Eszter Nagy

In the 1480s several luxuriously executed liturgical codices were made for King Matthias Corvinus. The richly decorated Pontificale romanum, the so-called Vitéz Pontifical preserved in the Vatican Library under the shelf mark Ott. lat. 501 fits among them well – at first sight. However, it is not at all self-evident to range the manuscript among Matthias’ liturgical books, for the signs alluding to the possessor point in two directions at the same time: in addition to the king, to János Vitéz the Younger, bishop of Szerém (from 3 June 1489 bishop of Veszprém), who was the king’s ambassador in Rome at the time.
Research has so far proposed three scenarios to solve this ambiguity. Some opined that Vitéz ordered the manuscript for himself and the motifs alluding to Matthias are only signs of his respect for his king. Others deliberated the possibility that Vitéz had the book made as a present to his ruler. By now the most widespread view is that Matthias himself had the pontifical made for himself (i. e. the Palace Chapel in Buda), and Vitéz was merely appointed to look after the order.
In my paper I introduce new viewpoints and argue for a fourth possibility. In view of the genre of the manuscript and the place of making, I think it most likely that the codex was Matthias’s gift for János Vitéz the Younger, the execution of which – not without precedents – was to be seen to by the beneficiary at his that-time place of residence, that is, in Rome.

Many details of the iconography in the Gradual of King Matthias are still undetermined, due to the work’s exceptionally rich decoration. In most graduals, historiated initials usually only adorned the beginnings of the most important feasts, but in this manuscript, which contains the hymns sung at masses between Holy Saturday and the end of the liturgical year, each mass opens with a large historiated initial. the majority of these, however, had no well-established iconography. Erzsébet Soltész noticed that in some cases, the miniature is a literal representation of the introit or of the text of the psalm from which it is taken. However, this does not explain the choice of theme for many of the initials. In my study, I argue that the person who conceived the iconography of the Gradual of King Matthias based the themes of the miniatures not only on the texts of the introits, but also on a well-known biblical commentary, the Postilla litteralis super totam Bibliam by Nicholas of Lyra.

The ideas for several themes, whose connection with the given mass has hitherto bafed researchers (e.g., Mattathias killing the idolatrous Jew, abraham rescued by the Lord from the fery furnace of the chaldeans), were taken from Lyra’s commentary on the biblical passage (or its closer context) in the introit. Elsewhere, curious details of certain miniatures, which otherwise faithfully follow the introit (e.g., fols. 145v, 188v), are explained by Lyra’s commentary. In some cases, connecting the Postilla text with the illustration requires revising the themes defned by Soltész (e.g., fols. 132r, 141v). Finally, with the help of Lyra’s commentary, we can also attempt to understand how the scenes from the life of king David, which make up more than a quarter of the illustrations, were selected.

Two miniatures suggest that it was not the Flemish miniaturist who conceived the subject of the depictions: comparing the images with Lyra’s commentary, it seems very likely that in these cases the miniaturist misread the instructions written by the inventor of the concept. the other master of the gradual, the Lombard miniaturist, painted only one historiated initial in the codex, but a small detail makes it clear that he was following the same concept as the Flemish master. However, this single miniature is insufcient to determine whether the Lombard miniaturist was the inventor or not. It is worth noting that we know of a Lombard miniaturist in Buda who fits the intellectual profle suggested by the iconography of the manuscript: as a Dominican monk, Giovanni Antonio Cattaneo da Milano would have been a suitable candidate for this task.

Of course, there are limitations to the interpretation drawn from the Postilla; the cycle of images cannot be seen as a visual commentary on the text of the introits. the inventor used Lyra’s work merely as a tool to devise themes for miniatures linked to sundays and weekdays with no conventional form of depiction.

