Pol de Limburg (1386 - 1416)

Pol de Limburg

Pol de Limburg, also Paul van Lymborch or van Limburg, was an early 15th-century French miniaturist from the Northern Netherlands.

Together with his two brothers, Herman and Jean, Pol worked in Paris. As teenagers, all three entered the service of Jean de France, Duc de Berry. It was for him that two of the most lavishly illustrated books of hours (a popular form of private prayer book at the time) were created.

Pol evidently had the greatest skill among the brothers and to him belongs the bulk of the work. After the completion of the Red Gazetteers, the brothers set to work on the Duke de Berry's Three Rich Gazetteers. This work, considered their greatest creation, belongs among the finest examples of the International Gothic style.

The Limburg brothers left The Rich Days of the Duke de Berry unfinished, as they died almost simultaneously in 1416, possibly during a plague epidemic.

The Limbourg brothers are the best known of all late Gothic manuscript illuminators. Together they synthesized the innovations of other illuminators and developed a style of their own, characterized by fine lines, painstaking technique, and minute detail. Their "Rich Days of the Duc de Berry," completed about 1485 by Jean Collomb, is one of the milestones in the art of book illumination. It greatly influenced the course of early book illumination and foreshadowed the paths of Northern Renaissance art.