The Hours of Charles of Angoulême (Part 2): The Passion Cycle and Calendar

This is the second set of images from a particularly high quality book of Hours made for Charles, count of the French city of Angoulême (1459-96), and father of King Francis I (r. 1515-47). (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Lat. 1173); the first part was published on Monday. Just under half of the volume, folios 59-115, is taken up with a very long series of prayers and meditations on the Passion, in both Latin and French, interspersed with twelve images that show episodes from the washing of the disciples’ feet at the Last Supper to the supper at Emmaus. These were originally created as engravings by a German printmaker named Israhel van Meckenem, which were then colored in by the main artist, Robinet Testard (fl. 1470 - 1519). Below them I include the twelve pages of the calendar.

As is typical of the late Gothic period, Meckenem’s images are quite complicated, with a lot of figures in a fairly limited amount of space, and very often more than one episode squeezed into the background. Here we see Christ washing St Peter’s feet in the foreground, with the Last Supper inside the building on the right, and in the upper left, the agony in the garden, with the crowd of soldiers entering the garden through the gate. (If you click the image to enlarge it, you can see that the figure of St John in front of the Lord at the table is very imperfectly drawn as the result of trying to compress too many figures into too small a space.)

The kiss of Judas and the arrest of Christ, with St Peter attacking the high priest’s servant at the lower left.

Christ appears before Pilate, who is dressed more or less as a typical urban magistrate of the period; at the lower left, a soldier is seen grabbing St Peter’s collar, as the serving girl looks on, and at the upper left, we see the soldiers mocking the Lord.

The flegellation, and at the upper left, Christ before Herod.

The crowning with thorns, and at the upper left, the soldiers hitting the Lord.

The Ecce homo, and at the upper right, Pilate’s wife speaks to him about her dream. As is also very typica for the period, the faces of the people demanding that the Lord be crucified are very brutish and distorted, with one fellow in particular, the man who has his arms raised, looking distinctly like a pig.

Pilate washing his hands. In the background at the upper left, Judas attempts to give back the thirty pieces of silver, and in the middle, carpenters bring together the parts of the Cross.

The Via Dolorosa; in the background at the upper right, the Virgin, in the company of St John and the other daughters of Jerusalem, faints.

The soldiers preparing the Cross as Christ sits on it, and in the background, the moment at which the solider pierces Our Lord’s side with the lance, as the Virgin faints again.

The deposition from the Cross and entombment.

The Resurrection, with the harrowing of hell in the nearer background (upper left), and further back, the three Marys coming to the tomb.

The Supper at Emmaus; in the background at the upper left, Christ speaking with the two men, and in the far background at the upper right, Mary Magdalene sees Him in the garden.

Each page of the calendar is decorated with a floral border, with the sign of the zodiac that begins within that month depicted in a medallion on one side. At the bottom of each page is a scene which shows an agricultural labor typical of that month, or a scene of courtly life. (At the bottom of May is a scene of jousting. King Francis’ son Henry II, who succeeded him in 1547, was injured in the eye during just such a tournament by a fragment of his opponent’s lance, and died of sepsis after only ten days, an event which did much to end the popularity of jousting.)