In relation to the Holkham Hall Evangelistary, Corvina research has hitherto only dealt with its ornately decorated frontispiece. In my study, I look “behind” the frontispiece to examine aspects of the manuscript that have been ignored until now: the source of the liturgical text and the surprisingly numerous, but never executed illustrations. These new aspects help us to reinterpret the place of the Evangelistary within the group of liturgical manuscripts associated with King Matthias Corvinus.
Determining the source of the text involved making a thorough comparison between the content of the Evangelistary and various liturgical sources. The Gospel readings that appear in the Holkham Hall manuscript are not entirely identical to the contents of the two Roman missals commissioned by Matthias, nor to the list of items in any of the known missals associated with the dioceses of historical Hungary. The selection of readings, however, complied perfectly with the content of
the first printed missal intended for use in Hungary, namely the Missale dominorum ultramontanorum, published in Verona in 1480. The connection is confirmed by the description that can be read in the incipit of the Holkham Hall manuscript (“evangelistarium secundum ritum tramontanorum”). The content of the missal proves beyond any doubt that it was produced for use in Hungary, although at present it is not
possible to connect it to any specific diocese. All that can be deduced, based on earlier research, is that the content of the ultramontane missal is probably associated with the liturgical practice in the province of Kalocsa, although the publication was primarily produced for commercial purposes, and was intended for distribution in the entire country. There are several reasons to believe that the Holkham Hall
Evangelistary was copied directly from an exemplar of the printed missal. Firstly, there is the similarity between the incipits: whereas the expression “ultramontane” in the Verona publication indicates that the work was destined for use abroad, on the other side of the Alps, its presence in the manuscript produced in Buda, for use in Hungary, makes
no sense, and the only possible explanation is that the text was copied from the printed book. Secondly, the only Gospel readings included in the Evangelistary are those that appear in their full text in the missal. Whenever in the printed missal, the reader, having arrived at a Gospel reading, is directed towards the text of another mass, that feast day is not even alluded to in the manuscript. The hypothesis that the printed missal was copied is further reinforced by a detailed philological comparison.
The ultramontane missal published in Verona was therefore accessible in the Buda court, and was presumably also used there. This, however, disrupts the unified image that was hitherto formed by the other liturgical manuscripts produced for Matthias that follow the Use of Rome, and indicates that we should assume a lower level of consistency with regard to the use of the ritual books commissioned by the ruler. I am of the opinion that the strongest factor unifying this group of
manuscripts should be sought not in their texts, but in their luxury execution and representational function. The Brussels Missal, the Vatican Missal, the Vatican Breviary and the Matthias Gradual are all extremely richly illustrated manuscripts, while the Holkham Hall Evangelistary differs noticeably from these by having just one decorated page. Looking through the rest of the pages of the manuscript, however, it becomes obvious that it too was originally intended to be decorated with an extraordinarily copious pictorial cycle: after each passage from
the Gospel, the scriptor left five to seven lines of space for a narrative depiction to accompany the given section of text. Eventually, however, the programme of illustration – which was on a grand scale that is almost unparalleled within the genre of evangelistaries – was abandoned, as indicated by the fact that the only initiative – the frame drawn for the miniature on fol. 3r – was later erased. The change in concept probably took place during the reign of King Vladislaus II, whose coat of arms on the frontispiece was superimposed over that of Matthias, his predecessor.
Thus, regarding the richness of their illumination, the liturgical manuscripts commissioned Matthias would have formed a completely unified and extremely prestigious set, that was probably intended for use in the Buda Castle chapel, which the king consciously strove to enhance and embellish in the 1480s.

Recent studies have proved that the Gradual (Budapest, National Széchényi Library, Cod. Lat. 424) of King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary (1458‒1490) was illuminated by a Flemish master presumably trained in Tournai or Lille. However, both the Gradual and a miniature in an incunabulum (Klosterneuburg, Augustiner-Chorherrenstift, Bibliothek, Cod. Typ. 814, fol. 2r), the only other work attributed to him so far, were produced in Central-Europe in the 1480s: the former probably in Buda, the latter in Vienna. In this paper, I propose a new attribution which would finally connect the illuminator’s activity to the Netherlands. Based on detailed stylistic analysis, I argue that the rich decoration of a universal chronicle, written by the otherwise unknown author, Johannes de Vico and now preserved in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna (Cod. 325) can be attributed to the same illuminator who painted the Gradual of King Matthias. Since at the beginning of the chronicle the author declares that the present date is 12 April 1495, the Vienna manuscript was definitely produced after the death of Matthias in 1490. Some philological and palaeographic observations suggest that Johannes de Vico was not only the compiler but also the scribe of the text, while the examination of the physical relation between text and images has revealed that the execution of the miniatures’ underdrawing must have preceded the copying of the neighbouring passages of the text. Therefore, the illuminator worked closely together with Johannes the Vico, and the date 1495 given in the text also marks the start of copying and illuminating. Based on this date and the coat of arms of the Burgundian Dukes painted on fol. 17v, Philip the Fair has always been considered the first owner of the manuscript. Although the activity of the illuminator in Vienna might raise the possibility that this manuscript was also commissioned there, by Maximilian I, the Holy Roman Emperor and father of Philip the Fair, there is no sign of Maximilian having been involved in the production of the chronicle. A detail of the dedication miniature also suggests that the manuscript was illuminated in the Netherlands, more precisely in Brussels. Marie José Onghena identified the church appearing in the background of the dedication scene as the Saint Gudula collegiate church of Brussels. Thus, the Vienna chronicle not only enriches the meagre oeuvre of the Flemish illuminator of the Gradual of King Matthias with a richly illuminated, prestigious new work, but it also testifies his return to the Netherlands in the 1490s after the years he spent in Vienna and probably Buda.

«Les jardins de Genius»: texte et illustration dans le Roman de la Rose

On se demande depuis longtemps dans la litérature spécialisée consacrée au Roman de la Rose quel est le rapport entre le texte et les illustrations des manuscrits et dans quelle mesure celles-ci ont une fonction interprétative. Après avoir passé en revue les principales prises de position en la matière, nous chercherons à répondre à cete question
en examinant l’un des points clés du roman, à savoir la comparaison entre le verger de Déduit et le parc de l’agneau ainsi que les représentations iconographiques de ces deux types de jardins. La comparaison des deux jardins est faite dans le discours de Genius, et ce dans un contexte à l’ironie multiple. On est surpris du petit nombre d’illustrations liées à cet épisode dans les manuscrits du 13e au 15e siècles. Pourtant, l’interprétation de ce passage a interpellé de façon intense non seulement les lecteurs modernes, mais aussi ceux du Moyen Âge. Dans ce contexte, il sera intéressant d’étudier un exemplaire du 16e siècle (le manuscrit M.948 de la Morgan Library de New York), dans lequel l’opposition visuelle des deux jardins joue un rôle de premier plan pour constituer le point de départ d’une lecture chrétienne de l’ensemble de l’œuvre.