Illustrated Manuscripts

Named for its 18th-century owners, the German Dukes of Gotha, this sumptuous manuscript may have been commissioned by one of the great fourteenth-century royal bibliophiles, and it may have been intended for the private chapel of the Valois king, Charles V of France (d. 1380). The manuscript was produced in the workshop of one of the great illuminators of the day, Jean Bondol, a Netherlandish artist who headed the king's manuscript workshop at Paris. The missal today is complete and in excellent condition. It consists of 164 vellum leaves with a Latin text block of two columns in brown and red ink. The main decorative body of the missal consists of two full-page miniatures (the frontispiece illustrations to the Canon of the Mass) and twenty-three small miniatures.

The style and quality of the decoration of The Gotha Missal provides considerable evidence of the high place the volume holds within a large group of manuscripts known to have been produced for Charles V. Those features also point to its inclusion within a more select group of manuscripts accepted today as coming from the hand of Jean Bondol. The criteria of page layout and border decoration, for example, are decisively Parisian, as is the manuscript's calendar. The meandering ivy vines prevalent in the borders were by 1375 a distinctive hallmark of Parisian manuscript painting.

Born in Bruges, Jean Bondol was active at the court of Charles V from 1368 until 1381, heading the court atelier and also serving as valet de chambre. At court he was sometimes referred to as Jean de Bruges. His work there consisted of miniature as well as large-format painting such cartoons for tapestries.

The salient characteristics of Bondol's style are evident in the miniatures of this missal. Chief among them is the use of distinctive mushroom-like trees. The figures are painted mostly in a technique known as grisaille, a monochromatic form of painting in shades of gray. Only in the flesh tones do touches of pink and in certain places pale blue appear. The draperies also have areas of pink. Grisaille is characteristic of a number of manuscripts made for Charles V and seems indicate the king's taste in book decoration. Bondol's grisaille figures are set against colored backgrounds to achieve contrasting effects and sharp tonalities and are important in the overall decorative scheme because of their intense colors: red, sharp orange, blue, or green. The backgrounds appear in at least a dozen varied patterns, with either winding gold scrolls or a diapered field of squares or diamonds. Overall, the effect is clearly one of sumptuousness and refinement.