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THE TILLIOT HOURS: COMPARISONS AND RELATIONSHIPS JANET BACKHOUSE THE provision of a new catalogue for the Yates Thompson manuscripts now in the British Library, taking into consideration the many advances in scholarship which have taken place since the collector himself issued his original catalogues at the beginning of the century, was among the major ambitions which Derek Turner did not live to fulfil.^ The forty-six manuscripts which the collector's widow bequeathed to the nation in 1941, together with the half-dozen volumes already in the department, represent a period of some six centuries and come from all over Europe, offering an unusual opportunity for a survey ofthe present state of knowledge over a very wide spectrum. The accumulation of notes and descriptions which Derek left will of course be utilized in the catalogue when it eventually appears. One ofthe latest ofthe manuscripts is the Tilliot Hours (Yates Thompson MS. 5), written and illuminated in Renaissance France and acquired for the collection via the Spitzer sale in 1895.^ This manuscript (pi. VI, fig. i) is a particular favourite of mine and one which I frequently talked over informally with Derek, whose own tastes (except in Flemish manuscripts) tended towards material of a much earlier period. It exemplifies a recent change of fashion in scholarly interest and a class of illuminated book about which current knowledge is expanding with a striking rapidity. My aim in this article is to put forward in accessible form a number of recently recognized comparisons and relation- ships, most of which have come to light in the wake ofthe British Library's loan exhibition of Renaissance illuminated books staged at the J. Paul Getty Museum in California in the autumn of 1983. Although the Tilliot Hours is of superb quality, it represents a period which was until very recently completely out of fashion with twentieth-century scholars, who tended to regard manuscripts made during the century after the invention of printing as the last decadent manifestations of a dying art. Derek himself described its miniatures some twenty years ago as 'careful and painstaking [but] . devoid of real life or originality, being examples of the survival of illumination after it had ceased to be an independent form of artistic expression'.^ It is only within the last decade that serious interest in the period has been rekindled, and the British Library exhibition, 'Renaissance Painting in Manuscripts*, made a major contribution to its rehabilitation.''" The exhibition opened in Malibu in October 1983 and was subsequently shown at the Pierpont Morgan Library 211 Eig. I. David and Goliath, (below) David annointed by the prophet Samuel. Tilliot Hours. Yates Thompson MS. 5, fol. 99^ in New York and in the Library's own galleries in Bloomsbury. A great part ofthe credit for this very successful exercise, from its informal inception over a cup of coffee with Thomas Kren to its triumphant opening more than two years later, was due to Derek personally though he deliberately left the limelight to his colleagues. The Tilliot Hours was among seven outstanding French manuscripts sent to the United States and held its own alongside the work of Fouquet, Colombe, Bourdichon, and 212 Fig. 2. David dispatching Uriah as his messenger. Heineman Hours. Pierpont Morgan Library, H.8, fol. Perreal.^ At the Pierpont Morgan Library the display was enlarged to include closely related manuscripts from the host collection. On that occasion I personally had a unique opportunity to compare the Tilliot Hours in detail with the superb 'Great Book of Hours of Henry VIIT, now in the Heineman Collection (MS. 8),^ which is beyond question the masterpiece ofthe group to which both manuscripts belong (figs. 2, 3). I also had it side by side with the splendid Tours missal (M.495; fig. 8) associated with the Lallemant family of Bourges and recently attributed to the same artist.^ The two Books of Hours form part of an increasingly substantial group of works lately 213 Eig. 3. St Jerome in the desert. Heineman Hours. Pierpont Morgan Library, H.8, fol. 170 associated with the name of Jean Poyet of Tours, a contemporary of Jean Bourdichon. Poyet, first mentioned in 1483 and recorded as working for Anne of Brittany in 1497, enjoyed a great reputation in his own time and was apparently particularly admired for his grasp of perspective.