The stylistic sources, dating and development of the Bohun workshop, ca 1340-1400
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The important group of books illuminated for the Bohun family, ca 1340-1400, has
not received the close study it warrants. Certain misconceptions have arisen about the
dating, localisation and ownership of these manuscripts. By a detailed codicological and
stylistic examination of each book, illuminators are charactensed, their artistic
development traced and a chronology postulated. Thi analytical method reveals that each
manuscript is not necessarily the product of a single campaign, but may have been
worked on for successive members of the family. It is only after the various campaigns
have thus been determined and a sequence of production formulated that conclusions can
be drawn for dating and ownership from documentary evidence.
Bohun patronage falls into three distinct phases. The first, in which the English
sources of the Bohun style lie, is that of the 1340s, a decade more productive than
formerly realised. The activity of these probably Cambridge-based illuminators, however,
was curtailed by the Black Death. During the second, more homogeneous phase (Ca 1350-
55 to ca 1385) two illuminators, the 'English Artist' and 'Flemish Hand' (and later a
third) worked at Pleshey Castle, Essex, where they produced manuscripts exclusively for
the Bohun family. The interaction of the artists of the 'central' workshop is charted; two
of these can be identified as Austin friars.
The origins of the Flemish Hand are localised in Toumai and Ghent illumination of ca
1330-1350; the 'Lows de Male' manuscripts, which have a direct bearing on his work are
here redated. The Italian influence often discerned in the work of the English Bohun
illuminator is identified as principally that of NiccolO da Bologna and his school.
With the demise or departure of their resident miniaturists the Bohuns ordered their
manuscripts in London where illumination was becoming more commercial. The complex
interrelationships between the Lytlington Missal workshop and others with which the
Edinburgh Psalter-Hours Artist can be associated, covering the third phase of Bohun
patronage (Ca 1385-1400), are examined.
Authors
Dennison, Lynda EileenCollections
- Theses [3919]