THE BREVIARY OF
GERAARDSBERGEN

These different tasks were often delegated to specialist professionals: decorators for the initials (large decorated letters) and the border decoration, and miniaturists for the historiated illustrations. Work activities were supervised by a kind of ‘site manager’. This might be a scribe or, in larger centres of production, a librarian. The large number of assistants to have worked on the Breviary can also be ascribed to the length of the project. After all, the scribe needed two years to copy the four volumes.

Just as with television series that run for several seasons, it is inevitable that the casting should undergo changes. Some of those involved lost motivation, had other commitments or – which was also a factor – simply died. Commissioners might make adjustments upwards or downwards in respect of their goals. That is what happened in this instance. We can ascertain that the team of staff changed starting with the third volume, which is to say from the beginning of the second section of the Breviary. Volumes 1 and 2 containing all the text for the cycle running from Christmas to Whitsun constitutes one unit, while volumes 3 and 4 contain the offices starting from Whit Monday and running to Advent. It is clear that different teams were deployed for these two sections.

To continue with the television series metaphor, we can argue that the first section was a ‘pilot version’, an episode that set the tone for the rest. The clients wanted to make an impression and, because it would catch the eye immediately, they entrusted the first illuminated page to a reputable painter. He belonged to a group of Ghent illuminators engaged in the profession for several generations, and known under the name ‘Masters of Guillebert de Mets’, who worked for the dukes of Burgundy on a regular basis. He is a late representative of this ‘Mets Group’ and was close to one of its members known as the Master of Margaret of Schorisse. The name comes from one of his clients, an abbess in Nivelles for whom in around 1445 he illuminated a splendid prayer book now kept at the Royal Library of Belgium (KBR) in Brussels.

The large number of assistants to have worked on the Breviary can also be ascribed to the length of the project.

His art was rooted in tradition and seems scarcely influenced at all by the new realism being introduced in the same period by painters such as Jan van Eyck or Rogier van der Weyden, known as the Flemish Primitives. After the calendar, in the large initial letter opening the text of volume 1, King David is kneeling in prayer before an altar with a retable, a piece of liturgical furniture usually placed in a church or chapel. However, the illuminator felt it unnecessary to set the scene in such an environment. The decor is abstract – a tiled floor, a wall and a chequered background – not referring in any degree to a real space. The margin has been decorated with a hybrid figure (half man, half beast), an angel playing a trumpet, a peacock and a depiction of the young David opposite the armoured giant Goliath. The same illuminator also produced a margin on a subsequent page (fol. 48v), but in the middle of the seventh quire a colleague of his took over. Although certainly less renowned, this colleague was much industrious.

To date, this illuminator is known only for his collaboration on the Geraardsbergen Breviary and for that reason he was given the name ‘Hand A of the Breviary’. He produced the illumination for the rest of volume 1 (eighteen quires) and also for the whole of volume 2. He painted dozens of margins in quite an idiosyncratic style which, it is hoped, will allow to identify his collaboration on other manuscripts. These decorative borders are populated with hybrid beings and animals, plant designs and, in one of the bottom margins, a wonderful acrobat spinning around on an acanthus leaf. Hand A painted only a dozen or so historiated scenes, and did so in a somewhat naive style. His figures are stocky and have dolls’ faces. The most beautiful is his compositions of a Tree of Jesse at the beginning of the prayer for the first Sunday in Advent.

Everything changes with volume 3. The second illuminations campaign is clearly more ambitious in scope. Here, the dominant tone is set by the Master of Gerard Brilis, a miniaturist active in Brussels and Ghent during the third quarter of the fifteenth century. We know nothing about his training, but the influence exerted on him by the Parisian school of illumination might point to a French background. In the years 1447–48 he was employed within the circle of bookmakers in the service of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, when that ruler was busy building one of the most prestigious libraries of the period.

The Master of Gerard Brilis collaborated on illumination of the famous Roman de Girart de Roussillon, a masterpiece from the ducal library and now kept in Vienna. Afterwards, he undertook assignments for important religious bodies, such as the Benedictine Geraardsbergen Abbey and the Carthusian monasteries of Herne (near Edingen) and Scheut (in Brussels). He also worked for secular clients and illustrated books of hours and prayer books. One of the most striking characteristics seen in his compositions is the use of medallions in the margin. Within these he painted episodes that complemented the main scene as depicted in the text’s large initial letter.

In volume 3 the Master of Gerard Brilis worked in partnership with another illuminator from the Mets Group, who we shall simply refer to as the Master of the Geraardsbergen Breviary. At present we know of just one other manuscript by his hand, a book of hours held in a private collection and in which he painted all of the scenes with figures. His role in the Breviary was far more modest. He acted as a second fiddle to the Master of Brilis and designed only four of the twenty-one historiated initials. However, in the quires on which he contributed, the margins swarm with spontaneously penned drawings. Their style and composition are characteristic of his formal repertoire, which leads to the assumption that he executed them. These drawings attest to work by a sensitive but confident hand.

Yet again, a new team was set to work for volume 4. The Master of Brilis was once more part of that team, demonstrating all of his skill in this instance. He painted the frontispiece, a splendid page entirely devoted to the legend of St Adrian of Geraardsbergen. The artist clearly enjoyed a certain prestige as the frontispiece of an illuminated manuscript is often an artistic ‘statement’. It indicates at once the luxury status of the book and focuses attention on its illuminator. This page was also intended to impress the reader surprised to across such splendid decoration within the manuscript’s heavy leather and wood binding. After this lavish opening, there follow a further twenty-nine other historiated initials by the hand of the Master of Brilis and on twelve pages once again medallions in the margin.

The artist clearly enjoyed a certain prestige as the frontispiece of an illuminated manuscript is often an artistic ‘statement’.

The rest of the illumination – three pages – was carried out by an anonymous miniaturist for whom this is the sole work known to date. In anticipation that other books by his hand might come to light, he has been given the name Hand B of the Breviary. His clumsy drawings are encumbered with an excess of gold leaf and a garish palette of unfortunate colour choices, combining blue, orange, green and pale pink.

Consequently, at least five illuminators worked on the Breviary’s decoration. Each of them had a distinct individual style that they did not try to align with that of the others so that the manuscript’s four volumes would harmonise with one another visually. Nevertheless, there was a common denominator shared by all of them: their close connection with Ghent. After all, the two painters from the Mets Group worked in that city, and it was also there that some clients of the Master of Gerard Brilis had their premises. Therefore, we can assume that both Hand A and Hand B, clearly subordinate to the two other painters, had also been active in that city.