Early Books of Hours, especially those made for women, have long been a speciality of Professor Margaret Manion, who in 1998 published a major article on the famous fourteenth-century Book of Hours of Queen Jeanne of Navarre, in the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris (ms n.a. lat. 3093). This lecture takes up her lead and it asks why and when this beautiful manuscript was made, and why it includes some very rare components and extraordinary pictures, then unparalleled in medieval art. It follows the history of this Book of Hours in directions hitherto unsuspected, tracing its descent through the possession of at least four different reigning queens, of Navarre, France and England.
Using entirely unknown material, it follows the astonishing journey of the manuscript right into the twentieth century, when, like the Rothschild Prayerbook, now in the collection of Mr and Mrs Stokes, it was stolen by the Nazis from the Rothschild family during the Second World War. It emerged under extraordinary circumstances, hitherto undocumented. It is a tale, stretching over 650 years, of art, female patronage, politics, devotion, and ultimately of greed, warfare, theft and rediscovery.
Christopher de Hamel is Fellow Librarian of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
Date: 6pm, Thursday 26th August, 2015
Venue: Theatre B117, Melbourne School of Design, Masson Rd, The University of Melbourne, Parkville
Free to attend. All welcome. Book via the University of Melbourne website.
This is part of a series of events in conjunction with the exhibition An illumination: the Rothschild Prayer Book & other works from the Kerry Stokes Collection c.1280-1685 the Ian Potter Museum of Art (28 August until Sunday 15th November) See the website for details of other lectures and talks.
