Burgundy.
In this opening we see a full-page miniature depicting Pentecost, the descent of the Holy Spirit. The artist renders this event in a carefully described Gothic church interior, complete with Solomonic columns and a gilt choir screen. The style of the miniature is painterly and expressive, full of movement visible in the flowing drapery.
As a final step in painting this miniature, the artist laid on extremely delicate gold highlights, probably using a brush with only two or three bristles. The radiance around the dove is so fine as to be almost ethereal.
The borders in this manuscript enliven the religious scenes and delight the viewer. At the side margin, for example, the artist has depicted, with careful mimetic exactitude, a rare hoopoe bird. Even today this bird is said to portend rain, although in the image it seems to portend the Holy Spirit. In the lower right margin, the miniaturist has depicted a harpy [Latin: harpyia) , a rapacious monster with the head of a woman, the claws of a lion, and the wings of a bird of pray. While this figure thematizes the power and danger of women, it also presents a word play: the harpy plays a harp. Further thematizing the power of women is the figure group at the lower left. This woman who plays the fiddle and rides her man may be Phyllis, who rode her husband Aristotle like a horse.
(KR)
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