Jean Pichore (fl.1490-1521) - photo 1
Jean Pichore (fl.1490-1521) - photo 2

Jean Pichore (fl.1490-1521)

Lot 16
13.07.2022 10:30UTC +00:00
Classic
Sold
£ 5 670
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 794502
Lot 16 | Jean Pichore (fl.1490-1521)
Estimate value
£ 3 000 – 5 000
Jean Pichore (fl. 1490-1521)

Agony in the Garden and Flagellation, two miniatures from a Book of Hours, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Paris, c.1500-c.1510]

Two miniatures from a Book of Hours painted by Jean Pichore, linked by their distinctive iconography to the Lallemant family of Bourges, receveurs généraux for Normandy and bibliophiles of taste and sophistication.



148 x 84mm each. The miniatures surrounded by trompe l’oeil wooden frames highlighted in liquid gold with six-winged red seraphim and white banderoles bearing the motto ‘In charitate totus’ (both leaves cropped, some pigment loss, chiefly the white of the banderoles and some of the red of the seraphim). Laid down on card mounts (226 x 160mm).



Provenance:

(1) Likely made for a member of the Lallemant family of Bourges, receveurs généraux for Normandy from the time of Louis XI, mayors of Bourges, and founding members of the civic confraternity of that city, the Table Ronde. Fifteen manuscripts made for the family survive; Jean Lallemant the Younger (d. 1548) was a considerable manuscript patron, whose books show an extraordinary taste for sophisticated symbolism (see M. Orth, Renaissance Manuscripts: The Sixteenth Century, 2015, cat nos 48-49): the six-winged seraphim in the borders of our miniatures – a highly distinctive iconographical inclusion – are also in the margins of a Book of Hours for the use of Bourges with the signed ex-libris of Jean the Younger, now at the Free Library in Philadelphia (Lewis E 87), which is missing all of its miniatures. Lallemant’s ownership inscription is dated 1544, though the manuscript was produced significantly earlier. Seraphim and cherubim also appear in later manuscripts made for Jean the Younger (cf. Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery MS W. 446) and in the stained glass of the Lallemant family chapel at the church of St Bonnet in Bourges.

(2) Four sister leaves are known to exist; they were exhibited in the 1902 Prímítífs flamands exhibition at the Hôtel Gruuthuse in Bruges, no 152, in the ownership of a Monsieur Amédée van de Walle. The exhibition catalogue, which describes the same ‘angels’ and mottos in the borders, lists the subjects of the miniatures – with a similar focus on the Passion of Christ, a particular Lallemant devotion – as: Adam and Eve, Christ before Caiaphas, Christ crowned with Thorns, and Christ carrying the Cross.



Illumination:

The style of the miniatures is attributable to Jean Pichore (fl. c.1490-1521), whose enormously successful workshop dominated the production of Books of Hours in Paris in the first decades of the 16th century (see C. Zöhl, Jean Pichore: Buchmaler, Graphiker und Verleger in Paris um 1500, 2004). Pichore is known to have worked for the Lallemant family; he collaborated with Jean Poyet and the so-called Master of the Lallemant Boethius on a Book of Hours painted for Jean Lallemant the Elder (d. 1533), brother of Jean the Younger, dated c.1498 (see M. Hofmann, Jean Poyer: Das Gesamtwerk, 2004, pp. 108-114). Fragments of these Hours are held across various repositories; stylistic comparison between a miniature depicting the Virgin praying before the Cross painted by Pichore, found in the portion at the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore (W. 459.1R) and our Agony in the Garden suggests the two could have been completed around the same time.





Special notice


This lot has been imported from outside of the UK for sale and placed under the Temporary Admission regime. Import VAT is payable at 5% on the hammer price. VAT at 20% will be added to the buyer’s premium but will not be shown separately on our invoice.
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13.07.2022 – 13.07.2022
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