^ However, no work is as yet clearly identified with him by documentary evidence. A list of manuscripts sharing a specific style has simply been brought together under his name^ and the quality ofthe best of these is certainly such that their artist must be ranked with the foremost painters ofthe day. A descent from Fouquet is abundantly—and predictably—clear. There is a strong resemblance to the work of Bourdichon, particularly in the facial types, though the Tilliot artist's landscapes are 214 superior and his colours, on the whole, richer and more intense. There are also signs ofthe influence of Colombe, who was based not at Tours but at Bourges. The lack of any documentary mention of Poyet after 1500 makes unqualified acceptance of his connection with the manuscripts difficult to sustain, as some of them seem more at home in the sixteenth than the fifteenth century. However, as Bourdichon continued to work well into the reign of Francis I, and as he and the anonymous illuminator of the Tilliot and Heineman Hours seem stylistically to represent the same generation, it is not impossible that continued investigation will one day uncover additional information extending Poyet's career into the sixteenth century. The relationships between the manuscripts on the 'Poyet' list vary in degree. No one would dispute that a number of different hands must be involved within the group and, as with Bourdichon and Colombe, it is likely that this obviously popular and successful master worked with pupils or assistants. Direct comparison leaves no doubt that one hand appears in the Tilliot and Heineman Hours and that this is the hand of a master. Unfortunately, neither book was made for an identified patron. The lavish scale ofthe Heineman Hours suggests an original owner of the very highest class, and tradition has even associated it with the Emperor Charles V and Henry VIII of England. ^^ There is no decisive evidence of date and the text is written out in a standard French bastard book-hand ofthe period around 1500. The Tilliot Hours, though less elaborate and physically smaller, is of equal quality. Its text is in a more distinctive type of script, a slightly Gothicized form of roman which is most closely matched in the service books made for Rene II of Lorraine about 1493,^^ though other examples are by no means uncommon. ^^ The two-tier design of its miniature pages is consistent with a date in the last decade ofthe fifteenth century, having been fashionable over a considerable period. ^^ Two further manuscripts in the style do offer fairly specific evidence of date. These are the two splendid presentation copies of Pierre Louis de Valtan's commentary on the Apostles* Creed, one owned by Charles VIII of France, who died in 1498,^'*^ and the other (fig. 4) by Isabella of Castile, to whom its author presented it during a diplomatic mission in 1500.^^ The hand of these two books is probably that of the author himself. The miniatures of the Apostles, though inevitably less complex than the illustrations in the Hours, are extremely close in style and execution and can be almost exactly paralleled by Evangelist miniatures in the two liturgical manuscripts. A further Book of Hours, now divided between several collections including the British Library, contains several more miniatures by the 'Poyet* hand and provides a direct link with Bourges. ^^ This manuscript (fig. 5) was designed for a member ofthe Lallemant family, probably Jean Lallemant the Elder, who was mayor of Bourges in 1500 and died in ^533' He was concerned in the building ofthe celebrated Hotel Lallemant and a number of personal elements appear in the iconography of both the building and the manuscript. Jean the Elder used a straightforward version of the family arms, recorded in what was probably his own copy of the statutes and register of the society of La Table Ronde de Bourges, which he helped to found in i486 (fig. 6).^*^ These arms occur throughout the Lallemant Hours and are also to be found in a Roman de la Rose in Leningrad*^ and in a 215 Vniitn fiiiTmrn. Qcwm vmiriiiim maim 4. St Peter. Pierre Louis de Valtan's Commentary on the Apostles' Creed. Sold from the collection of Henry Huth in 1919 Boethius dated 1497 and now in Paris. ^^ The two secular books do not appear to belong to the 'Poyet' group, but the Hours cannot be far removed in date from the Boethius and it seems that Jean the Elder was artistically active around the turn of the century. His brother, Jean Lallemant the Younger (d. 1548), was later to become even more noted a bibliophile, but his manuscripts are identified by a highly personal iconography and by the inclusion of livery colours rather than by arms.^° Similar colours, part black and part 216 •- ... - ^^v Fig. 5. David rebuked by the prophet Nathan. Hours of Jean Lallemant the Elder. Add. MS. 39641, fol. 3^ striped in dark red and pale grey, are used on the scroll which carries his name below his personal arms in the register of La Table Ronde (fig. 7).^^ These three Books of Hours, together with the two Creeds, form a nucleus to which other manuscripts can be related. ^^ One major subgroup has already been suggested by John Plummer.^^ A manuscript that is hard to reconcile with the others is the Tours missal in New York which bears the arms ofthe Lallemants (fig.

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